Class blogging in the EFL classroom

Brett Milliner

Frontiers of Language Teaching

Universal Publishers

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http://www.flt.ioksp.com/edboard.htm

English as a foreign language (EFL) students to gain valuable experience interacting in English. In order to prepare students from five, university-level EFL classes in Japan for accessing English speaking contexts online, a teacher incorporated a class blogging component into the class’ syllabus. Students were asked to write a 300 to 500-word blog post every week during the 15-week semester. This paper presents an action research study into this experience. Student perceptions of the blogging component; an analysis of how students utilized technology; and, whether class blogging influenced learner motivation were evaluated. Important findings were that in spite of major technical problems, students had a very positive perception of the blogging component and participation in the blogging component had a positive influence on students’ motivation.