My Dear Visitors,

As I’ve been learning how to blog and the potentials blogs have for interaction between a teacher and students, I thought of creating this blog for my Business English (BE) students. It’s an open space for all students studying or interested in BE. It’s also a space where BE teachers can share their ideas, resources, projects and more.

Your suggestions, interests, ambitions, expectations are all welcome in this blog. Let’s start by sharing your expectations from BE classes. Feel free to tell me everything you want us to have. If it’s not covered in the book we’ll be using, we can surely talk about it here. This is our space to learn and share: http://lilianbusiness.edublogs.org

Waiting to hear your voices in our space.

This week’s discussion, along with Konrad’s post, reminded me of a paper that I wrote about 2 years ago. I was first introduced to blogs then and I wanted to investigate its potentials for teaching writing. I did a mini literature review then. In this post, I’ll share the conclusions I reached in that paper. I’ll provide a reference list at the end for those interested in reading more for themselves. The list of references include those articles used in the whole paper, not just in the part below.

Using Blogs in the Universtiy Writing Classroom

A careful and deeper look at the reviewed studies will enable us detect some interwoven threads of findings and interpretations.  These threads sometimes overlap and intersect throughout the five studies covered in this review.  The threads are going public and performance, interaction, feedback and motivation, and improved learning and writing.  

 Thread 1: Going public and performance

            Although the students in Wu’s (2005) study were encouraged to invite their friends and families to visit and comment on their weblogs, the majority of them refrained.  Lack of self-confidence and the desire to protect their privacy were among the reasons they gave.  However, Holmes (2005) reports the use of weblogs as a public area that outside audience can look at as the first purpose of weblogs use in classroom.  Additionally, Du and Wagner (2005) found out that weblogs, as a public space, increased students’ creativity in writing. 

Two researchers have made some suggestions to utilize the public nature of weblogs in the EFL classroom.  Wu (2005) suggests using a class blog rather than separate personal blogs to overcome the students’ lack of confidence discussed above.  This class blog can enhance interaction and, consequently, develop students’ confidence.  The second suggestion is generated by Pinkman (2005) who suggests opening the class blogs for outside audience in order to ensure more authenticity.  Her suggestion, though not very convenient for a formal learning environment, can be explained in the light of her research design: a small-scale action research with a few students participating in a supplementary weblogging activity.  This design could have influenced the researcher’s findings and, therefore, suggestions.

 Thread 2: Interaction

            The public nature of weblogs cannot be separated from the opportunities of interaction they provide.  Holmes (2005) found out that weblogs may be used by students to generate and maintain discussion and to exchange ideas.  This discussion fosters students’ interest and involvement in learning (Du & Wagner, 2005) in addition to motivating them to do better (Pinkman, 2005).  This interaction-based motivation positively affects students’ academic performance as Wang and Fang (2005) have illustrated.  One of their basic findings is that learning accelerates with more interaction.  This interaction is interwoven with feedback and motivation, which is the third thread of findings.

 Thread 3: Feedback and motivation

            The interactivity weblogs provides can take the form of feedback and comments.  Students in Pinkman’s (2005) study were highly motivated to write and post on weblogs because of the comments they received from either their peers or teacher.  This finding was seconded by Wang and Fang’s (2005) study that learning becomes faster when the learners are supported by their peers’ feedback.  The researchers explain that positive feedback helps learners become independent, which, in turn, motivates them to learn faster and develop.  Feedback, however, does not have to be positive to improve learning as long as it is constructive and motivating for better performance.

            The above mentioned benefits of interaction and feedback made Pinkman (2005) suggest using various systems when teachers integrate weblogs in their courses to ensure commenting.  She suggests making commenting mandatory (maybe as part of the grading system) and assigning partners so that no student may be left without feedback on his/her weblog entries.

 Thread 4: Improved learning and writing

            The public nature of weblogs, with its built-in chances for interaction and feedback, has helped many learners to improve their overall learning performance and writing skills particularly (see sequence of threads in Table 3).  According to Du and Wagner (2005), when students assess each other’s work on the blog, they reflect on their own work, comparing it to their peers’.  This reflection helps them self-evaluate their own work (Wang & Fang, 2005).  Wu (2005) provides a feasible explanation for this.  The students in his study reported seeking help from English resources to better express themselves (Wu, p. 5).  Holmes (2005) backs this explanation as she found out that one function of weblogs in the writing classroom is to link students to web-based resources.  This finding makes it easier for us to understand Pinkman’s (2005) finding that one of the advantages of using weblogs in the EFL class is to improve writing skills, enhance grammar practice, and learn new vocabulary.  The possible outcome of this development is not just better writing, but better overall performance, either in exams or course work (Du & Wagner, 2005).

Hence, this review of research has yielded four major findings: weblogs enable students to improve their writing because of their public nature, interaction through weblogs help students become better academically, feedback on weblog entries increases students’ motivation to write better, and writing and overall performance develop with the use of weblogs.  

References

Campbell, A. P. (2003). The experience of computer supported cooperative learning using weblogs in the university classroom: A phenomenological case study. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Sheffield, UK. Retrieved April 25, 2006 from http://www8.ocn.ne.jp/~apc33/meddissertation.pdf.

