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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Hui-Ju Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages :

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Compared with first language (L1) writing, writing in a second or foreign language (L2) is considered to be more challenging and difficult. The challenges and difficulties may result from both the cognitive and the affective aspects of writing. To mitigate the difficulties of L2 writing and help students master L2 writing, teachers could consider using the pedagogical strategies which can help enhance students' cognition in writing or students' writing performance, and also can help reduce students' fear of L2 writing. One of the pedagogical strategies is online collaborative writing supported by CMC. Collaborative learning helps enhance students' cognitive outcomes, such as academic achievement and cognitive development, as well as produce less anxiety in learning. CMC facilitates collaboration, and also provides more chances for interaction which could result in more thoughts. The more thoughts would facilitate to compose. Therefore, it is assumed that online collaborative writing is more effective than traditional collaborative writing in terms of writing performance and writing anxiety. The present study is a quasi-experimental study. Participants were 101 first-year college students from two intact classes of a private university in Taiwan. One class was randomly assigned as the control class. Participants were engaged in traditional collaborative writing. The other was the experimental class. Students wrote collaboratively via blogs. Before the treatment, both classes were asked to completed a background survey, a pre-test L2 writing anxiety questionnaire, and a pre-test individual writing task. The treatment lasted for ten weeks during which each collaborative group in both classes completed five collaborative writing tasks. After the treatment, a collaborative writing questionnaire, a post-test L2 writing anxiety questionnaire, and a post-test individual writing task were administered to all participants.

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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Pattarit Na Nagara
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Academic achievement
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Previous theories and research have suggested practical benefits of active blogging that could potentially lead to better achievement in writing for school students. The aim of this study was to investigate the patterns of the types of responses and replies received in students' individual blogs and to investigate their possible relation to students' writing achievement. The research procedure was conducted based on the blogging activity of Year 5 students of the ethnic minority groups from three different schools. These student participants were verified to have both high and low educational achievement and writing skills. Participants were required to blog online as a form of learning strategy throughout their academic year (2012). The collected data of this research were primarily records of students' blog materials as well as their writing assessment scores. The analyses of data were divided into three analytical categories, these were; a) types of blog posts, b) types of responses and replies, and c) groups of audiences. A close examination of the data collection has revealed significant positive weak relationship between the frequency of published blog posts, frequency of responses and replies, and students' writing achievement. However, the results have also shown certain contrasts of findings to previous research and theoretical frameworks such as, conversational turn responses made to bloggers provided more benefit toward students' achievement in writing than the evaluative feedback responses. Results have also shown that peer responses were made to students bloggers in larger number when compared to the teachers' responses, and that they were determined to be more beneficial toward students' writing achievement as well. In addition to the contrast in findings, very few dialogical string conversations developed on focus students' blogs. Possible factors and explanation in support of these contrasts could possibly relate to focus students' age and their capability in blogging, as Year 5 was the first fundamental year to incorporate blogging as a learning strategy. The inexperience in blogging could have been an influential factor in the development of the study's outcome, and could represent a potential explanation for the numerous contrasts in findings. Several recommendations suggested for further interventions for future research include developing well structured-workshops for students. Through these workshops and preparations, students may gradually strengthen the correlation and relationship between blogging and students' writing achievement in the future.

Author: Chih-Ching Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blogs
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Author: Rashed Saad Alaboudi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Technology is advancing in continuous and swift steps, producing many tools that can be utilized in language teaching and learning practice. This study aims to examine the perceptions of 16 male English writing students in a Saudi university towards the utility of using blogging in their writing classes. The instrument of this study includes a survey of 19 Likert-scale questions, three open-ended questions, and five demographic questions. Six major areas of interest are explored in view of participants' perceptions of blog-based writing classes, including usefulness, benefits, advantages and disadvantages and whether or not they would choose a blog-based writing class in the future. The results reveal that the utility of blogging is perceived positively by the majority of participants in this study and is associated with an increased motivation and involvement in the learning process. Blog-based English writing classes are found useful for improving learners' critical thinking skills, vocabulary knowledge, writing style, sentence structure, grammatical competence, audience awareness, punctuation, organizational structure, and creativity of ideas. Among all these benefits, the highest mean is observed in relation to the benefits of blogging for participants' growth as critical readers of other students' writings. Overall, the results of the present study add further support to the postulations of Collaborative Learning Theory (Dillenbourg,1999) and the Expectancy Theory (Groom, 1964), according to which collaboration in learning facilitates the process of reaching the expected learning outcomes. Based on the results of the present study, the use of blogging as a teaching tool seems to facilitate both the collaborative nature of learning and the level of learner expectancy. This observation is supported by the high percentage (56%) of participants who agreed that by writing blogs they have learned to write for different audiences. The findings of this study also draw attention to the fact that some negative observations were made about the quality and effectiveness of peer work and peer feedback. This is one area that needs to be considered in future research in order to find effective ways of incorporating peer collaboration in the development and assessment of students' writing skills in English blog-based classes.

Author: Simon Higginson
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 1612337562
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Since the turn of the century the use of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) has become more widespread in educational contexts and weblogs (blogs), one of the more popular forms of CMC (Bloch, 2007), have been the focus of numerous studies. However, whilst these studies have listed the potential benefits of blog use for language learners, few studies have offered any practical tips for educators who wish to implement the use of writing blogs in the EFL classroom. Moreover, the vast majority of studies have focused on the use of blogs with relatively high-level learners in academic contexts. This small-scale study focuses on how the use of blogs impact on the writing of a group of low-level learners in a tertiary EFL context in Chile. Moreover, it presents a tentative model to explain the different factors that contribute to writing development using weblogs as these learners grapple "not only with a written code but with a linguistic code that is still being acquired" (Raimes, 1985: 232). The findings report that blogs have the potential to aid low-level learners develop their L2 writing, and a number of suggestions are made that may help practitioners facilitate the process.

Author: Theresa Martin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Academic achievement
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Author: Michael W. Holmes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blogs
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Author: Mayela Adriana Hernandez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blogs
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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A skill that second language learners struggle to acquire is writing. This study is based on the Huebner (2008) study which findings indicated that there was no significant difference in the writing achievement of third-grade second language learners when they responded to writing prompts in writing journals and in a blog. A limitation of the Huebner (2008) study was that the participants had no prior keyboarding skills. Two research questions were explored. Will there be a difference in writing achievement between third-grade second language learners who participate in a three week training in keyboarding skills, compared to students who do not when they blog? "Will the use of blogs versus journals cause third-grade second language learners to write more words, use more sophisticated language, and have less grammatical and mechanical errors?" (Huebner, 2008, p. 4). Twenty-two third-grade second language learners and 2 native English speakers participated, 12 in the experimental and 12 in the control group. The experimental group was exposed to a three-week keyboarding training. Both groups for three weeks answered 12 writing prompts 6 in their journal and 6 a blog. The results indicated that the experimental group had a higher word count when the word counts of only blog and blog and writing journal entries were added. However, the control group had a slightly higher writing rubric score. There was no significant difference in writing achievement. KEYWORDS; computers, keyboarding skills, second language learners, web 2.0 sites, weblogs (blogs), writing achievement