Students perceptions of blog peer feedback for english writing practice

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY No2 PHAM MINH DUC STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF BLOG PEER FEEDBACK FOR ENGLISH WRITING PRACTICE (A CASE STUDY AT FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY No2) SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI HONG NHAT, M A Hanoi, May 2013 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On completing the graduation paper, I owe profound indebtedness to so many people, without whose contribution and spiritual support I would not have accomplished it First of all, I would love to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Nguyen Thi Hong Nhat M.A, for her scholarly instruction, critical comments, great encouragement and valuable materials, without which the thesis would not have been accomplished I am greatly indebted to 10 students from Course 37 in the academic year of 2012-2013 They took part in my blog writing course and filled in my survey questionnaires I wish to thank all the lecturers at Hanoi Pedagogical University Number 2, especially the lecturers in the Foreign Language Faculty for their dedicated instruction during my years of university work I am particularly grateful to my close friends for their enthusiasm and kindness helping me collects valuable reference documents and data for my research Last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my beloved family, for their whole- hearted encouragement and endless support iii ABSTRACT Blog is one of the recent innovations that provides students with opportunities to practice English writing outside the classroom More and more educators have applied this easy-to-use technology to classroom instruction and language learning (Campbell, 2003; Johnson, 2004) Two main objectives of the study are to evaluate the impact of blog peer feedback to facilitate EFL learner’ comments and revisions on writing task, and to find out the students’ perceptions toward the use of peer feedback on English writing A total of ten English major students of K37 at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hanoi Pedagogical University No2 participated in this study Data are collected from students through questionnaires and blog comments conducted during the writing course in the second term, academic year 2013 Responses indicate that students have a favorable perception of blog peer feedback in their writing classroom Findings suggest that learner-perceived benefits of using blogs included increased interest and motivation to use English because of interaction with, and feedback from students iv STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Title: Students’ perceptions of blog peer feedback for English writing practice (A case study at foreign language faculty in Hanoi Pedagogical University No2) I certify that no part of this report has been copied or reproduced by me from any other person’s work without acknowledgements and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance from my supervisor Date submitted: May 2013 Student Supervisor Pham Minh Duc Nguyen Thi Hong Nhat, M.A v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Blog : Weblog EFL : English Foreign Language vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi PART ONE INTRODUCTION I Rationale II Research questions III Research objectives IV Research scope V Research tasks VI Research methods VII Significance of the proposed research VIII Design of the research work PART TWO DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I.1 Literature review in brief I.2 Writing skill I.2.1 Definition of writing I.2.2 The importance of writing I.2.3 Approaches for teaching writing I.2.3.1 The Product Approach vii I.2.3.2 The Process Approach I.3 Blogs 10 I.3.1 General observations about blogs 10 I.3.1.1 Definition of blogs 10 I.3.1.2 Types of blogs 12 I.3.1.3 Advantages of blogs 14 I.3.2 Using blogs for English writing 17 I.3.2.1 The effectiveness of blog in a English writing class 17 I.3.2.2 Influences of using blog on students in English writing 17 I.3.2.3 Helpful pointers to facilitate using of blogs for English writing 19 I.3.2.4 Reflections with blog for English language learners in writing 20 I.4 Peer feedback 20 I.4.1 Definitions of peer feedback 20 I.4.2 Modes of peer feedback 21 I.4.3 Benefits of peer feedback 24 CHAPTER TWO METHODOLOGY II.1 Research setting 27 II.1.1 Writing class 27 II.1.1.1 Overview .27 II.1.1.2 Participants 28 II.2 Data collection 28 II.2.1 Procedures of data collection 28 II.2.2 Instruments 30 II.2.2.1 Blog comments 30 II.2.2.2 Reflection essays 30 II.3 Data analysis 30 viii CHAPTER THREE: THE RESULTS, DISCUSSIONS, FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS III.1 Blog peer feedback on EFL learners' comments and revisions 31 III.1.1 Nature of comments 31 III.1.2 Nature of revisions 33 III.2 Students’ perceptions of blog peer feedback 34 III.3 Findings 35 III.4 Recommendations 37 PART THREE CONCLUSION Summary 39 Limitations .40 Suggestions for further study 40 REFERENCES 41 EDITING CHECKLIST 45 APPENDIX A 45 APPENDIX B 46 ix PART ONE INTRODUCTION I Rationale In recent times, the Internet has emerged as a prominent new technology The