Blogging

Today the usage of information technology is being highlighted in almost all classroom settings. Accordingly, the change in methodology and pedagogy has taken a widespread place, shifting teacher-centered learning into a student-centered one (Montgomery, 2015). In order to enhance this approach the instructor of our course for Academic English introduced blogging. The following essay will attempt to rationalize the process of blogging based on student’s own experience and literature.

If during the first semester we were working on the academic essays, this semester we have been writing blogs. The main similarities of these types of writing are that they both put onus on students in order to improve their academic writing abilities, develop critical thinking skills and improve functional literacy. Whereas, differences are also worth emphasizing: if essay writing involves only a student and a teacher, where teacher gives feedback and corrects the errors; blog writing involves a bigger audience giving the opportunity for students to receive comments and feedback not only from their instructor, but also peers and other readers, who have the access to the website. In addition to that, I think, in essay writing students were more worried about their academic English enhancement or about their grades, but in blog writing students think about how to interest the audience and how to clearly state the common issue. In this respect, the autonomy given to students in choice of topic or style plays a big role. Students indeed feel responsibility for their blogs, in terms of clarifying, defending and responding with evidences to the comments and feedback from audience (Montgomery, 2015). Thus blogging is an effective tool for publishing and discussion among the particular audience, in our case among the students of the same educational context (Warschauer, 2010).

Analyzing the survey provided by Montgomery (2015), it can be concluded that many students take neutral position about blogging and academic essay writing, backing from taking preferences. As far as I am concerned, this semester I enjoyed the autonomy, feeling more confident and less worried about writing style and rules. Still we had one academic essay, which somehow brings you to APA and writing style. We could take an advantage of less pressure on deadlines and performance of work. The ability of academic writing is not the only indicator of proficiency in English, discussing the interesting topics and important issues, sharing information and ideas are much more important to me.

References:

Montgomery, D.P. (2015, 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: ICBSB.

Warschauer, M. (2010). Invited Commentary: New Tools for Teaching Writing. Language Learning and Psychology 14(1), 3-8.