Reflection on blogging

This semester started with interesting, ambitious and provocative elective courses. Going through the “English for Research” course, I confronted additional challenges such as exploring suitable articles for my blog post and the lack of consultation with the instructor. This essay demonstrates my general positive attitude and opinion on blogging with evidence and support.

Writing on a blog has changed me as writer this semester as compared to the previous one. At the beginning of my master classes, all essay and presentation topics with clear rubrics were determined by the instructor, while freedom for topic choice was provided over the next semester only. Initially, I thought how great it would be to write about the educational issues which I would like to share with my peers and attract students’ and teacher’s attention on my posts on the web. “Online writing environments, such as blogs, create the necessity for natural and authentic communication between students and teachers, as well as among the students themselves” (Montgomery, 2015, p. 2). However, then I faced the following issues: firstly, after publishing more than four blog posts, I found myself “swimming in the big ocean”. The topic choice turned out not an easy task for me. Searching various articles on a specific issue, organizing the structure of each essay and peer editing apart from the lessons were yet additional challenges for my otherwise routine academic life. Thus, I started to improve my skills on searching valuable articles through the NU library and plan the essay structure to provide qualitative work. As a result, writing in a blog on various topics opened my horizons and enhanced my critical thinking skills.

On the other hand, the lack of instructor’s advice and grammar revisions on time have worsened my writing skills. Despite the fact that my professor’s door was open at any time, I have only visited the office few times to show my draft essays. “Most often the papers are never discussed orally and very little real communication of ideas occurs” (Montgomery, 2015, p. 2). I guess the vast majority of students should think about their time management skills in organizing additional meetings with the instructor. Moreover, the lack of time management skills was obviously reflected on writing the comments in blog posts. The vast majority of students commented each others’ blogs on the last days prior to deadline, while they were supposed to discuss and comment over the whole course period. From my point of view, there are only two reasons of this issue: students may really lack time, or they cannot cope with time management.

To summarize, I began to think from the global perspective by choosing different topics, being more specific about the issues in the field of education. However, the lack of instructor’s advice and time leads to certain negative consequences.

Reference:

Montgomery, D. (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: ICBCB