INTERACTIVE WRITING VIA WEBLOGS

INTERACTIVE WRITING VIA WEBLOGS
By
Ghazali Bunari
Journal writing activity has long been used by teachers to improve students’ writing skills. It is also a way for students to communicate with the teacher and vice-versa. This paper shares the experience of a language instructor utilizing weblogs to enrich the traditional journal writing task. A weblog is generally defined as a website containing frequently updated journal entries arranged chronologically. This task based activity can be described as an interactive writing. This paper defines the concept of weblog, explains the benefits of applying weblog in ELT, outlines the challenges of its implementation and finally, it suggests the logistic requirements for a successful implementation of the weblog project.
INTRODUCTION
A weblog or blog is a website with frequently updated entries. The latest entry is always on the top and the older ones fall into archives. Most weblogs allow visitors or readers to interact with the entries by providing a comment form. Before easy- to-use template based weblog writing services like Blogger.com and Livejournal.com were introduced in 1999, only those who were good with html code could maintain a weblog. Now, even those who do not know html can publish their entries and update their weblog everyday. They just need to fill in an online form to sign up for the free weblog service and log in every time they need to update their weblog. Some bloggers enjoyed recognitions from certain organizations as a medium to be capable of spreading messages efficiently. For example, in 2004 USA presidential elections, bloggers were invited to The Democratic and Republican Parties conventions. This paper shares the experience of an instructor utilizing weblog to improve the traditional journal writing task in a language class. A report of a small scale action research to investigate students’ perspective on the impact of weblog, as a tool for the journal writing assignment is part of this exclusive paper.
WEBLOG
In the introduction to We've Got Blog, Blood (2002) describes blogs as:
"… a training ground for writers--and there is fine writing being produced daily on hundreds of sites. They are platforms of intelligent reaction to current events and ubiquitous pundits.”
Technology has now allowed journal writing to be published on the web at a very low cost.
A weblog is defined as:
“… a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly—from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.” (Pyra Labs, 2000)
At present, there are many free weblog services available and most of them are user-friendly. Weblog services such as Blogger.com and Livejournal.com have made it easier for non-IT individuals to publish journal entries and archive old ones on the Internet. The blogging phenomenon has become the killer app that has the capacity to engage in collaborative activity, knowledge sharing, reflection and debate (Hiller, 2003). Currently there are thousand of weblogs in the cyberspace. Most weblogs are in a form of personal journal type in which writers report their lives, thoughts and feelings (Herring, 2004).
JOURNAL WRITING
Journal writing activity has long been used by teachers to improve students’ writing skills. It is also a way for students to communicate with the teacher and vice-versa. Williams (2003) stated that journal entries help students to reflect on their experiences. Journal writing is more than just a place for learners to write freely without undue concern for grammaticality. Journals can be in form of language learning logs, grammar discussions, reading logs and reflective notes of oneself(Brown, 2001).
Journal writing lends itself well to a heuristic learning approach. Kerka (1996) presented in her literature review that journal writing has several benefits to teaching and learning:
Writing journal entries is less formal and less threatening, thus students can write without self-consciousness or inhibition
Journal entries can provide tangible evidence of mental processes. They make thoughts visible and concrete, giving a way to interact with, elaborate on, and expand ideas.
Journals are tools for growth through critical reflection, for it is not enough to observe and record experiences, but equally significant is to make meaning out of them.

