The integration of weblogs into the instruction of process writing in an efl classroom: a case study

• Main Authors: Chan, Hui Ling, 詹惠玲
• Other Authors: Lin, Chi Yee
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13507389586503307482

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英語教學碩士在職專班 === 98 === Over the past decades of practice in process writing, criticism over “the stress on content over form” (Badger & White, 2000) and the neglect of final writing product (Barnes, 1983) has never ceased. Considering that blog has attracted scholars and learners for its unique features — self-expression, self-reflection, interactivity, and publication, this researcher integrated blog into the instruction of process writing to investigate the writing performance of the four 12th graders. The literature review covered studies on process writing, blog and three elements commonly found in both process writing and blog— feedback, self-reflection journals and e-portfolio. The participants of this study were four 12th graders of Taiwan’s high school in a blog-mediated process writing class taught by the researcher. The procedure revolved around the process writing cycle, in which these four participants repeated the recursive writing process. Data included multiple revisions, two drafts (pre-test and post-test), questionnaires on students’ writing attitude (pre-test and post-test), the teacher’s logs and interviews. First, to obtain what types of changes students made in multiple revisions, the 48 multiple revisions were coded by Yagelski’s coding schemes (1995) and Johnson’s indicators of content and organization (1994). Second, to investigate if the four participants made progress in content and organization, this researcher touched on four aspects of analysis: 1) the score differences between the pre-test and post-test drafts, 2) the length of essay, 3) a connection analysis between the multiple revisions and the two drafts and 4) a draft analysis using Johnson’s indicators of content and organization (1994). Third, the interview data helped to explore how the blog functioned in each step of process writing model, and to present the challenges students encountered and the teacher support they needed. Fourth, to discover if these students experienced any attitude changes, she also calculated the score differences between the pre-test and post-test questionnaires in students’ writing attitude and verified the questionnaire results or clarified the unclear points with interview data. Finally, some other classroom-context-related findings were also revealed in the analysis of the teachers’ logs and the interview data. The major findings were listed as below: 1) students showed preference for making some types of changes in multiple revisions; 2) the four students in the blog-mediated process writing class gained significant progress in content and organization; 3) the class blog functioned differently in each step of process writing model; 4) the boredom of doing multiple revisions and the teacher-student mini conference were the challenges encountered and the teacher support recommended; 5) there were writing attitude changes in the four categories — confidence, anxiety, usefulness and preference; and 6) several findings were also revealed in the context of classroom. Some pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research on process writing were presented at the end of the thesis.