Freedom in Writing OR Reflection on Blogging

“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.”

- Brian Clarke

Blogging is one of the newest approaches of improving writing ability in terms of posting ideas on internet where it is published for larger audience. In spring semester several cohorts of GSE were introduced by our instructor using blogs with some requirements such as writing in half academic style, connecting topics with education, using academic sources and etc. Even though students had free writing style and active online interaction, there was less effective impact on improving my academic writing skills as blogging does not correspond with the purpose of the course “English for Research”.

As one of the main goals of blogging was improving English language proficiency by writing a post - was great opportunity for students to choose the topic they like and develop their ideas. Similarly, Bloch (2007) and Rezaee & Oladi (2008) stated that blogging helps students to enunciate their ideas who become also part of writing community and balance their voice on their own writings as contributors (as cited in Warschauer, 2010, p. 1). For instance, I was posting the topics on village school, giving definition for reflection, raising the importance of ECA in mainstream school of Kazakhstan and etc.  Ostensibly, I had privilege to designate my own topics at least I submitted them on time.

Several authors pointed out that interactive learning such as blog helps to increase the level of communication between teacher and students, also communication among students themselves (Montgomery, 2015a; Chen, 2011). It was an opportunity for group of people to share ideas and get feedback from their peers as well. According to blog survey, the majority of students (approximately 80%) were eager to get feedback from their peers and instructor which is very constructive and valuable for their further writings (Montgomery, 2015b). However, the posts were not regularly read and commented by students and instructor. Here is the example of one student in blog survey (Montgomery, 2015b) “Also, the teacher should comment more, sometimes I feel like nobody reads my posts”. On the next half of the semester instructor started to comment on writing style and grammar errors of how to improve writing while hitherto he gave feedback only at the end of the term.

Another essential point of blogging is improvement of academic writing skills. However, I don`t think that my writing has improved now than at the beginning of the semester since there was no correlation between the research and blogging. Undoubtedly, writing the posts according to APA style and considering paragraph organization were elements to practice of academic writing. Maybe blog is more appropriate for online conversational interactions which is also described as “social interaction”  (Vygotsky, 1978 as cited in Warschauer, 1997, p. 3), “bridge between writing and speaking skills” (Chun, 1994, as cited in Warschauer, 1997, p. 6 ) and “equality student participation” (Warschauer, 1997, p. 5) while we need more practice on writing our researches.  

Considering that EDUC 502 “English for Research” class was full of useful classroom academic writing activities, it can be concluded that blogging remains as remedial tool for improvement students` writing. Students can experience freedom in writing by choosing any interesting topics in educational sphere; they interact by expressing their ideas on different topics. As for improvement of students` academic writing in terms of research I would suggest to develop further ideas how students can practice their writing skills through blogging. Maybe it can be pivotal motivation for students to share how to write thesis or discuss other issues on writing thesis. 

References

1.      Brian, C. Retrieved from http://www.incomediary.com/bloggerstop-blogging-quotes

2.      Montgomery, D.P. (2015a, April). Did you read my new post?: Improving autonomy, English and engagement through class blogs. Paper presented at The International Conference for Building Cultural Bridges, Suleyman Demirel University. Kaskelen, Kazakhstan: ICBCB.

3.      Montgomery, D. P. (2015b). [Blogging and Academic Writing]. Unpublished raw data. Retrieved from htt://goo.gl/PX8wv7

4.      Lai, H. M., & Chen, C. P. (2011). Factors influencing secondary school teachers’ adoption of teaching blogs. Computers & Education, 56(4), 948-960.

5.      Warschauer, M. (1997). Computer‐mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. The Modern Language Journal, 81(4), 470-481.

6.      Warschauer, M. (2010). Invited commentary: New tools for teaching writing.Language Learning & Technology, 14(1), 3-8.