Maloney and Campbell-Evans (2002) investigated how interactive journals were used. They also found that journal writing promotes reflective learning. Interactivity in their research meant an ongoing pen-and-paper written dialogue between a teacher and his or her students. They found out that students used the journals to get direction on practice and planning, as a tool for analysis, as an emotional release and as a way of ‘sorting things out.’ Through journal writing, one can revisit his or her experience and reap lessons from the experience.
Nevertheless due to time constraint in a normal educational setting, the primary audience of a student’s journal is restricted to the instructor. It would be beneficial for the learning process if journal entries can be published and received feedback from the public. Comments on ideas written by others would mature students’ critical thinking and enhance argumentative writing skills. The degree of interactivity will increase as more people participate in a communication process and this will provide opportunities for language learning.
According to Burnett and Marshall (2003), when discussing about interpersonal communication and the web, “interactivity is a process-related construct about communication that describes the extent to which messages are related to each other. (p.52)” Computer-mediated communication provides us wider opportunities for interactivity to flourish.
Longhurst and Sandage (2004) suggested that e-mail should be used by instructors for journal assignments because it meets pedagogical goals with minimum disruptions. Basically e-mail assists pedagogy in several ways:
E-mail journal assignments permit the instructor give personalized comments on students’ work.
E-mail journal assignments allow quick feedbacks from instructors.
E-mail journal assignments are easily linked to other classroom tasks.
E-mail journal assignments encourage active learning.
E-mail journal assignments require minimum technical support and technology training.
Williams (2003) suggested e-mail pen pals as a way to make writing assignments more meaningful. She discovered that real audience motivates students to write better.
The concept of weblogs is almost similar to web-based e-mail application except writings in weblogs become public because they are posted as a webpage. Users just need is a web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape) and a computer that is linked to the Internet in order to write and read entries. In a language learning environment, weblogs might be a better choice of technology for journal writing task. It can provide the pedagogic benefits offered by e-mail journals plus promoting a high degree of interactivity by supplying writers with more readers.
METHODOLOGY
Participants were 48 (N=48) first year students at a university in Johor, Malaysia. They were students of Education Faculty who were taking UHB1412, English for Academic Communication. It is a mandatory English course for students in that university. This was the first English language course out of three compulsory English language courses that the students had to take. The students were selected on the basis they were available, convenient to access and prepared to participate. The action research project executed was to keep a weblog for 15 weeks or one semester. Data from an open ended survey questions and weblog analysis were collected to investigate students’ perspective on the impact of weblog as a tool for the journal writing assignment in a language learning environment.
One of the course works of UHB1412 required the students to complete self-access activities. There are a number of language activities that can be done ranging from pen and paper exercises, online activities and multimedia based exercises in the lab. The objectives of the Self-access Learning Activities were:
To increase students’ contact with the English language
To complement what are taught in class
To provide opportunities for students to access and monitor their own language learning progress
To provide opportunities for students to become independent learners so as to inculcate greater awareness of their own language learning strategies

The assessment procedure was very liberal. The students were given marks based on attendance at the language lab or submission of self-access learning portfolio report. The one-page report contains students’ own account of what they have learnt and the strategies employed to learn the items.
I decided in Semester 2, 2004/5 to execute the weblog project in which students were required to keep weblogs as their self-access activity. The students had to post a minimum of five one-hundred-words entries in their weblog. In the weblog, the students have to reflect on the events that had happened to them. The marks were given based on the completion of task and the amount of comments made by the readers on the weblogs. The rubrics for the task were as follows:
Write 5 entries. Each entry should be more than 100 words. (5 marks)
Collect 5 comments. Each comment should be more than 50 words. (5 marks)
Every time you post a new entry, ask me to visit your blog by writing a comment at http://gameplan.blogspot.com
Entries should be based on real events.


Figure 1.0: A weblog made by a student
Few students had read weblogs before but all of them had never experienced maintaining a weblog. The instructor trained the students to create weblogs, write entries and give feedbacks for two hours. At the end of the training session, each student had a weblog, able to publish entries and write feedbacks on weblog entries. The free weblog service chosen for this project was the one provided by Blogger.com. All weblog addresses were listed in the class weblog at http://gameplan.blogspot.com for ease of access. Students also used this weblog to promote their own weblog.
Blogging activities were done outside of the class time in a duration of 15 weeks or one semester. The participants updated their personal weblogs that acts as a reflective journal at any computer with access to the Internet in campus or off campus. In the normal class time, students were reminded of the task and were encouraged to read and give comments to the entries made by their friends. At the same time, they were also allowed to promote their weblog in order to attract public comments.
RESULTS
There were 241 entries written by 48 students/participants. Although the assignment requirement asked for only 5 entries, few students wrote more than five entries producing an average of 5.02 entries per student. All students managed to meet the posting requirements. The entries received 390 comments producing an average of 8.1 feedbacks per weblog. One particular weblog received the most number of comments, 31 comments, although one needed only 5 comments to complete the task. Nevertheless, 5 weblogs failed to get the minimum number of comments. The lowest number of comments made was 2 comments.
At the end of the task, the instructor gave the students 2 open ended survey questions on the task of keeping weblogs. Here are the answers given by the participants:
State your positive experiences when keeping a weblog.
Keeping a weblog was a valuable new experience
Keeping a weblog improved my writing skills / vocabulary/ grammar
Keeping a weblog increases writing confidence
I like to read opinions and experiences of my friends
I made new friends
I like receiving feedbacks from others
I could express views and share interesting experience
I communicated with others in English

