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Weekly UpdatesA possible explanation for students' perception of improvement, whether real or imagined, especially in fluency, is that the blog's speaking environment, where freedom and safety were paramount, encourage students to take risks with the target language and to emphasize content over form, which resulted in a sense of improved fluency. In addition, the task-based nature of blogging promotes authentic and purposeful language use, with the form playing a secondary role (Skehan, 1996; Willis & Willis, 2001). This also aids students' fluency development.
In the current study, some participants recorded their blogs all at once rather than spacing them out evenly throughout the semester. One consequence of a last-minute rush could be a significant diminution of the quality and quantity of the blogs. Students would either make shorter entries near the end of the semester just to get enough entries done or they would spend less time on rehearsal and practice before making actual recordings.
CONCLUSION
The results of this study reveal that students went through a series of blogging stages, including conceptualizing, brainstorming, articulation, monitoring, and evaluating, and used a wide variety of strategies to cope with blogging-related difficulties. In addition, students perceived blogging not only as a means of learning, but also as a means of self-presentation, information exchange, and social networking. Furthermore, the findings suggest that blogs constitute a dynamic forum that fosters extensive practice, learning motivation, authorship, and development of learning strategies.
Pedagogical relevance is an important driving force that can both motivate students to undertake an activity and maintain their interest in it (Barr, 2004). Students in language courses would be more likely to engage in blogging if they felt that maintaining a regular target language blog could enhance their language proficiency or that improved blog-based performance could improve their course grade. Whatever the case, educators should make informed decisions regarding the extent of integration of blogs with course content, for instance, should the blogs be central or a peripheral component of the course? Course design should take into account many blog-related issues. One such issue concerns whether teachers should assign specific topics to be addressed on blogs. Further research in this regard would be of interest to researchers and classroom teachers.
Finding a balance between meaning and form is another important issue in integrating blogs more fully into course content. The need to focus on form may vary depending on course objectives and task design. If the main purpose of blogging is to enhance self-confidence (that is, to reduce speaking anxiety), then educators should provide students with opportunities for free language exchanges. On the other hand, if the main purpose of blogging is to enhance awareness of form, teachers should encourage students to observe and to reflect on language use in their own and in others' blogs.
One of the limitations of the current study is that classroom-based blogging tends to have a limited audience. Participants in the study expressed their interest in having not only a greater number but also a greater variety of visitors to their blogs, not just classmates. They also expressed interest in interacting with native speakers of English. Future research could compare classroom-based blogging and 'real-world' blogging and examine its effect on language learning, learner attitudes, and interaction among bloggers.
Research on the possible contributions of blogs to language learning is still in its infancy. More research can help determine whether other factors such as gender, age, field of study, computer literacy, and learner personality have a significant effect on the blogging process. Moreover, studies comparing blog entries with classroom discourse could shed light on communication patterns in the blogosphere. Other questions that are not addressed in this study merit attention: Is speaking on a voice blog as anxiety-provoking as speaking to an audience face-to-face? Can students who are speaking on a voice blog develop similar sense of audience as they would when speaking to a group face-to-face? Finally, it would be useful to compare the advantages and disadvantages of educational blogs with other CMC and face-to-face communication. More research on different task types of blogging could clarify aspects of student blogging and help create better pedagogical approaches for various instructional purposes. Combining mobile devices with blogs might serve as another strategy that, by fostering "anywhere, anytime" learning, could render blogging more time-efficient (Geddes, 2004).
APPENDIX: Voice-Blog Survey
Section one: Please respond to the following statements by rating your agreement on the scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = undecided, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree).
1. Voice blog is helpful in improving my general oral skills.
2. Voice blog is helpful in improving my public-speaking skills.
3. Voice blog is helpful in improving my oral fluency.
4. Voice blog is helpful in improving my pronunciation.
5. Voice blog is helpful in improving my grammar accuracy.
6. Voice blog is helpful in improving my vocabulary accuracy.
7. Voice blog is helpful in improving my idea-organization skills.
Section two: Please respond to the following statements by rating your agreement on the scale (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = usually, 5 = always).
8. I rehearse before recording the audio files.
9. I listen to the recorded files before uploading them to the blog.
10. I write down what I want to talk about before recording them.
11. I visit others' blogs to get some useful ideas.
12. I respond to the comments received on my blog.
13. It is difficult for me to identify topics to discuss on voice blog.
14. The length of time that I spend on thinking about discussion-worthy topics decreases over time.
15. When I don't know what to talk about on voice blog, I search for information from various sources.
16. I choose topics that are easier to express.
17. When I record a voice blog, I feel like I am talking to someone.
18. I have mentioned my blog to someone I know.
19. I redo the voice-blog entries when the speech does not flow well.
20. I redo the voice-blog entries when the intonation does not sound right.
21. I redo the voice-blog entries when there are grammatical mistakes on it.
22. I redo the voice-blog entries when the word choice is not quite right.
23. I redo the voice-blog entries when the pronunciation does not sound right.
24. I redo the voice-blog entries when the organization of ideas is not right.
25. I update my blog on a regular basis.
Section three: Please respond to the following statements by rating your agreement on the scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = undecided, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree).
26. Voice blogging is an interesting activity.
27. I expect myself to update my voice blog frequently.
28. Listening to my classmates' voice-blog entries is interesting.
29. Responding to my classmates' voice-blog entries is interesting.
30. Overall, I am satisfied with my performance on voice blog.
31. Recording on voice blog is interesting.
32. Voice blog provides opportunities for social interaction online.
33. Voice blog provides opportunities for enhancing my oral-proficiency skills.
34. Voice blog provides opportunities for self-presentation by enabling the user to express him- or herself.
35. Voice blog provides opportunities for exchanging information.
36. Voice blog enhances my confidence in speaking in English.
37. I am pleased when others leave a message on my blog.
38. I feel motivated by listening to classmates' voice blogs.
39. I care about how people view my voice blog.
40. I care about how many people visit my blog.
41. I care about whether or not people understand my blog entries.
42. I care about the quality of my blog entries.
43. I care about whether or not the content of my blog is interesting to others.
44. I care about whether or not the content of my blog is informative.
45. Interacting with native speakers on my blog can help me improve my English.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and editors for their insightful feedback and to Dr. C. Chou and Dr. S. Huang for their comments on earlier versions of this article. The project was sponsored by the National Science Council in Taiwan (NSC-94-2411-H-009-013).
REFERENCES
Baggetun, R., & Wasson, B. (2006). Self-regulated learning and open writing. European Journal of Education, 41(3-4), 453-472.
Barr, D. (2004). Students and ICT: An analysis of student reaction to the use of computer technology in language learning. IALLT Journal, 36(2), 19-39.
Beauvois, M. (1992). Computer-assisted classroom discussion in the foreign language classroom: Conversation in slow motion. Foreign Language Annals, 25(5), 455-464.
Beauvois, M.. (1998). Conversations in slow motion: Computer-mediated communication in the foreign language classroom. Canadian Modern Language Review, 54(2), 198-217.
Betts, J. D., & Glogoff, S. J. (2004). Instructional models for using weblogs in e-learning: A case study from a virtual and hybrid course. Paper presented at the Syllabus 2004 Conference, San Francisco, CA. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://download.101com.com/syllabus/conf/summer2004 /PDFs/w01.pdf.
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