The Influence of Blogging on EFL Learners’ Writing Fluency, Accuracy and Complexity

Abstract

Weblog is a new arrival as an educational technology due to which we can create different types of activities and projects which are motivating and authentic for the 21stcentury students. Therefore, blog use may offer a helpful tool for teaching foreign language writing. Thus, this research reports on the effects of blogging on students’ writing performance. It focuses on three aspects of writing, i.e. writing fluency, accuracy and complexity, and thus compares and contrasts results between and within groups. Twenty five pre intermediate Armenian students participated in the study. The comparison group (n=13) did their writing assignments as homework based on paper and the experimental group (n=12) accomplished the writing assignments by using a blog software. Based on the analysis of students’ written work, the findings suggest that blogging had little effect on students writing fluency, accuracy and complexity. The latter means that there was statistically no significant difference found for both within and between group comparisons. However, based on the questionnaire and interview results, the study supports the previous research done in the field reporting that blogging has the potential of becoming a motivating and productive pedagogical tool for enhancing writing skills.