Comparing the Effect of Blogging as well as Pen-and-Paper on the Essay Writing Performance

Comparing the Effect of Blogging as well as Pen-and-Paper on the Essay Writing Performance - In today’s world, there are lots of methods in language teaching in general and teaching writing in particular.
Using two different tools in writing essays and conducting a study to compare the effectiveness of these two
tools namely blog and pen-and-paper was the basis of this study. The result of this study showed that the tools by themselves could not effect on the quality of writing essays and improvement in the students’ writing performance. Using technology and in this study, Internet can motivate the EFL learners to write more eagerly since they may like innovation in learning in contrast with traditional old methods of learning writing and practicing it, but it does not necessarily improve their writing performance only because of using computer and Internet.

The Iranian graduate students of UPM found blog more interesting and motivating tool for writing, but it was not as easy using as pen-and-paper for them with which everyone is familiar. This research could find answers to the research questions posed at the beginning of the study and investigated the hypotheses presented then.

Implications of the Study

The findings of this study have various implications for Iran Ministry of Education, EFL university lecturers,
EFL curriculum makers, language schools, and university students. This study can help Ministry of Education of Iran to plan the new methods of teaching writing at schools and universities such as using blogs in essay writing. They can use technology in their syllabus and compare the function with the conventional methods of teaching writing.

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It provides the EFL lecturers better knowledge and understanding about the graduate students needs for writing in English language. They can use blog as a tool for teaching writing in their classes and view the students motivation and eagerness in writing. Since this study had scheduled topics based on five categories of writing namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics, the lecturers can focus on each category in each session of their lectures and ask the students to write essay topics based on these categories. If the lecturers give feedback to the students, it will be more beneficial for them and helps them to improve in their essay writing.

Maybe in some day if i being a teacher i will implement this method to improve my student writing skill and trigger their interest in studying English. combining technology and English language is the best way to learn Quickly.

Source : 
International Journal of English Language Teaching Vol. 6, No. 10; 2013
ISSN 1916-4742 E-ISSN 1916-4750
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

Author :
Hajar Kashani1, Rosnaini Binti Mahmud1 & Seyed Ali Rezvani Kalajahi

Direct Link :
http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n10p202