influence of such a powerful technological tool has pervaded all aspects of the education, business, and economic sectors of our world (Singhal, 1997) Regardless of whether people use the Internet or not, people must know clearly about the fact that we have entered a new information age and the Internet is here to stay Because the use of the Internet is widespread in numerous fields and domains, without a doubt, it also carries great potential for educational use, specifically foreign language education The technology has a lot of advantages in learning foreign language The use of technology helps teachers reach all students in different ways Technology relates the curriculum to life outside the classroom, which involves students in worthwhile, interactional activities, such as interpersonal exchanges, information gathering, and problem-solving projects Using different aspects of technology helps motivate students to learn Moreover, technology adds many dimensions of foreign language learning, particularly with the use of multimedia programs Technology helps to make the study of foreign languages very practical and significant in students’ lives Students have the opportunities to work collaborative manner Technology gives students opportunities to use their productive and receptive abilities for real purposes, such as publishing a newsletter or writing interactive journals (“school computing”, e-book) One of applications of technology to English learning is social networks On social media sites like Facebook , Twitter, Google+, Zing Me or Weblog, users may develop biographical profiles, communicate with friends and strangers, research, and share thoughts, photos, music, links, etc According to the web site “http://socialnetworking.procon.org”, the author mentioned that the proponents of social networking sites say that the online communities promote increased interaction with friends and family, offer teachers, librarians, and students valuable access to educational support and materials, facilitate social and political change; and disseminate useful information rapidly And Blog is unexceptional Blog is relatively easy to use and intrinsically motivating It enables learners to communicate with the world in an authentic manner The use of weblogs in English language classrooms can facilitate and enhance English language learning as learners are presented with the opportunity to interact and connect with materials as well as an authentic audience outside of the classroom, thus making the language learning process an interactive and intrinsically motivating experience for the learners (Wan & Tan, 2011) Blogs can be applied to EFL writing classes in different ways Blogs can be used to provide extra reading for learners, as online learner journals that can be read by the other learners, to guide learners to online resources appropriate for their level, to increase the sense of community in a class, to encourage participation from shy learners, to stimulate out of class discussion, to encourage a process writing approach, as an online portfolio of learners’ written work and to help build a closer relationship between learners in a large class (Stanley, 2005) Weblogs also provide learners with a real audience, an opportunity for peer review as well as accommodate a range of process-based writing tasks that learners enjoy doing (Raith, 2009; Ward, 2004) They are extremely versatile and the number of ways that they can be used is limited only to the imagination of the user There are three types of weblogs used in English language classrooms which are the tutor blog - run by the tutor for the learners, the learner blog - either run by individual learners themselves or by small collaborative groups of learners), the class blog - the result of the collaborative effort of an entire class (Campbell, 2003) However, the learner blog is supposed to be the most suitable for writing class In conclusion, blogs can provide an exciting and motivating learning environment where students have a sense of ownership and readership They can be used to enhance student analytical and critical thinking skills, create social Figure 1: Types of comments The pie chart shows the types of students’ comments in the writing course of research Total of comments are 384 (100 %), 39 comments (10.16%) are the non- revision oriented comments and in which the revision oriented comments are 345 comments, 248 comments (64 %) of total of comments are the correctrevision oriented comments, and 97 comments (25.26%) of total are the incorrect- revision oriented comments This chart shows us that most of students gave correct- revision oriented comments because of some reasons When using blog to write or to give feedback, they can use some supported online tool such as online dictionary, online checking grammar Criteria of comments Criteria of comments are divided into many ways, but the researcher based on the editing checklist (Appendix A) to divide into criteria namely punctuation comments, capital letter comments, spelling comments and grammar comments The results are displayed by figure 2: 32 Figure 2: Criteria of comments The pie chart shows the criteria of students’ comments in the writing course of research Total of comments are 345 (100 %); in which 97 comments (28.12%) of total are the punctuation comments, 115 comments (33.33 %) of total are capital letter comments, 46 comments (13.33 %) of total of are the grammar comments, and 87 comments (25.22%) of total are the spelling comments This chart shows us that the comments about the spelling and capital letter were popular Because students normally did not read their peer writing in order not to give feedback about the grammar III.1.2 Nature of revisions There are types of revisions, namely correct revisions, incorrect revisions, and remained revisions The results are displayed by figure 3: 33 Figure 3: Types of revisions The pie chart shows the types of revisions in the writing course of research Total of revisions are 60 (100 %); in which 37 revisions (61.67%) of total are the correct revisions, revisions (15 %)of total of are the incorrect revisions, and 14 (23.33 %) of total are the remained revisions This chart shows us that most of students revised correctly their writing This shows that the correct comments helped students to orient well and check the correct mistake of their writing in order to write correct revisions III.2 Students’ perceptions of blog peer feedback In this part, the students were asked to give their opinion about learning English writing through blogs and giving peer feedback is useful for them Most of them said that learning through blog has many advantages and using the peer feedback through blogs to learn English writing is useful for them The blogs and the way students changed their writing: Examples of students’ responses are as follows: S1 (Student 1): “Writing on the blogs made me check word choice and word spelling more carefully.” S3: “Writing on the blogs made me more careful about sentences, paragraph structure.” S2: “Writing on the blogs made me check my grammar more carefully.” 34 S9: “Writing on the blogs made me carefully revise the way I present my arguments or put forward my descriptions in essay writing.” S4: “Writing on the course blogs made me adapt my texts to the potential reader.” Students’ attitudes toward giving peer feedback through blogs Examples of students’ responses are as follows: S2 & S5: “Blog helps to save my time, I don’t need to meet each other to work together Giving peer feedback through blogs, I and my friends helped each other to learn.” S7: “Giving peer feedback through blogs gives me more useful advice and comments from my peers.” S8: “Working together on the blog helped me to improve summary writing skill.” S10: “Using blog in learning enabled me to develop cooperative skill with other.” S3: “I can improve my writing skill after learning through using the blog.” In short, the students’ reflection essays show that peer feedback through blog in an English foreign writing class is positive Therefore, we should use blog in learning English writing According to students’ opinion, learning English writing through blogs brings many advantages Learning through blogs helps students to save their time They not need to meet each other to work together; giving peer feedback through blogs, students and their peers can help each other to learn Giving peer feedback through blogs gives students more useful advice and comments from their peers The peer suggestions are often easy for them to check the mistakes so that their writing skills are also easy improved III.3 Findings In conclusion, the results from this study indicate that the students in the study generally perceived the use of blogs for English language learning positively They stated that giving peer feedback through blogs increased their 35 confidence, improved their writing skills, facilitated the sharing of ideas with their classmates, connected them with their classmates, provided them with the flexibility to choose when and where they worked, enabled them to express their thoughts and allowed them to acquire skills such as conducting online research and thinking critically about issues Only a handful of the learners expressed that they have not yet concerned about this blog writing course The reasons that they met some problems while using blogs to give feedback Students showed the advantages and disadvantages of using blog peer feedback in table 2: Advantages Disadvantages - Giving peer feedback made students Students confused that their peer check your writing carefully such as: comments or advice are correct or not + word choice Therefore, students don’t know how to + word spelling check their own writing well + grammar - Students can use online tools to support their writing: + dictionary + e-book + grammar - Giving blog peer feedback gives students more useful advice and comments from their peers - Using blog peer feedback to learn can save student’s time because they not need to meet each other to learn Table 2: The advantages and disadvantages of blog peer feedback 36 III.4 Recommendations In many ways, this study was an experiment for both the researcher and the students Despite growing up in a digital age and certainly being positively predisposed toward the use of technologies in general, most of the students had never used blogs for personal, let alone educational purposes Using blogs for supporting peer feedback activities seemed