My reflection on the process of blogging in the ‘English for Research’ course

Nowadays, “the rapid growth of the internet has caught the attention of language teachers” (Warschauer, 1997, p.470). One of the innovations in teaching methodology is blogging, which is relevant in use in higher education. In my experience, I firstly used blogging in the “English for Research” course. In this reflection, I will write my perspectives of how I have changed as a writer this semester, highlight the similarities and differences between last semester and this in terms of essay writing versus blog writing. I will express my point of view on my experience as a blogger and if blogging is beneficial for other students. In the end, some recommendations concerning blogging will be given to the students involved in a classroom blog, and comparison of my blogging experience to the current research on blogging will be made.

   What is “blogging”? Every person who is new to Blogging World asks this question. The first answer he/she usually gets is that blogging is a very creative thing to do in the internet when a person posts “personal thoughts and opinions on websites” (as cited in Lai, and Chen, 2011). My first experience of blogging was in the English for Research course in the spring semester. Blogging was implemented as an alternative to essay writing in the “Academic English” course in the fall semester, which helped me to improve writing skills. In the beginning of studying this course, I was really challenged with writing essays. My weakness was writing correct introductions and conclusions, which had to repeat the introduction and summarize the whole idea of the topic. According to my grades, the progress in writing this semester is blatant. For instance, my grade for the last summary for Mock Viva Voce was ten scores. In my opinion, the positive impact of writing essays and blogs on this success is crucial. Both tasks are helpful in developing us as good writers and bloggers. However, they have some differences: essays are usually more formal while blogs can be both formal and informal depending on the topic and instructor’s guidelines. Regarding the topics, it seems that sometimes students do not understand that they should coincide with the education topic. And when we want to write comments, we waste our time trying to find the blog connected with the topic of education. As blogging is used in the English for Research course, I would recommend other students to choose the topics discussed in the field of education.

            Overall, blogging is a very useful online tool, which is beneficial for developing students’ abilities to write and motivating them to learn to write clearly, coherently, and correctly. Moreover, “the value of online communication in second language learning has been attributed to how it combines the interactivity of speech with the permanence of writing” (Warschauer, 1997, p.3).  Thus, the use of blogging in the English for Research course changes us as writers and develops us as bloggers.   

Reference

Lai, H.-M., and Chen, C.-P. (2011). Factors influencing secondary school teachers’ adoption of    

              teaching blogs. Computers and Education, 56, pp.948-960. Elsevier Ltd.

Warschauer, M. (1997). Computer-mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. The

              Modern Language Journal, 81(4), pp. 470-481. Wiley.

Warschauer, M. (2010, February). Invited commentary: New tools for teaching writing. 

              Language Learning and Technology, 14(1), pp.3-8.