Reflection: Weblogs (not required)

REFLECTION

After reading "Weblogs: a tool for EFL interaction, expression, and self-evaluation Previous studies: blogs foster development of ELT skills "

Before this paper

Blog was just a socialising tool

Now it is a helper

That prompts process writing off school 

Teachers and students

all leave their words 

Formal or not

Comment has its use 

Summary

Weblogs: a tool for EFL interaction, expression, and self-evaluation

Previous studies: blogs foster development of ELT skills

This study:

Approach: sociocultural approach

Focus: on interaction that creates learning environment

Target: aim to identify interaction strategies   

Outcome: blogs promote EFL interaction, self-expression, self-evaluation, and a sense of language process

Blogs’ capacity that imply they can be used as channels for interaction:

•  Authentic interaction context of blogs: real social functions
• Highly collaborative nature of blogs: bloggers engage in others’ writing
•  Scaffolding: Peer works exposure provide chances for learners with lower abilities to learn from others (autonomous: “We view the autonomy and empowerment that blogs can offer as key elements in fostering learners’ confidence and desire to write.”)
• Interaction through writing: reflection (“ Increased reflection and awareness about language may foster a greater level of self expression and self-evaluation.”)

Projects:

Mainly aiming to identify such strategies by exploring both teacher- and student-initiated interaction. 16 students who took English as an elective course needed to carry out 13 tasks that resulted in short posts on their blogs.

Students were free to decide whether or what to publish on their blogs without being forced to actively publish anything beyond the prescribed short activities. If students chose to interact with each other, this was interpreted as an indication that learner motivation and autonomy were promoted.

In teacher-initiated interaction:

The teacher of the class systematically left comments on each student’s blog as a follow-up to the tasks that the students had written on their blogs.

Function of comments:

•  Feedbacks
• Motivation for students to elaborate and expand their initial writing and thoughts.

Informal language:

“The use of a relaxed learning atmosphere has also been highlighted as animportantmotivational strategy in traditional L2 classrooms (Dornyei, 2001)” and the focus of the class was on interaction and communication. Therefore, teacher language was informal.

Three effective strategies used by teachers:

• Inclusion of questions in his comments
• The employment of witty and humourous language to motivate students’ responses and engagement
• Provision of examples from his personal interests

In Student-initiated interaction

“Through his comments, the teacher not only modelled possible ways of writing but also scaffolded students into the process of collaborative writing.” Students gave positive comments to peers and often included their own opinions.

• Self-expression: students can express ideas freely and change their writing purpose and extent. “It was not only the language per se that mattered but also how it was used with and by others and for what purpose.”
•  Self-evaluation and a sense of language progress: the reverse chronological nature of blog allowed students to see their progress
• Motivation: “ These data, in the form of students’ own words, indicate students’ growing motivation to improve their English because of their writings’ visibility to others.”