Vurdien, R. (2013). Enhancing writing skills through blogging in an advanced English as a foreign language class in Spain. Computer Assisted Language Learning. 26(2), 126-143.
For academic English writing Vurdien’s (2013) study, explored collaborative blended learning with 16 advanced students of English at a language institute in Spain preparing to take the Cambridge certification exam. Using 8 essay prompts, students were assigned to write and revise their drafts on blogs they created at home and to provide feedback to a class partner online. Class discussions were held and students were interviewed for input and feedback on their experience.
One observation Vurdien had made was that most of the participants showed higher motivation and engagement than the usual traditional academic writing classroom. Another was general improvement in the four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). Many of the students also reported favorability on the asynchronous nature of communication being more convenient and the partial anonymity decreasing anxiety along with having a potentially larger (public) audience boosting their enthusiasm to participate and motivation to produce better quality writing (Vurdien).
Some limitations included the outlying students who were less motivated or less proficient and were not benefiting from the experience and whose assigned partners did not have as much constructive feedback. While they did not represent the majority of the participant population, their non-participation or low proficiency was observed to decrease the quality of the experience for their more advanced and motivated partners (Vurdien).
This was a particularly interesting article for me as I had kept a blog for about 12 years before the domain went offline. I had never really thought about how my writing and overall communication skills had improved over that period of time. Admittedly, I had also taken several writing and English literature classes during my undergraduate career, but being a lover of several writing genres, blogging had become one of my top favorite and was a large part of my life.
Vurdien noted that students had access to a wide array of audiovisual and textual media in English. Additionally, the ubiquity and asynchronicity of online genres like blogging creates more opportunities for interaction with proficient (“native”) English language interlocutors.
My personal experience confirms Vurdien’s observations. I had friends from all over the world. The personal blog I had kept, was the first of its kind. It was Open Diary and it had hundreds of thousands of users from every inhabited continent. Over time, I had a regular audience. I was also a frequent reader of some. Most were heritage anglophone speakers from anglophone countries, but a few were users of English as an additional language. One lived in Malaysia, but had stopped posting years before Open Diary ended. Another lived in London. Two were on the East Coast of the United States. One of my favorites due to her use of humor lived in New Zealand. Finally, there is one Open Diary friend with whom I have actually kept in contact (now connected on Facebook) and she lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Diarists embedded media often. One, a curmudgeon college freshman composition instructor, wrote snarky entries either reviewing American cultural products and media or witty social commentary on cultural behaviors. He was also quite the fan of wordplay, puns, irony and sarcasm. In his reviews, he embedded photo images, screenshots, GIFS, and videos in his entries. If he was writing social commentary, he rarely used anything but text. A particular favorite was one of his humorous sociocultural commentaries on Facebook behavior where he stated, “We have become our own yentas” (yenta is Yiddish for - female gossip) announcing to the world all of our personal life details from medical problems to sexual exploits.
I had developed a long and deep rapport with some bloggers and during a recent scan of the entries I had managed to back-up, I noticed the gradual improvement of my vocabulary and writing. I still have a ways to go, I think, but I also handle conversations, discussions, and presentations much better than I used to. Additionally, I had acquired a sense of self worth and connected more with myself and who I am as I bonded during these real and genuine connections with my Open Diary friends.
Sometimes, we had filtered posts that only certain people of our choosing could read. Occasionally, these posts were about troubling times and once in a while they were a bit mirthful, but still less public even though we had anonymity. These online friendships were the longest continuous and consistent social connections I had had. When the Open Diary domain closed, it was like a small apocalypse. I had instantly lost nearly all of my, although in digital form, close friends–it was as if they had all died. Of course, they did not really die, yet they may as well have since everyone used aliases. Most of us did not know each other’s real names or exact locations. That also means, to them, that I died too.
Blogging played a large role in my personal and intellectual development. Having meaningful connections with people all over the globe (and sometimes whose primary languages were not English) over the years has been highly influential regarding my motivation to write as well as improve my intellectual and interpersonal skills. I think of those years often and sometimes still feel a little bit of actual grief from the loss of Open Diary. Nevertheless, I am forever grateful to have had such an opportunity and all of the ways I have come out a much better person for it. Although Open Diary isn’t solely responsible for all of my personal growth, it was a major factor in getting me to a higher level. It was simultaneously my object other and person other as I moved through my zone of proximal development of communication abilities.
At any rate, whether for personal reasons, or desires to improve language proficiency, I see blogging as a useful tool for learning and teaching writing. Moreover, it is also an effective way to cultivate greater interpersonal skills (speaking from personal experience) and cultural sensibilities while also strengthening self-image and identity. Whether one might wish to write creatively, academically, expressively, or whatever, it is a fairly inexpensive means to get a ton of practice and exposure. There are many sites to choose from and here is a small list (other than Livemocha which I have already discussed in another entry here :
Livejournal (nearly as old as Open Diary would be)
Wordpress - has a tier of features offered depending on whether the user has a free account, paid personal account, or a business account.
Blogger Owned by Google, is a free resource for bloggers.
Tumblr is actually a mircoblog, but one of my favorite blogs to read lives here.
Blogmask does not have so many users, but it is completely anonymous and there are no registration requirements. Just remember the password(s) to your entries if you want to be able to edit them later.
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