Does Blogging Facilitate the Development of Students' Writing Skills?
By Maria B. Cequena De La Salle University Manila
Abstract
Blogging is viewed as a tool in facilitating the development of writing skills. To ascertain such contention, this study attempted to determine the effects of blogging (weblogs) on the forty-one freshman college students' writing performance based on the results obtained from pre-test (entry essays) and posttest (exit essays) mean scores, interviews and reflections. Three classes or a total of 66 freshman college students from a top university in the Philippines, majoring in Communication Arts and Accountancy participated in the study that ran for more than three months in the first trimester of AY 2012-2013. These classes were introduced to blogging as they wrote their three essays on a computer in English classrooms with free access to the Net via school Wi-Fi. Prior to and after the treatment period, they were made to write entry and exit essays based only on one topic of their choice for an hour. However, upon completion of the study, only 41 students were able to accomplish all the instruments needed. The findings reveal that students' writing skills improved based on the results of paired samples dependent t-test of their entry and exit essays mean scores at p<0.05 level of significance. Furthermore, three independent raters unanimously agreed that students improved on content and organization. These findings matched students' perception that blogging helped them improve their writing skills because of their peers' constructive feedback.
Keywords: blogging, weblogs, blogs, writing skills
Introduction
The influx of Information Communications Technology (ICT) has revolutionized the teaching of English, particularly writing, to ESL/EFL learners. If students before were used to in-class writing tasks using the traditional mode of writing, paper and pen, today, they can now enjoy laptop, net book, tablet, IPad, and other.
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