attractive due to the remarkable similarities in the discourse around peer feedback and blogs It has been shown that students generally enjoyed working with blogs and receiving feedback from both the teachers and peers because peer feedback in combination with teacher feedback provided them with different perspectives on their performance and afforded them the opportunity to compare their tasks to their fellow students’ tasks However, learners did not enjoy providing feedback themselves due to a perceived lack of expertise, lack of specific guidance on how to give feedback and a fear of imposing on those to whom feedback is provided This led to some of the feedback comments offering little constructive advice for fellow students with regard to their task The class blog was perceived generally not to be an ideal environment for providing feedback, mainly because it was difficult to maintain the normal feedback routine that would include a more general comment and specific feedback on error types Based on the results of the study, the teachers should apply blogs for teaching EFL class Students use blogs to learn and the exercise in order to support for lessons such as pre- writing, post- writing even while- writing activities Therefore, it's very useful for teachers to have the highly efficient lessons Now, there are some teachers applied blog for teaching English, Mr Andrew is one of some teachers at foreign language faculty in Hanoi Pedagogical University No2 applied blog successfully for his speaking classes The research was only done with the class blog type so there are many limitations and the efficiency of the research was not high Therefore, if the research was done by the combination of class blog and tutor blog and the 37 combination of the teacher’s feedback and the students’ feedback would be better (in this case the tutor is the teacher) Because when the students were only received their peer feedbacks, they wondered whether their peer comments were right or not For this reason, the teacher feedback plays an important role when she or he will give the last feedbacks to be sure that students' feedbacks are right or not From that points, the quality of the revisions are more efficient and the writing skills of students will be improved and progressive Besides the teacher's tasks, the students' tasks are also very important First of all, students should realize that the benefits of using peer feedback in writing skill Giving peer feedbacks make students check their writing carefully such as word choice, word spelling or grammar Students can use online tools to support their writing namely dictionary, e-book, and grammar Giving blog peer feedback gives students more useful advices and comments from their peers Using blog peer feedback can save student’s time because students not need to meet each other to learn The blog writing course is a great working environment for students to learn All of students can free-share their feelings without worrying whether their own comments are right or not The students' feedback must be the contributions' comments to help themselves improve writing skills 38 PART THREE CONCLUSION Summary As the result of research has shown that most of students agreed that giving blog peer feedback can improve their writing skills; using blogs in learning English writing should be done for English writing practice Some of the best reasons are learning English through blogs helps students to save their time They don’t need to meet each other to work together; giving peer feedback through blogs, students and their peers can help each other to learn Giving blog peer feedback gives students more useful advice and comments from their peers The peer suggestions are often easy for them to check the mistakes so that their writing skills are also easy improved In summary, peer feedback is supported by several theoretical backgrounds The collaborative nature of learning through blogs and using blogs as an online portfolio enables students to reflect on their learning process and provide and receive feedback from more capable peers The interactions and sharing of their experiences using blogs enhance the authentic use of the target language, which is highly crucial in the learning process Most importantly, students can reflect, change or edit what they write as learning is a developmental process and, thus, improve their self-editing skills and become more independent learners In addition, blogs facilitate writing to a real audience, hence increasing students’ self-confidence and motivation to write more and share their experiences with their peers Not only students but also teachers and parents are able to monitor and access their work at any time even after months or years, as blogs have a record of what is published in a blog archive This also helps the students to monitor their own progress and become more reflective learners 39 Limitations The study still has some limitations First of all, this study was implemented in a small number of participants leading to the vague findings Therefore, the study would be more successful if a large number of students participated the research Moreover, recently, the course had lost the data of class blog It made students hard complete