A Class Blog: Cultivating Students’ Writing Accuracy within Collaborative and Competitive Atmospheres

Abstract

In reality, writing is considered very complex activities in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes but the smallest satisfying subject for teachers and the most discouraging lesson for students. The students often produce grammatical errors or unnatural expressions. One of the activities to solve the problems the students encounter in accomplishing a writing task is the implementation of a class blog. As a computer-mediated platform, the blog allows observable interactions both within and beyond the classroom between students and teachers and or among students. Thus, the present paper investigated the power of a class blog in cultivating the students’ writing performance, especially the accuracy of the essays posted in the blog. A number of 30 students majoring in English Department participated in this study. They were treated using a class blog in one term. The findings suggest that the blog facilitated the students to revise and develop their accuracy in composing essays. Nevertheless, teachers are strongly suggested to take into account students’ different levels of technology savvy.