TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG: HOW DOES IT IMPACT ON WRITING IN A JAPANESE CLASSROOM?

Transcription

1 TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG: HOW DOES IT IMPACT ON WRITING IN A JAPANESE CLASSROOM? Sharon Henry Wellington High School Rosemary Erlam The University of Auckland Abstract This article reports a small scale inquiry learning project that was set up to investigate whether requiring Year 10 students of Japanese to write blogs in Japanese would have a positive impact on their writing both in terms of quality (i.e., variety of language features used) and quantity. Students (n = 20) were required to write blog entries (posts) on three different topics that were concurrently the focus of their classroom language instruction. The requirements that students needed to complete as they wrote their blogs were designed to also fulfil requirements for a task (Ellis, 2009). After students had completed their initial blog entry for each of the three tasks, they received written comment and feedback from their teacher. They then rewrote their blog entry and received a final comment from the teacher. The students were also asked to fill in a questionnaire with a view to finding out students impressions and reactions to keeping a blog in Japanese. Findings showed that all students made gains in writing quality and quantity. Evidence suggests that this was largely due to the written comment and feedback that students received from the teacher and, for one task in particular, to the scaffolded help that they were given prior to their rewrite. Questionnaires showed that the students enjoyed writing blogs but that around half preferred hand writing Japanese hiragana. Implications for the use of blogs in the Japanese classroom, in particular with lower level learners, are discussed. INTRODUCTION Blogs are personal spaces that enable users to represent who they are (Wheeler, 2009). They are essentially an online journal, in which the author s posts or entries appear in reverse chronological order. Authors may add images, videos and links to other sites within their blog entries. They can also personalise their blog site by changing the background or using a particular font type. Most blogs enable readers to leave feedback by means of comments subsequent to the main entry. The advantages of using blogs in an educational setting have been well documented. Blogs enable students to enter into dialogue on specific topics (Wheeler, 2009, p. 4), in particular providing a forum for students who find it difficult to express themselves orally in class (Miceli et al., 2010). Research has demonstrated that students who take up blogging witness improvements in a range of skills, such as writing and debating (Hall & Davison, 2007, p. 164). There is also evidence to suggest that blogging requires higher-order thinking skills such as the ability to evaluate and synthesise (Hourigan & Murray, 2010, p. 211). Another advantage for using blogs is that they have the potential to encourage students to become more reflective about their learning (Wheeler, 2009): Ultimately, even though they can be intensely personal in nature, blogs have communication with others as their central purpose because interactive tools such as comment boxes can facilitate dialogue between the blog writer and the blog reader. Blogs thus promote learning through reflection and discussion, incorporating the sharing of knowledge and best practice. (p. 5). Hall and Davison (2007) also comment on how journal writing, which is similar to the type of writing that is evidenced in a blog, is an intrinsically reflective activity. Reflection can be a powerful learning tool for students. Research has shown that effective learning can be enhanced if activities are organised along the lines of the reflective aspect of learning (Ho, 1997, p. 212). Reflective practice can encourage students to write imaginatively and has been shown to encourage The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