their assignments The information security of Tumblr blog is not very high However, fortunately, managements have been repairing the damage of Tumblr The data security of Tumblr is better than before Suggestions for further study As regards the limitations of the present study, it was carried out only for eight weeks of one semester Studies carried out for a longer period of time with classes of different proficiency levels would be needed to find out the probable effects of peer feedback on the development of their second language writing It is also suggested that the teachers should join online discussions students have i.e on articles, news and steer them towards right directions as well as probe them to view things from different angles This may reveal whether teachers’ presence in discussions facilitated by blogs can make a difference in the quality of feedback they provide to their peers In spite of its limitations, the study concludes that blogs facilitate 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III Research objectives The study is aimed at the following goals: 1) To evaluate the impact of blog peer feedback to facilitate EFL learners’ comments and revisions on writing task 2) To find out the students perceptions of blog peer feedback for English writing practice IV Research scope The research focuses on investigating the blog. .. too late Therefore, feedback should be provided in the process of writing That means feedback crucial for the success of the writing task I.4.2 Modes of peer feedback Peer feedback is a practice in language education where feedback given by one student to another Peer feedback is used in writing classes to provide students more opportunities to learn from each other After students finish a writing assignment,... Therefore, it’s the reason why teachers apply blogs in EFL writing class The purpose of the study is to examine the effectiveness of blog peer feedback and students perceptions for English writing practice II Research questions The study is focus on two following questions: II.1 To what extend can blog peer feedback facilitate EFL learners’ comments and revisions on writing task? II.2 What are the students ... blog peer feedback and students perceptions for English writing practice The population involved in the study is ten female English major students of Course 37 of Faculty of Foreign Language at Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2 3 V Research tasks The study involves fulfilling the following tasks: 1) To study the features, classification, and the advantages of blogs 2) To study the features of peer feedback. .. initially created for use in language education, but blogs have formidable potentials as a useful tool for the teaching of EFL writing class In a short blog posting titled “Do weblogs improve writing? ” Bernstein (2004) supported “Frequent writing improves writing , Writing for an audience improves writing , Writing that matters improves writing , and Writing on a computer improves writing However,... readers who offer feedback and suggestions for improvement Due to the great effect of peer feedback on students revision in particular and on students writing skill in general, teachers have increasingly required their students responsibility for not only their own writings but also for those of their peers Feedback is “any input from a reader to a writer with the effect of proving the information... gives a lot of information about weblog They give the pedagogy behind blogs, practical suggestions for implementing blogs, benefits of student blogging Kitchakarn (2012) in the book Using Blogs to Improve Students Summary Writing Abilities gives a quite understandable picture of the weblogs Overall, most scholars focus on definition, classification, benefits of peer feedback and blogs in writing class... features, types, benefits of weblogs, and weblogs in English language learning Aljumah (2012) refers to Use of Blogs in Teaching English Writing Course for EFL He also introduces the definition, types of weblogs & writing instruction in ELT Campbell (2003) in Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes just mentions to the types of weblogs and their benefits In the book Content Delivery in the Blogosphere, Ferdig &...interactions between students and the instructor, students and their peers, and students and a global audience Blogs are recommended to foster students English language development in a genuine learning environment Thanks for advantages of blogs, it’s used widely in EFL writing classes and useful for both of learners and teachers Influence of using of blogs on developing writing skills have to do ... blog peer feedback such as the effectiveness of blog peer feedback and students perceptions for English writing practice Therefore, it is essential to have a study on students perceptions of. .. investigate students perceptions of blog peer feedback for English writing practice Students were asked to write which students expressed their opinions about the use of blog peer feedback after... on writing task 2) To find out the students perceptions of blog peer feedback for English writing practice IV Research scope The research focuses on investigating the blog peer feedback and students