Role of Blogs in Learning English

Role of Blogs in Learning English 

Agustinus Marjun (email: agomickjohn@gmail.com)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to review role blog in Learning English for any perspectives of previous research. The writer analyses and summary three of research paper and an article about the use of blogs in language learning. This summary reports that all of research paper in this written are gives the benefit result on the use of blogs for language learning and the article views also indicated that blogs are needed in language learning specifically to the aspect of English writing.

Introduction

Blog was popular in since in every day internet life. They are many reasons for writer to explore their idea through blogs. The trend of using blog may contribute an enormous impact for the user even reader. Blog may become as trending target for all internet user to fulfill they necessity. Blog as an online media for sharing information and idea make a good impact for web reader gather the information as they need quickly. The user of blogs is allowed to choose freely what they want to share with various purposes. They can design slightly their own blog. It is also the user of blogs able to read millions people’s blogs as the references needed. There were many studies that prove the effectiveness of using blog for learning. In language learning blogs has made a significant impact for the language learner particularly on the writing skill.Blog also can be used for language learner through writing to reflect their language learning (Lin, 2012; Mynard, 2007; & Zhang, 2009). Since years ago until recently there are many research has done the investigation toward the use of blogs. Thus, the main objective of this article tries to summary from any different previous research toward the use of blog for learning.

Literature review

Role of Blogs in Learning for EFL Student

A blog as a Tool for Reflection for English Language Learners (Mynard, 2007)

The authors of this study draws on preliminary data collected from twenty-two female Japanese college students.Students kept voluntary blogs in their free time throughout a semester they spent studying English in the UK.The authors of this study underlined a key question “to what extent did the students use their blogs to reflect on their learning?” therefore the main objective of this study was to find out whether blogs could be a tool that let the students to reflect their own learning. The researcher of this study thinks that this investigation filled the gap because the purpose of the present research is not to measure or compare data but “to establish whether students used blogs as a tool for unprompted reflection. In this study reports that blogs can help twenty-two female English student of Japanese especially as follows result through the implementation of questionnaires and interview as the instrument for collecting data:

1.      The finding proves that blogs could be one tool for educators to use in order to encourage students to reflect on their learning.

2.      The results of this small-scale study show that the students used their blogs as a medium to reflect on specific aspects of their learning.

3.      The students were aware that their blogs are public documents and wanted to communicate particular observations with their friends,teachers and families.

4.      Blogs as tools for reflecting on their learning, it is likely that the learners reflected on their English as they wrote their blogs.

This author in this study suggests that blogs may assist language learner but it is more important for the user or even reader involved in blogs activity. In similar blog projects, participants should be encouraged to share their feelings about learning with teachers and classmates, and that readers should be encouraged to write comments on the blogs, prompting further reflection.

Blog-Assisted Learning in the ESL Writing Classroom: A Phenomenological Analysis (Lin, M. H., Groom, N., & Lin, C.-Y. 2013)

This study explores the experiences of a group of Taiwanese ESL student writers on a course of study that used a blog-assisted language learning (BALL) methodology.The authors is interested to conduct this study through the previous analysis although blogs may contribute students’ learning but at the fact students seems did not make any further posts to their own or their peers’ blogs. This problem could arise a key question why does enthusiasm for BALL in principle fail to translate into blogging as self-directed language learning activity in practice? This study was conducted in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at a university in central Taiwan. Twenty-five first-year English majors agreed to do a BALL course by signing a consent form. The class met for two hours each week on Friday mornings, and the course aimed at enabling students to develop well-organized texts in different types of writing.Students were required to post at least 17 journal or assignment entries on their blogs in order to ensure an adequate degree of immersion in this experience.Students were required to post their writing assignments and journals in their own learner blogs; they were asked to provide feedback on fellow students’ entries; and the participants were encouraged to invite their friends to comment on their blog entries. The data gathered from very depth interviews through open-ended questions corresponding. The impact of this study revealed as follows result:

1.      The students’ experience of learning to write using a blog-assisted methodology seems to have been no different from the experience of learning to write in a more traditional ESL writing classroom context.

2.      Students learn about the value and importance of receiving and responding to constructive criticism on their work.

3.      Allowing students to have collaborative discussions or work as a pair/group may also be a way of alleviating students’ anxieties about publishing their individual work and expressing their own ideas and feelings.

4.      It would be interesting and useful for future studies to take students’ learning styles into consideration when blog use is introduced into classrooms.

