Week 1: Creating an Academic Blog

A blog (short for weblog) is defined as “a website where an individual person, or people representing an organization, write regularly about recent events or topics that interest them, usually with photos and links to other websites that they find interesting” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). 

There are a number of reasons why blogging has become increasingly popular as an English language teaching tool over the past few decades. According to Sattar (2015), a blog serves as a collaborative platform where students, as bloggers, can actively construct their own knowledge through interactions with teachers and friends, which is considered a more “at-home” and “comfortable” learning environment for students. Blogging is, therefore, an important contributor to increased active participation among quieter students. Additionally, Selami (2014) concluded that blogging does exert favorable impacts on students’ writing skills. Normally, teachers are the only ones to receive, read, and give feedback on student writing, so students may not feel a meaningful sense of purpose in their writing assignments. Blogging, in contrast, provides students with a lot more ‘real’ audiences such as their peers, their parents, and potentially anyone with Internet access, encouraging them to carefully evaluate what they write before publishing it. This not only enhances students’ critical thinking skills but also makes them more responsible for their writing. Over time, their writing performance improves, their ability to monitor writing develops, and their attitudes towards writing become more positive. 

After reading the article How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform in 2024 (Compared) suggested by the lecturer, I decided to create a blog for my class on Blogger, a free blogging platform by Google. Since most of my students have limited English proficiency and tend to be too shy to express themselves in front of the class, I believe this blog will motivate them to share their ideas with the whole class in a pleasant manner. Besides, a 90-minute class per week is not enough for me, as a private tutor, to do much for my students; therefore, I can use this site as a repository to upload extra learning resources, such as online worksheets, articles, videos, and games, related to in-class lessons so that my students can learn and practice more at home, and most importantly, at their own pace. Furthermore, in the foreseeable future, I will ask my students to post their writing assignments and/ or reflections on our class blog, and also write some constructive comments on their peers’ work. This will allow my students to learn from one another, and become more critical and responsible in their own writing.

In conclusion, I find the first module Creating an Academic Blog very useful for my teaching career and feel really excited to explore more educational tools in the upcoming lessons.

References
Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Blog. In Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. Retrieved February 5, 2024, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/blog_1?q=blog 
Sattar, S. (2015). Learning via Blogging: The ESL/EFL Perspective. GSTF Journal on Education, 3(1), 7-12. https://d-nb.info/1239033281/34
Selami, A. (2014). The Use of Blogs in Learning English as a Foreign Language. Mevlana International Journal of Education, 4(1), 244-259. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED545624.pdf