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.
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Date
2018
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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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