Blog-assisted language learning (BALL) plays a significant role to experience students’ writing. The author of this study underlines the important note“our analysis also suggests that we should bear in mind the pace of technological change in the modern world, and how this affects the perspectives of different groups of observers: what seems exciting and thus intrinsically motivating to one generation may be humdrum and unremarkable to another. In the meantime, we would advise against jumping to any premature conclusions about whether second language writing teachers should run with the BALL, throw it to a team-mate, or drop it altogether”.

The Application of Blog in English Writing (Zhang, 2009)

In this study the authors realize that blog give much contributes especially to the teaching of English writing. As blogs become more and more commonplace, educators in recent years have begun seeing the potential of blogs for teaching and learning. It seems more important of this article to draws the use of blogs to impact English writing ability from any perspective of recent study. Thus, the author’s focus of this article is on the possibilities of blogs as learning journals in the virtual teaching and learning environment.This article underlines some key point of views: the blog in education included general observations about blog, the application of blog in education, rationale for using blog in education, using blog for English writing, and the reflection with blog for English Language Learners in writing. As the author mentioned in the conclusion there were important suggestions for the research on blogging and its potential for its pedagogical application to education, especially the teaching of English writing.

Blogs in English language teaching and learning: Pedagogical uses and student responses (Blackstone, B., Spiri, J., & Naganuma, N. 2007)

The authors of this paper reports on an innovative approach to the implementation of a cycle of blogging activities within different levels of courses in English for academic purposes/composition program in an English medium university in Japan. The purpose of this study was to measure student interest in blogging and associated activities.With the authors’ consideration the limitations of this realize that a student in the traditional writing class has typically presented his or her work to the teacher alone, or at most, to a group of peer reviewers and then to the teacher. It is indicated that this study are needed to investigate the pedagogical uses and student responses. The methodology used by the authors called as an attitudinal survey conducted over two semesters with eleven classes of 145 students. Afterward, the result revealed as follows:

1.      Students demonstrate that they had extremely positive attitudes toward both blogging and the blogging buddy system, blogs, which are interactive homepages that are easy to set up and manage, enable students to engage in online exchanges, thereby expanding their language study and learning community beyond the physical classroom.

2.      Regular blogging also encourages more autonomous learning, when a student’s audience includes his or her classmates, the teacher and potentially anyone with an internet connection, motivation to engage in meaningful written communication appears to increase.

3.      From the survey results it seems clear that students truly appreciated the need to improve their writing and considered having an editor and being an editor valuable.

4.      The blog posts seemed to serve as motivation for students to make specific improvements in content and organization and correcting careless mistakes.

5.      Students seemed highly motivated to give their classmates written feedback on their posts.

Furthermore, the authors specifies that one potential problem of using blogging activities is that blogs are not private, but public.Three features of the blogging activities seem to make them attractive and powerful curricular component for university-level English language classes:

1.      Their accessibility beyond the limits of the traditional classroom,

2.      The personalized, student-centered nature of the interactions that they facilitate,

3.      Their capacity for motivating students to work autonomously (whether alone, in pairs or small groups) to consider, produce and react to more content more frequently than a teacher might expect.

These features combine to make blogging a highly productive, communicatively meaningful and effective approach to helping students refine and develop their language skills. It can be concluded that the blogging methods and activities presented do provide a motivating curricular addition for those students with internet access to have meaningful target language interactions outside the classroom.        

Conclusion

The literature shows that blog are very flexible medium of learning. Blogs play much contribute develop language skill such students’ writing, to reflect students’ learning, blog as a potential of  teaching and learning, and it is more than the improvement of writing ability blog can increase students’ motivation. In contrary, because of blogs belong to the public web-user which means it is accessible seems that blogging full-time make something useless if no one views even comments, indiscipline of the users’ posting, and attitude and learning are the most difficulty using blogs because it is need to have a good writing. Overall, there is no wrong with blog which means it is depend on the user to manage well their own blog.

References

Blackstone, B., Spiri, J., &Naganuma, N. (2007). Blogs in English language teaching and learning: Pedagogical uses and student responses. Retrieved January 8, 2016 from http://www.nus.edu.sg/celc/publications/RETL62/01to20blackstone.pdf.

Lin, M. H., Groom, N., & Lin, C.-Y. (2013). Blog-Assisted Learning in the ESL Writing Classroom: A Phenomenological Analysis. Educational Technology & Society, 16 (3), 130–139. Retrieved January 8, 2016 from http://www.ifets.info/journals/16_3/10.pdf.

Mynard (2007). A blog as a Tool for Reflection for English Language Learners.Retrieved January 5, 2016 from  http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/pta_Nov_07_jm.pdf.

Zhang, D. (2009). The Application of Blog in English Writing. Retrieved January 8, 2016 from http://www.journal.acs-cam.org.uk/data/archive/2009/200901-article8.pdf.