2 more accurate and critical methods of articulation (Wheeler, 2009, p. 6). However, using blogs in a classroom situation requires a reasonable amount of forethought and planning, and once initiated it can be a time consuming process for the teacher. Hourigan and Murray (2010) conclude that there are a number of factors for teachers to bear in mind when implementing blogging. These include: A great deal of groundwork is needed in order to successfully integrate blogging into the language classroom There is a greatly increased administrative workload, both with regards to commenting on posts and with technical issues Teachers should provide a structured framework for students There may be some negative student attitude if the blogging tasks are compulsory. As is evident from the research already referred to in this paper, much of the literature dealing with the topic of blogging is situated within the context of general education. There has been less investigation into the potential for blogging in the second language classroom. One exception is the work of Sun (2009), who reminds us that to use blogging effectively in a language learning environment there must be a balance between meaning and form. In other words, blogging is not just about encouraging students to write, it is also about encouraging them to use, accurately, the grammatical structures and/or formulaic expressions that they have been practising in class. Lee (2010) investigated the possibility of using blogs to develop the language competence of 17 advanced learners of Spanish. Data collected from the blogs, online surveys and final interviews showed that regularly writing blogs had a positive impact on learners writing fluency and increased their motivation to write. Findings also showed that learners were also prompted to focus on accuracy in their writing as a result of the feedback that they received from their lecturer. This article describes an initiative to investigate the potential that written blogs have to improve written language skills in the Japanese language classroom. As such it aims to address a gap in the research literature by looking at the impact that blogging may have on language learning. The project that this article describes was an inquiry learning project undertaken in the context of the principal author s involvement in the Teacher Professional Development Languages (TPDL) programme in 2011 (hereafter the inquiry is described by the principal author in the first person). THE INQUIRY The inquiry was set up to answer three questions: 1. Does writing blogs improve writing quality in L2 Japanese (i.e., number of different language features used)? 2. Does writing blogs improve writing quantity in L2 Japanese (i.e., number of symbols used)? 3. How do New Zealand Year 10 students of Japanese react to blogging tasks? THE STUDENTS The students who participated in this inquiry were 20 students in my Year 10 Japanese class. The school is a large decile 9 school in one of New Zealand s main cities. The students in the study had started learning Japanese in Year 9, completing a four or five week module (16-20 hours in total for that year). In Year 10 they have four hours a week of Japanese. This inquiry was conducted at the beginning of term three. Students in the class typically have access to computers both in class and at home, and were therefore IT literate. The class is of average ability with 15 of the 20 students having an average PAT Comprehension stanine of 5 or 6. Four students of above average ability have a stanine of 8 or 9, while one student has a stanine of 2. The school has a netbook program, so 16 out of 20 students had a netbook or a laptop that they regularly use in class. The remaining four borrowed a netbook from the pod of netbooks for ESOL and Languages classes. Occasionally there were problems connecting to the network, which wasted time. One student had continual problems logging in and ended up using my computer instead. PROCEDURE Prior to the inquiry students set up their own blog, personalised it and wrote an introductory post. The inquiry required students to write and re-write blog entries or posts on three different topics. Each topic was part of a task that fulfilled the taskbased learning criteria as stated by Ellis (2009, p. 223): Tasks had a primary focus on meaning There was some kind of gap Students had to rely largely on their own resources There was a clearly defined outcome other than the use of language. The topics on which the blogs were written ran alongside the topics that we were studying at that time: family, pets and food. The family and food blogs were letters, while the pets blog was an advertisement. As an example, the task for the pets blog involved each student designing an The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

3 advertisement for a pet that would be sold in their group s pet shop. Students had to ensure that their advertisement would appeal to other students, as the aim was to sell as many of their pets as possible and to see which shop would be the best performing. The pets ranged from albino peacocks to meerkats. Figure 1 below shows one student s advertisement. Figure 1: One student s blog post. All students received a comment and feedback from me, as the teacher, after each blog entry they made. This included what I thought that they had done well, as well as suggestions for improvement. Figure 2 shows the teacher feedback given in response to the post displayed in Figure 1, and Figure 3 shows the same student s rewritten blog entry following the feedback given in Figure 2. Figure 4 summarises the process for each of the three blog topics. Figure 2: Example of teacher s feedback. The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

4 Figure 3: Example of rewritten blog entry. Write blog entry Teacher feedback Rewrite blog entry Final teacher comment Figure 4: Procedure 1 After this process had been completed for all three blog topics, all students also completed an online questionnaire (see Appendix A) about the blog writing project. The questionnaire asked students to rate a range of statements from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). There were also a number of questions where the students were asked to write a short response. An issue that caused some problems in the inquiry was that the regional languages settings on each computer need to be changed in order to type in Japanese on a computer. For students using the latest Microsoft platform, this was an easy process. However, some students needed to find and install the Asian language files from the start-up pack or download them from the internet before being able to change their regional language settings. Those who used the school s netbooks were unable to write in Japanese as they could not access the regional language settings in the control panel due to security protocols. Any student who had problems typing in Japanese used a website that allowed them to input letters that are then converted to Japanese script, and then they cut and pasted that into their blog. This was inefficient and time consuming. ANALYSIS OF DATA To analyse the difference between student s initial blog entry and their rewritten entry I looked at two aspects: the quality of writing (Research Question 1) and the quantity of writing (Research Question 2). To measure the quality of the writing I decided to measure the number of different language features used. This took into account the problem alluded to above where students might have written a substantially longer post, but simply used the same sentence structure again and again. Table 1 lists the language features that were included in this investigation. The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

