Using Blogs in an EFL Writing Class

Abstract

Since 1998, weblogs (or ‘blogs’) have gained increasing notice in the cyberspace community because even people without programming experience can also easily update and publish their personal web sites (Blood, 2000). More and more foreign educators have applied this user-friendly technology to classroom instruction and language learning (Campbell, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Richardson, 2004a); however, it seems that relatively few English teachers have ever used blogs in an EFL writing class here in Taiwan. Although not originally created for use in language education, blogs have formidable potentials as a useful tool for the teaching of EFL writing class. The main objectives of this paper are (1) to give explicit instructions to set up a personal blog with ‘Blogger’ (a free blogging service), (2) to discuss the advantages of blog in an EFL writing class, (3) to give a preliminary report about my students’ reactions to the use of blog in two English classes, and (4) to suggest some further research on blogs and some other application of blog to English learning and teaching. Introduction Blogs, online personal journals that are frequently updated, have existed in the cyberspace community since 1998. In August of 1999 the release of Blogger, a free blog hosting service, fostered the rapid growth of blog sites (Blood, 2000). Later, blog genre extended into various professional realms especially journalism and business. The cover story of the first issue of Fortune magazine in 2005 introduces “10 tech trends to watch in 2005”, and blog ranks the first one. “According to blog search-engine and measurement firm Technorati”, Fortune reports, “23,000 new weblogs are created every day – or about one every three seconds” (p.34). No wonder the author claims that blogs have become a force that business can’t afford to ignore. Blogs may be still strange to some English teachers here in Taiwan. What on earth is a blog? According to Webopedia, an online encyclopedia dedicated to computer technology, blog is defined as “Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.” I first found out the free blog construction service of Blogger in the middle of 2003 and immediately created an experimental blog titled “ESL teaching” in my personal website. However, while it was quite convenient to update my ideas about ESL teaching in this blog, I had difficulty adding sidebar links and making my archives function properly. That blog site has hibernated since then. In September 2004, I realized that Blogger also offered Blog*spot URL address as its blog hosting platform. I tried to create another blog hosted on blogger.com and found that it was pretty user-friendly and all the functions worked properly. Because blog features its easy-to-use interface, frequent text update, and interactive comment area, most educators applied their blogs to reading or writing classes (Campbell, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Oravec, 2002; Wilder & Merritt, 2004). Setting up a Blog Site There are many websites featuring free blog hosting services. Creating a blog at Blogger will be used as an example here to give clear instruction. After you enter Blogger website (http://www.blogger.com), it will take you only about ten minutes to create a personal blog. Blogger offers 3 easy steps to create a blog – (1) create an account, (2) name your blog, and (3) choose a template. In the first step, you only have to fill in all the basic information such as user name, password, and email, etc. Then, you have to give your blog a title and decide its URL address. If you would like to host your blog at Blogger, you have to choose a unique name before blogspot.com. For example, one of my blogs is named as ‘chuenglishwriting1’; therefore, the complete URL address of that blog is http://chuenglishwriting1.blogspot.com. If you would like to put your blog in your personal website, you then have to enter advanced blog setup to configure some blog details. Finally, after you pick up your favorite template, you can start writing down your own thoughts and publish them in the cyberspace. Most data you fill in