Title: Voice Blog : An Exploratory Study of Language
Learning
Journal - volume: Language Learning & Technology
June 2009, Volume 13, Number 2
pp. 88 - 103
http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num2/sun.pdf
Author's name: Yu - Chih Sun,
National Chiao Tung University
The review:
The aims of the research is to provide a theoretical and a pedagogical foundation for the idea that extensive practice on blogs can constitute an integral part of instruction, and that blogs enable the learners to present their thoughts to the other learners. The study used two procedures in collecting data which was through a survey of the learners' attitudes towards the use of blogs, retrospective interviews with the learners. The teacher had the facility from the class blog where the teacher was able to track the learners' post history and the blog displayed all the profiles and the data in an online spreadsheet according to various sorting methods. Each learner had a separate blog which includes the personal biography and a brief self-introduction. They were able to post their interests and everything related to the English learning course. The learners were able to check the other learners' blogs by searching their names, ID numbers or keywords in the blog title. The blog included interfaces for both learners and teachers. For the learner interface showed the learners' online oral diaries that presented their thoughts. The participants of this research were 46 college learners in Taiwan in two oral communication classes taught by the teacher-researcher. Both of the class contained 24 and 22 learners. 15 of the learners were female and 31 were male. The participants had been studying English as a foreign language for about 9 years, and most of them had never been studied abroad in an English-speaking country. They were from different courses such as electronic and mechanical engineering, information management science, and electrophysics. These learners have a little exposure to English in their content-based classes. The finding of the research stated that after one semester which was 18 weeks, 46 participants uploaded 1,239 voice-blog entries and 646 comments on their classmates' blog entries. On average, each participants posted 27 voice-blogs and 14 comments for one semester. The results of this study reveals that the learners went through a series of blogging stages including conceptualizing, branistorming, articulation, monitoring, and evaluating, and used a wide variety of strategies to deal with blogging-related activities. The learners perceived blogging not only as a means of learning, but also a means of self-presentation, exchange information and social networking. Furthermore, the findings suggest that blog represents an active forum that cultivates more learning, motivation in learning and development of learning strategies.
The researcher had presented such an amazing concept which is learning the target language through blogging. Blogging increases the learners' self-confidence as it reduces the speaking anxiety of the learners as they did not have to stand in front of the class with all eyes on them and present their thoughts instead they presented it through voice-blog and the informations were neatly transferred to the other learners. The research was well conducted. It can be proven by the results of the learners well-responded voice-blogs and comments. Fault can never be avoided. The blog that the researcher created was not written fully in English as it could be seen in the figures that the instructions were mostly in Chinese and therefore it impedes the learner from dealing with the real situation in English as in this case English blog. The researcher should invent a blog that is fully written in English so that not only helps the learners in communicating in English with the voice-blogs but it helps the learners in reading in the target language. The other limitation is that the blog was not publicly published. The learners expressed their interests and comments only among them. They should have given the chance to express themselves in the target language to a variety of visitors and have the experience interactive with the native speakers of English. The implication of this research in teaching and learning of ESL in the general is that it gives the idea of learning English through a different medium that holds a lot of advantages. As in the Malaysian context, I believe that this research is very good and should be practiced in teaching and learning English as it is an authentic way of learning English and it reduces the speaking anxiety in Malaysians as they are very famous with the culture of politeness that it prevents them from voicing out their opinions and interests. This is an alternative wayof presenting their thoughts. Therefore, learning target language through books is not enough. The use of technology may always help strengthen the delivery of the knowledge.
Nur Fatin Najwa Mohd Khalid
2005755052
U8B
The researcher had presented such an amazing concept which is learning the target language through blogging. Blogging increases the learners' self-confidence as it reduces the speaking anxiety of the learners as they did not have to stand in front of the class with all eyes on them and present their thoughts instead they presented it through voice-blog and the informations were neatly transferred to the other learners. The research was well conducted. It can be proven by the results of the learners well-responded voice-blogs and comments. Fault can never be avoided. The blog that the researcher created was not written fully in English as it could be seen in the figures that the instructions were mostly in Chinese and therefore it impedes the learner from dealing with the real situation in English as in this case English blog. The researcher should invent a blog that is fully written in English so that not only helps the learners in communicating in English with the voice-blogs but it helps the learners in reading in the target language. The other limitation is that the blog was not publicly published. The learners expressed their interests and comments only among them. They should have given the chance to express themselves in the target language to a variety of visitors and have the experience interactive with the native speakers of English. The implication of this research in teaching and learning of ESL in the general is that it gives the idea of learning English through a different medium that holds a lot of advantages. As in the Malaysian context, I believe that this research is very good and should be practiced in teaching and learning English as it is an authentic way of learning English and it reduces the speaking anxiety in Malaysians as they are very famous with the culture of politeness that it prevents them from voicing out their opinions and interests. This is an alternative wayof presenting their thoughts. Therefore, learning target language through books is not enough. The use of technology may always help strengthen the delivery of the knowledge.
Nur Fatin Najwa Mohd Khalid
2005755052
U8B
Thank u so much sir!
ReplyDeleteHappy fasting!