5 Table 1: Language features Verb forms and functions Adjective forms and functions Other forms and functions present adjective + noun agreement frequency present negative negative adjective quantifier past past adjective demonstrative past negative past negative adjective time suggestion linking adjectives counter imperative comparative conjunction desire (want to ~) superlative possession linking verbs higher level clausal structure I also thought it was important to gauge any increase in the quantity of symbols written. Naturally, students wrote differing amounts depending on their language ability. So in order to ascertain whether students had improved comparatively with regard to the amount that they had written I investigated the percentage increase in the total amount of symbols written. The disadvantage of this measure is that it needs to be remembered that quantity is not always an indication of proficiency. For example, students who are more advanced will omit an obvious subject or subject pronoun such as watashi for I, whereas less proficient students will use one in every sentence. As I wanted to quantify the amount of improvement between the two posts for each task, I only measured students who had completed both posts for a single task. In other words I ignored the results where the student had completed the first post, but not the rewrite. In order to control for the effect of student absence (i.e., there were some students who due to absence were not included in some of the tasks) I then decided to measure the average difference of the two aspects. The numbers of students completing both posts ranged from 13 to 15. RESULTS Figure 5 shows the average number of language features used per blog post. These results indicate that for each task there was an increase in the number of language features that students used. This is most evident in the food posts, where students used twice as many language features in their rewrites as they did in their original posts. This increase was largely due to the fact that I gave scaffolding help to students prior to their rewrite. This was because some students were unsure what to include in their rewrite, so we brainstormed ideas on the board based on what we had covered during the topic, and discussed how we would normally write a letter in English and how that could be used to scaffold their writing in Japanese. Average number of language features per post 10 Number of features family post 1 family post 2 pet post pet post 1 2 food post 1 food post 2 Figure 5: Average number of language features used per blog post The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

6 Figure 6 shows the average increase in the number of symbols students in each group used on the second write of their blog. The results indicated that there was an improvement in terms of quantity of writing for all tasks over time. Students wrote around 50% more on their rewrite for the family and pets post, and more than double what they had originally written for the food post. The large increase in the quantity of symbols used in the food rewrite can be ascribed to the brainstorming of possible ideas to write about as mentioned earlier. In fact, in this study, the fact that students tended to include the suggestions that the teacher had given them in their rewrites, points to the crucial role of the teacher feedback in this blogging process. Average % increase in quantity of symbols per post percentage increase family post pet post food post Figure 6: Increase in number of symbols used on the second blog The questionnaire of students reactions to the blogging experience was completed by 18 of the 20 students (see Appendix A for a copy of the questionnaire). The first set of questions were a range of statements (see Table 2) where all respondents had to select the response that best suited them from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Table 2: Responses to questions about blogging Statement Strongly agree Agree More or less Disagree I had a positive experience with the blog project I preferred creating blog entries to traditionally writing on paper I think my Japanese ability has improved as a result or writing blog entries Blog tasks were interesting to me I liked how the tasks required me to type in Japanese I found typing in Japanese difficult It was important to me to receive feedback about my Japanese from my teacher I found my teacher s comments valuable Strongly disagree The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

