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Weekly UpdatesBrainstorming
In addition to conceptualizing the blog topics, participants used a variety of brainstorming strategies for the spoken discourse. About 47% of them usually or always wrote down the script before recording it. As one student stated:
4. I plan ahead for things I would like to talk about. Then I outline the main points in English, check grammar rules, and rehearse about five times. I don't record the voice blog until I'm quite familiar with the content because I can't tolerate myself making too many unnecessary utterances such as "well." I'm also afraid that I'll suffer from incoherence, which makes the listener impatient.
5. I usually plan what I want to say in Chinese first, and then translate it into English, and then say it in English. Although I still make pauses at times, things are getting better.
Articulation
55% of the students rehearsed several times before recording. The following excerpts from the interviews illustrate how participants prepared for the blogs:
6. I try to practice speaking several times before the speech sounds fluent enough.
7. I usually rehearse five to six times for each blog post.
Monitoring
Most participants used extensive monitoring strategies to enhance the quality of their blog entries. 56% usually or always listened to the recorded file before uploading it to the blog. They expressed a number of concerns involving pronunciation, grammar, and fluency:
8. I plan ahead for the content and word choices. Then I consult a dictionary to make sure that the word usage is correct.
9. I usually listen to the recorded file again before it's uploaded.
Evaluating
After uploading the entries to the blog, participants used evaluating strategies to either redo or edit part of the entries:
10. The probability that I'll redo a blog is about 80%. Sometimes, some grammatical errors in a blog post may suddenly come to my mind several days after I finished recording the blog; then I'll go back to the blog and redo it.
11. I redo the blog entries mostly because of grammatical errors, unnecessary pauses, or fluency problems. I spend about 40 minutes on average for each blog post.
Students not only viewed blogging as a means that allowed them to share thoughts and feelings with others on the Internet, but one which also allowed them to focus on both meaning and form. They generally used a wide variety of strategies to create their blog entries, from early conceptualizing, topic brainstorming, and compensating for insufficient language skills to rehearsing, monitoring, and evaluating.
The blogging stages and strategies above are represented in Figure 3. Conceptualization involves planning the blog content, acquiring knowledge about the topic, and acquiring knowledge about the pattern of discourse. Brainstorming refers to drills, word and phrase searches that facilitate both the expression of meanings and the sequence of utterances. Articulation involves rehearsing and recording one's blog entries. Monitoring means checking both the linguistic quality and content of utterances. Evaluating involves identifying mistakes and self-correcting them. As revealed in the interviews, these processes are recursive, i.e., students tend to shift back and forth among the different stages. By encouraging students to take authorship of their entries, blog-based publishing can lead students to make greater strategic effort to improve the quality of their learning outcomes (Richardson, 2006).
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
Research question 2: What emerging themes characterize perceptions of participants' blogging experiences?
Blog activities
Participant responses to questions about interest in blogging are summarized in Table 4.
The following excerpts show the self-perceived effect of students listening to others' blogs:
12. By listening to others' voice blogs, I come to notice my weaknesses in speaking and to learn about different ways to express myself.
13. I think that the requirements for responding to others' blog entries should be greater because I think that I benefit more from listening to others' blogs than from recording mine. The amount of posting and of responding should be at least equivalent. Listening to others' blogs can help us compare and contrast our own blogs with others' blogs, a process that is really helpful.
Participants' perceptions of usefulness of blogs
The participants' perceptions of usefulness of blogs are outlined in Table 5. Of the perceived benefits of blogging, speaking skills received the highest score (M=3.51), followed by self-expression (M=3.51), information exchange (M=3.31), and social networking (M=3.02). In general, the results show that the participants prioritized the enhancement of oral-communication skills.
The following excerpts illustrate students' perceptions of blogs as learning tools:
14. I seldom speak or think in English. Speaking on a voice blog increases the opportunities for me to speak English and to provide oral feedback to peers. It really helps me reduce speaking anxiety.
15. Voice blogs are helpful because they promote speaking among people like me who don't speak English on a regular basis. Unlike the classroom environment, blogs make me feel relaxed and thus help me speak more fluently. I feel that I perform better on the voice blog than in face-to-face situations. My listening ability has also improved owing to the requirement that we respond to others' blog entries.
Time management
Most students worked harder on their voice blogs at the beginning than they did by the end of the semester. Moreover, many indicated that they did not spread out their blog practice throughout the semester evenly. Half of them put off completing the blog assignments till the last few days before the deadline during the week of the finals. The following excerpts are of interest in this regard:
16. I spread out the blog recordings on a regular basis before the midterm: one blog at a time. But after the midterm, I recorded them all, about ten blogs, at a time. I learned more from the spread-out mode of practice because it's hard to be well prepared when I record the entire required amount in a single sitting.
17. I recorded all fifteen of the required blogs within one day (from early morning till midnight) during finals because I always have a hectic schedule at that time of the semester. Recording on a daily basis is more helpful to me than recording all at once. But it's more time efficient to record the blog entries all at once.
As indicated in comments 14 and 15, the students seemed to realize that regular, evenly distributed postings on the blog yielded greater benefits than did irregular, unevenly distributed ones. The regularity of students' blogging, students' time-management practices, and students' motivation became factors that determined the effectiveness of students' blog activities. As Barr (2004) noted, students do not always engage in self-directed e-learning efficiently. This is not necessarily due to student opposition to self-directed learning. Rather, they may lack the necessary time for it. Therefore, time availability for learners' e-learning is an important pedagogical issue:
18. The voice blog was fun in the beginning, but later, it wasn't interesting. During finals week, it got even worse.
19. At first, it was awkward for me to speak into the machine. At first, the recording process and the posting process (which involved photos of myself, as well as audio clips) were burdens for me, but later, it turned out to be an interesting and special learning experience.
20. I felt annoyed at the very beginning because it was something new and I wasn't in the habit of keeping a diary myself, not to mention one in English and in oral form. But the more I practiced, the more I became fluent while speaking on the voice blog.
Concern about popularity
Students exhibited various degrees of concern about the popularity of their blogs. As indicated by the following excerpts, some students were unconcerned, whereas others tried to boost their popularity indices. Some students exhibited disappointment when their actual popularity failed to meet their expectations:
21. I'm busy, so I seldom work on the popularity of my blog by doing things like posting photos.
22. In the very beginning, I cared about how many people visited my blog. But when I realized that the number always fell short of my expectations, I stopped caring about it. It's exciting to notice that more than 200 people have visited my blog. When the number of clicks fell to between 20 and 200, I no longer felt any excitement. And when it fell below 23, I felt that nobody cared about my blog.
To boost the popularity index, participants made the following suggestions:
* Make the blog indispensable for many people by posting valuable information, such as test-preparation tips or test banks.
* Make the blog more dynamic by inviting guest speakers and international students on campus to post on the blog, advertise the class blog on a search engine such as Google or Yahoo or on the university's homepage.
* Open a discussion forum on the blog about issues of common interest, such as study and travel abroad, or advice on business start-up.
DISCUSSION
Willis and Willis (2001) showed that to achieve satisfactory efficiency in learning a foreign language, a balance between meaning and attention to form must be found. Student strategies as revealed in this study indicate the complex nature of students' struggle with meaning, attention to form, and fluency of language production. How to help students find an appropriate balance is, therefore, an important pedagogical issue (Barr, 2004).
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