with different purposes. These three blog types are tutor blogs, learner blogs and class blogs.
47
1 Tutor blogs: The tutor creates and monitors a tutor
blog to provide daily reading practice for students. The tutor blog provides different English Web sites
for students to explore. It also serves as a resource of links for self-study. This type of blog can be used as a
platform to encourage students to participate in online verbal communication. It can also provide a space for
tutors to post learning information, such as assigned tasks and course information.
2 Learner blogs: Students create and run learner blogs,
either individually or as a small collaborative group. Students use this type of blog as a platform to express
themselves through free writing. It can also be a forum in which students can discuss their writing.
3 Class blogs: This type of blog is run by the entire
class. It can be used as a discussion platform for project-based language learning, and as a free-form
bulletin board where students can post any information for others to read. In addition, a class blog
can serve as a space for an international classroom language exchange.
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2. Teaching Writing with Blog
According to Hyland, as cited in Thomas Raith, there are three different approaches to researching and teaching writing can
be identified. The first approach can be described to see texts as autonomous objects, referring to structuralism. The focus in this
approach is on the correct arrangement of elements, and the idea
of language learning is based on “an autonomous mechanism which depends neither on particular writers or readers, but on
setting out ideas using correct forms.
The second approach focuses on the writer and the process of creating texts. Learning writing is a process which can be
47
Nadzrah Abu Bakar, “Using Blog to Encourage ESL Student to Write Constructively in Writing,” AJTLHE,
Vol.1, No.1, 45-57.
48
Ibid., pp. 45-57.
encouraged by providing writers with the space to make their own meanings through an encouraging, positive, and cooperative
environment with minimal interference. Since weblogs provide this open space for writer-oriented creativity, they can be used in
language learning for such writing processes. However, more traditional media, such as paper journals, can provide this space
also, thus it is not this aspect of weblogs which makes them an exclusive and new tool for teaching the writing process.
49
It is because weblogs fulfill the requirements of the third approach which traditional media cannot easily satisfy, to provide
a tool for writing as social interaction, that they can be considered novel and unique. This third model considers that a writer always
has a certain purpose and audience in mind when writing a text. Either the audience is directly addressed through the text e.g. in
a letter or the audience is invoked, meaning that it is meant to read a certain text although it is not addressed directly e.g. a
novel.
50
Furthermore, Chan and Ridgway as cited in Squires on her Dissertation, consider blogs as a way of allowing students to
share ideas with others easily, as a useful platform where students might engage in appropriate learning activities. They have
described a blog as an environment whereby students have to engage actively in the co-construction of knowledge with peers
and with their tutor which reflects very clearly the constructivist ideas.
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Broadly spoken, blogs have been used in classrooms for a number of years now and the evidence suggests that blogs can
positively enhance learning and more particular, in relation to the skills of writing many researchers have claimed that blogs can
improve writing skills. Research has confirmed many positive uses of the blog which include the development of
a student‟s
49
Thomas Raith. “Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning
,” The Use of Weblogs in Language Education, ed. Michael Thomas London: IGI Global, 2009, p. 278.
50
Ibid., p. 278.
51
Susan Blackmore, “An Investigation into the Use of Blog as a Tool to Improve Writing in the Second Language Classroom” PhD diss., The
University of Manchester, 2010, 16.
analytical and critical skills through a more student centered environment. Oravec claimed that the blog can empower students
to become more analytical and critical, in turn improving a student‟s self confidence. The understanding here is that writing a
blog encourages students to think about their own opinions and also consider how their views may be interpreted by others before
they publish their post.
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3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Blog in Language