7 The results in Table 2 indicate that two thirds of participants were positive about the opportunity to write blogs. Surprisingly, however, students did not, overall, show a definite preference for writing blogs to writing on paper seven indicated that they preferred writing blog entries to writing on paper, four preferred writing on paper and seven were undecided in their preference. Fifteen students thought that their writing had improved, although only two were strongly in agreement with this statement. Students were more definite about the positive role of the teacher s feedback in the writing process ten were strong in their endorsement of the benefit of this and from five to seven were in agreement. The last set of questions was a series of short answer questions. When asked what students enjoyed most about the blog writing project the overwhelming majority (15 out of 18 respondents) said either writing in Japanese or improving their Japanese. What the students disliked about the project varied: five students said nothing, four students said they disliked rewriting the blogs, three mentioned that we did it too often, three referred to the problems they had typing in Japanese and two mentioned technical issues with the netbooks. The most interesting answers were to the question Do you think writing blog entries are valuable for learning Japanese? Explain. Seventeed students said yes, while one said maybe. The main reasons given were as follows: Improves writing skills 6 responses Improves typing skills 4 responses Gives a better understanding of how structures work 4 responses Improves overall understanding - 3 responses Improves reading skills 2 responses Improves vocabulary knowledge 2 responses DISCUSSION When considering the results in relation to the first two research questions ( does writing blogs improve writing quality and writing quantity in L2 Japanese? it can be seen that there was an improvement in both writing quantity and quality. The biggest factor in the improvement in writing quality is hypothesised to be the comments and feedback that I gave and the scaffolding that I gave for the post rewrite of the food blog. As a teacher, I found the blog project to be extremely useful. It made me much more aware of my students language ability and where their problems lie, much more so than marking a piece of writing in their book. It also created more of a community as a language class, and provided me with a better connection with the students. Since the blog project students have seemed more confident to approach me with questions about how the Japanese language works and seem to have made gains in terms of being able to think about how to expand what they want to say or write. My positive conclusions about blogging, from my viewpoint as a teacher, are evidenced in the research literature. Halic et al. (2010, p. 206) had 67 undergraduate students of nutrition in an American university write blogs. They found that blogs have the capability to make student learning transparent and become a space where a greater understanding of student meaning making can be gained. Paulus et al. (2009) mention that, through reading blogs, teachers can better understand the issues students have with particular concepts and can then adjust their teaching accordingly. The overwhelming majority of my students found the blog project valuable, enjoyed the blog writing tasks and would like to continue with blogging. They found the comments made on their blog useful. Research also reports examples of positive student responses to blogging. Halic et al. also report that most participants who used a blog as part of their course work considered it to have enhanced their overall learning. Wong and Hew (2010) explored the perceptions of 36 primary students (grade 5) in a school in Singapore through interviews and reflection sheets. They report that students liked blogging because they could improve their writing through comments made on their blog post. There was one noticeable difference between my research and other research. Most research concludes that students enjoy using blogging as a writing tool more than writing on paper (e.g., Lee, 2010; Wong & Hew, 2010). However, I found this not to be the case. Of the 18 students who answered the questionnaire only seven agreed or strongly agreed to this statement. When I further questioned the other 11 to see why they gave the response they did, the majority (nine of the 11 students) commented that they simply liked writing in Japanese by hand, and the other two mentioned the frustration they had with writing Japanese on the computer. This response could perhaps be attributed to the fact that this class has only begun learning how to write in hiragana (Japanese script) this year. For them, being able to write full sentences in Japanese script is still a new and, it seems, exciting experience. Therefore it may be beneficial to offer students the option of hand writing a journal rather than a blog. It is also interesting to consider whether blogging at initial stages of learning may disadvantage more tactile learners. A conclusion from this inquiry could be that blogging is more effective for students who already have a certain language proficiency in Japanese. It may, in retrospect, have been a little too early to introduce blogging to this class. A class that has been learning Japanese for longer The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