State your negative experiences when keeping a weblog.
It was troublesome to get access to the Internet in order to complete the task
I did not receive enough comments
I suspect nobody read my weblog
Comments provided by my friends hurt my feelings
Some comments were not relevant to my entries

CONCLUSIONS
Weblogs empowered students to publish their thoughts for the whole world to read. Although students’ writings were not perfect, the participants felt that keeping a weblog was good for the development of vocabulary and writing skills. This is parallel to Blood’s claim (2002) that weblog build better writers. Readers who were willing to understand that making grammatical errors are part of language learning process, could be entertained with true anecdotes and witty commentaries of life.
Participants of the project loved the facts that others read their entries and in most cases they valued comments left by their friends. The feedbacks could help students to grow awareness of the audience (instructor and classmates) when writing. In a class where time for students-to-students interaction was limited, keeping weblogs allowed students to communicate in the target language with people they would not normally have time or courage to talk to. Communication within in the interactive environment was real as opposed to isolated conversations in language practices.
When the students exchanged comments they got new insights of the entries they had written. Those who received a lot of comments might had produced interesting topics that attract many readers. Some did write beautifully and attract others to read and share opinions. Or, they could just simply write earlier than the others thus giving them the advantage of having more time to gather comments. Those few who did not manage to acquire enough comments, most probably waited for the last minute to post their entries. I doubt that their writings were not interesting as I found that they did not write poorly compared to the others. Furthermore, most of the students were generous at giving comments regardless whether they were close to the writers or not.
Sociocognitive framework spells out that language develops through social interaction and assimilation of others’ speech (Warschauer and Kern, 2000). Teaching methodology such as journal writing via weblog fits the sociocognitive approach to network-based language teaching. It promoted negotiation of meaning through interaction and it created a discourse community with authentic communicative tasks. Perhaps by promoting a well established tool like weblog for language learning purpose, students will be motivated to continue to write beyond the requirement of the classroom assignment.
SUGGESTIONS
The pre-requisites to the adaptation of weblog into the classroom are ample ICT infrastructure on-site and sound pedagogical techniques. Students need to be trained on how to use the technology before any technology related tasks are introduced. In the case of weblog, students need to be informed of strategies to attract readers to read their entries. They need to know how to write reader friendly entries so that they will receive feedbacks from readers as this valuable writer-audience interaction lead to the joy of writing. They should also be informed about ethics in sharing opinions in a public place like the Internet, be it in weblog entries or feedbacks given to others.
In the near future all homes and schools will be equipped with Internet ready computers and teachers can start being creative and think about how computers can enrich the learning experiences of the students. People will live in an interactive environment. Tapscott (1998) predicted that the interactive environment will strengthen verbal ability and expression of ideas. Whilst I have demonstrated how I used weblog in my class, educators can use the weblog in different approaches. Ovarec (2002) proposed teachers to use weblogs as sources of information on important topics and modes of online classroom. Weblogs can be training platforms for students to show their skills in creating web contents. Another possibility is school newsletters can now be made available online via weblogs. Weblogs can also be as a venue for students to share interesting links they found on the Internet. In an interview with Online Community Report, Evan William, creator of Blogger.com predicted “… blogs are going to be morphed into all kinds of interesting configurations. They will be less easy to define and serve widely different purposes (Cashel, 2002).”
REFERENCES
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This paper is prepared for INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON E-LEARNING 2005 " E-LEARNING : TOWARDS LIFELONG LEARNING ". The seminar is organized by Universiti Malaysia Sabah on 25-26 July 2005.