DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS VIA BLOGS

Year 2016, Volume: 5 , 244 - 246, 01.09.2016

Muge Gunduz

Abstract

The main goal of
English language teaching (ELT) is to develop learners’ skills to communicate
with other people in real world situations and to express themselves in English
(Brown, 1987; Oxford, 1990; Yang and Chen, 2007) (quoted in Fageeh 2011, p.1). According
to Pinkman (2005) blogs can provide interesting, authentic and communicative
resources that can serve a variety of purposes in language classroom and they
can also be used to encourage
interaction among students and between teachers and students (Yang, 2009). In this study, the participants were 1st year university students (n=103)
who created their group blogs in order to share their ideas during their oral
communication classes. Students interacted with their peers via blogs simply by
reading and commenting on each other’s blog posts. The data was collected from the blog entries and
a questionnaire administered at the end of the project in order to understand
the perceptions of students on effectiveness
of using blogs in developing their writing and critical thinking skills. It is hoped that the findings of this study provides some food for
discussion on a number of pedagogical and theoretical issues. 

Keywords

Blogs, language classes, writing skills

References

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