8 may, on the other hand, give a result that is more in line with what current research suggests. Due to the limited time frame of the blog study, our class did not explore students reading and commenting on blog posts that other students made. This is something I would like to try in the future, and it is something that my students are receptive to. Lee (2010, p. 219) interviewed advanced learners of Spanish in an American University and found that they felt more compelled to write when they knew that their peers, rather than just their instructor, would read and respond to their posts. However she also comments that students feel unqualified to make comments on their peers posts on the linguistic accuracy of the target language. As such there will always be an important place for teacher comments that focus on form. One of the most surprising discoveries over the course of the blog project was that half of the students had written more than 600 symbols over their three post rewrites. This is the minimum number of symbols that is required for the NCEA Level 1 writing portfolio. Moreover, they will be able to use their posts next year for NCEA Level 1 if they so choose. Naturally they would need more reworking, but these students can go into Year 11 Japanese knowing that they are fully capable of achieving the writing portfolio. Given that the writing portfolio and interaction portfolio require a considerable time commitment at Year 11, this is a big advantage. LIMITATIONS A number of potential limitations have already been highlighted, such as problems with internet access (see earlier). Problems of accessing Japanese script and the issue of absences may also have had an impact on the inquiry. Finally, questionnaire data of this type always needs to be interpreted with some caution in that it is always possible that some students reported more favourably than warranted, in a desire to give answers that they perceived the teacher may have wanted. CONCLUSION All students who completed the blogging tasks in this inquiry showed improvement in both the quality and the quantity of their writing. In fact, a pleasing finding was that half of the students had written the minimum number of symbols required for the NCEA Level 1 writing portfolio. It is suggested that the comments that the teacher made, along with the scaffolded writing help provided on one occasion, may account for the gains that students made. Qualitative questionnaire data show that the majority of students in this study enjoyed writing blogs. A surprising result was the discovery that less than half found blogging more enjoyable than writing in Japanese on paper. It is suggested that computer difficulties along with the fact that students were recent beginners and said that they enjoyed writing hiragana may account for this. One tentative conclusion is that blogging may be more suited to higher level students. It is hoped that this inquiry may inspire others to investigate the potential that blogs may have in the Japanese classroom in terms of their important impact on learning. NOTE 1 Originally some of the students in this inquiry also completed a guided self-reflection after they had written their initial blog (before receiving any feedback from the teacher) and again after they had rewritten their blog. However, as results showed no real difference in terms of gains in writing for this group of students (it being concluded that the process of writing a blog was in itself facilitative of self-reflection) this component was no longer considered a key focus of this inquiry and the results of these students were dealt with in the same way as those of students who did not engage in any guided self-reflection. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Principal of Wellington High School has given permission for this inquiry learning investigation to be published, and the students have given permission for data relating to them to be reported. REFERENCES Ellis, R. (2009). Task-based language teaching: Sorting out the misunderstandings. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19(3), Halic, O., Lee, D., Paulus, T., Spence, M. (2010). To blog or not to blog: Student perceptions of blog effectiveness for learning in a college-level course. Internet and Higher Education, 13, Hall, H. & Davison, B. (2007). Social software as support in hybrid learning environments: The value of the blog as a tool for reflective learning and peer support. Library & Information Science Research, 29, Ho, B. (1997). Reactions of students to reflective learning in a technical report-writing course. English for Specific Purposes, 16(3), Hourigan, T. & Murray, L. (2010). Using blogs to help language students to develop reflective learning strategies: Towards a pedagogical framework. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(2), Jones, Z. & Nuhfer-Halten, B. (2006).Uses of blogs in L2 instruction. In M. L. Wilbur & C. M. Cherry (Eds.), Language for today s world: Dimension The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

9 2006 (pp ). Valdosta, GA: Southern Conference on Language Teaching Lee, L. (2010). Fostering reflective writing and interactive exchange through blogging in an advanced language course. ReCALL, 22(2), Miceli, T., Murray, S., & Kennedy, C. (2010). Using an L2 blog to enhance learners participation and sense of community. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23(4), Paulus, T., Payne, R. & Jahns, L. (2009). Am I making sense here? : What blogging reveals about undergraduate student understanding. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 8(1), Sun, Y. (2009). Voice blog: An exploratory study of language learning. Language Learning and Technology, 13(2), Wheeler, S. (2009). Learning space mashups: Combining web 2.0 tools to create collaborative and reflective learning spaces. Future Internet, 1, 3-13 Willis, J. (1996). Aspects of tasks. In A framework for task-based learning (pp ). Harlow. UK: Longman Pearson Education Wong, R. & Hew, K. (2010). The impact of blogging and scaffolding on primary school pupils narrative writing: A case study. International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 5(2), Appendix A: Blog Writing Questionnaire This questionnaire is about the current blog writing project we have been doing in Japanese. Your responses will be important for the research project I'm doing so I would appreciate it if you are as honest as possible. Any suggestions and comments will be greatly appreciated. Your username will be recorded when you submit this form. *Required I had a positive experience with the blog project * I preferred creating blog entries to traditionally writing on paper * Blog tasks were interesting to me * I liked how the tasks required me to type in Japanese * The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

10 I found typing in Japanese difficult * I would have preferred not to re-write my blog * I think my Japanese ability has improved as a result or writing blog entries * It was important to me to receive feedback about my Japanese from my teacher * I found my teacher s comments valuable * I enjoyed reading other people's blog posts * I would have like to have read more of other people's blog posts and commented on them * Other than just the food one The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

11 I enjoyed making comments on other people s blogs * I was nervous about other people reading my blog * I liked other people making comments on my blog * I found other people s comments valuable * Other people's comments were as valuable as my teacher's comments * I would have prefered it if other people hadn't read my blog * The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

12 What did you enjoy about doing the blog project? * What did you not enjoy about doing the blog project? * Do you think writing blog entries is valuable for learning Japanese? Explain. * In a language learning blog situation such as this one, do you think that people should read and comment on other people's blogs? Explain. * Would you like to continue doing blog entries in Japanese in the future? Why or why not? * The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November

13 Do you have any suggestions for improvements? * Any additional comments? Send me a copy of my responses. The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November