Students’ Attitudes Towards the Effect of Using Blogs to Enhance their Writing Skill in EFL: The Case of Master I Language and Communication at MMUTO.

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

2018

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou

Abstract

Blog – an online journal-are being used widely on the Internet. This study is mainly concerned with students’ attitudes towards the effect of using blogs to enhance their writing skill in EFL learning. It was undertaken in order to investigate the impact of blogs could have as a tool for improving the writing skill and to seek out the factors influencing students’ use of this new technology. The research was conducted at MMUTO relying on Vygotsky’s socio-constructivist approach, mainly the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and on collaborative learning theory. A questionnaire was administered to forty four (44) students of Master one Language and Communication speciality in the Department of English at MMUTO, and a semi- structured interview was conducted with one teacher from the same Department. While Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for statistical analysis, Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) was used to interpret and explain the results of the interview. The conclusions derived from this research showed that students had positive perceptions and attitudes towards using blogs to improve their writing skills, and they perceived it as an effective and a motivating tool. In addition to that, the findings revealed that there were many inhibiting factors that influenced the use of blogs, among them: “Difficulty to access to the blogs”, “inability to use internet”, and “lack of interest and confidence in using this platform”.

Description

63p.:ill;30cm.(+cd)

Keywords

Blogs, Writing skill, students’ attitudes, Vygotsky’s theory, Collaborative learning theory.

Citation

Language and Communication