Why Weblogs in ESL Classroom?


I believe that blogging serves a lot of beneficial experiences to the students. As English teachers, we have to furnish our students with the newest technology in communicating; hence we cannot afford to close one eye to the importance of blogging. Weblogs have the potential to be the latest tool for teaching of language and it provides new way to access authentic reading and writing skills. It is not only exciting for the teachers but also gives students good reasons to enjoy reading and writing.

Here are some of the reasons why I feel it is encouraged to use blogs as a language teaching tool:

1. To provide a real audience to student writing. Normally only the language teacher will read the student writing but through weblogs students will be able to experience real audience who, apart from their teacher, may include their peers, students from other states and may even be anybody from other countries around the world.

2. Student collaboration. Student can easily read each others’ work as they are link to one another. This encourages them to learn from their peers and see the different styles of writing and approaches to assignments. Hence, they share learning experiences on the web without being familiar with web publishing.

3. Help students to realise that writing is an ongoing process. By writing and updating their blogs, students will learn to appreciate that writing is indeed an ongoing process but with the added bonus of an interactive audience, authentically communicative.

4. Writing blogs is less formal and less threatening. Research has shown that people behave differently when communicating online compared to a face-to-face situation. Therefore, students will be able to write freely and without self-consciousness. Students who are shy in class will be able to find their voice when given the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings in the weblogs. The notion of anonymity can be a major help for the students to cut down their anxiety and gradually develops their confidence in writing.

5. As an online portfolio of student written work. Students gained a lot of benefits by having a portfolio of their work. They can easily return to previous work and evaluate the progress they have made during the course.

6. To provide extra reading practice to the students. Students will not only read their blogs everyday but they also tend to read others’ as well and respond to their reading. Besides reading the blogs, students too will have the chance to read more related articles in the links and sites suggested by their teacher.

7. Help develop critical thinking skills. Since the students are exposed to various resources and diverse viewpoints this may indirectly develop their critical thinking skills.

To all my students who have enjoyed blogging, keep up your good work and keep writing.

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