Du, H. S. & Wagner, C. (2005). Learning with weblogs: An empirical investigation. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’05) - Track 1. Retrieved April 30, 2006 from http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2005.387

Forster, P. W. & Tam, T. (2004). Blogging in an MBA classroom : Personal experiences. Proceedings of the Second Teaching and Learning Symposium, Hong Kong (May 17, 2004). Retrieved April 25, 2006 from http://hdl.handle.net/1783.1/1728 

Holmes, A. J. (2005). Weblogs in the post-secondary writing classroom: A study of purposes. Unpublished master’s thesis, North Carolina State University, North Carolina. Retrieved April 26, 2006 from http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=3865

Pinkman, K. (2005). Using blogs in the foreign language classroom: Encouraging learner independence. The JALT CALL Journal (1), 1, 12-24. Retrieved May 10, 2006 from http://jaltcall.org/journal/articles/1_1_Pinkman.pdf.

Wang, J. & Fang, Y. (2005). Benefits of cooperative learning in weblog networks. Proceedings of The Third International Conference on Multimedia Language Education of APAMALL 2005. Retrieved May 13, 2006 from www.allbest.org/2005/english-program.htm

Williams, J. B. & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education. Australian Journal of Educational Technology (20), 2, 232-47. Retrieved April 26, 2006 from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/res/williams.html

Wu, W. (2005). Using blogs in an EFL writing class. Retrieved May 10, 2006 from www.chu.edu.tw/~wswu/publications/ papers/conferences/05.pdf

If you are in the academic sphere, you must have heard the common saying ‘Publish or die’. I wonder if a modified version of this saying can be applied to the technical and technological situation in my country, Egypt, and others more. I wonder if something like ‘Integrate technology or lose your students’ is appropriate to use in describing the complicated situation of school teachers.

The discussion on my previous post stimulated me to consider the reasons behind the unpleasant situation of little or none use of technology in our schools. Pardon my reference to the Egyptian context often as it is the only context I’m very familiar with. Believing that teachers are the ambassadors of change, I decided to start with this human factor in the education system and try to go deeper into their reasons for going on without considering technology.

Why do most Egyptian EFL teachers are not considering the integration of technology in their teaching? Having been a school teacher for many years, I was in close contact with many EFL teachers and I can assume I’m aware of many of the thoughts haunting many of them:

• Some teachers think that technology is a waste of time, if they have been ‘good’ teachers for years without technology, why bother about it now? They are just satisfied the way they are.
• Some teachers believe that technology is not for them. “I’m not into technology and I don’t think I can ever be’.
• Some teachers feel, which is true sometimes, that it takes a lot of time and effort to learn even basic stuff about technology. Many of them can afford neither the time, money, nor  the effort technology requires.
• Other teachers blame the situation on the somehow discouraging conditions they have to work under: large classes, the widespread of private tutoring, indifferent students, unsupportive administration, mocking colleagues, … NAME IT! Honestly speaking, I sympathize with them at some of those points.
• Some teachers can’t simply see what technology may add to their classes; NOBODY told them before.

This list does not go in any specific order. I just recalled how things were like when I was a school teacher a few years ago. No, it’s not from the past, believe me; this is the exact current situation.

These are my two cents for now. Eager to know what you have to say and how similar/different things might be in your context.

For about 16 months, I’ve been involved in the English Access Microscholarship Program (EAMP), known as Access Program. It’s a two-year program targeting the under-served teenagers. It’s a huge program funded by US Department of State and carried out by my university, the American University in Cairo, AUC. The major component is English teaching (192 hours/class/year). Other components include American culture classes, community service, and field trips.

It was my first time ever teaching early teens as all my teaching experience has been with adults and young adults. At first, it was very difficult for me dealing with those kids, bearing in mind their behavioral problems due to their social background. As time went by, both of us began to enjoy it. Students started to appreciate the effort I’m putting in their classes and their English has been improving like I never thought it would.

Last week, they went for a visit to the US embassy IRC (Information and Resource Center). They watched a movie and had a discussion with the people in charge there. I couldn’t believe how their communication skills have progressed; they were able to communicate very smoothly with native speakers, understand the movie and have a lively discussion about it. They ahve come a long way to the people they are now.

As I look at them now, I can’t help thinking that although the name of the program means enabling under-served students to have access to English learning, the whole program is simply an access to a better future packed with opportunities. It certainly needs dedication and determination on both sides: students and teachers.

This post was inspired by Carla R.’s comment on my first one. Carla wondered if teachers in my area have problems with technology. The sad situation is that many of the teachers in my town, as I come from a small, not very advanced town, are reluctant to use technology in their classes in any way. They think that it’s a luxury beyond thier grip or their students’ realization. A very few English teachers would care to explore and learn about educational technology. This is mostly the case in government run schools.

The fact that most schools do not have advanced computer labs adds to the problem. Even if the labs are available, they are in the custory of narrow-minded technicians who see technology as a brooch to ornament the school when a high stake visitor comes.

 So, it’s a multi-layered problem. Wanna hear your say here.

Thank you all for your support and nice words. I’m really flaterred.

Just wanted to correct the way some of you spell my name. It’s Lilian, not Liliam. I know we have a Liliam from Argentina. It’s OK; I understand how confusing similar names could be.

Never mind. I thought I’d just use this as a new post in my play area.

Hello Bloggers,

Welcome to my brand new blog. This will be my play area until I master the blogging skills and tools and be ready to start a blog with my students.

TEFL Hard Times has nothing to do with Dickens’ masterpiece. It’s a place where we, TEFLers, can share our hard moments and seek support and help from each other. We all have those moments and we appreciate whatever advice or support we could get. So, let’s share and care.

I’ll appreciate all the comments and suggestions you can leave me here to learn and grow in the blogsphere. Will be waiting for your comments.