weblog as a writing activity in esl classroom: a survey on students' perception

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PSZ 19 : 16 (Pind. 1/97) UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA BORANG PENGESAHAN STATUS TESIS JUDUL : WEBLOG AS A WRITING ACTIVITY IN ESL CLASSROOM: A SURVEY ON STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION. SESI PENGAJIAN : 2008/2009 Saya NURUL `ATIQAH BINTI MOHD NASIR (HURUF BESAR) mengaku membenarkan tesis (PSM/Sarjana/Doktor Falsafah)* ini disimpan di Perpustakaan Universiti Teknologi Malaysia dengan syarat-syarat kegunaan seperti berikut: 1. Tesis adalah hakmilik Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. 2. Perpustakaan Teknologi Malaysia dibenarkan membuat salinan untuk tujuan pengajian sahaja. 3. Perpustakaan dibenarkan membuat salinan tesis ini sebagai bahan pertukaran antara institusi pengajian tinggi. 4. ** Sila tandakan ( √ ) SULIT (Mengandungi maklumat yang berdarjah keselamatan atau kepentingan Malaysia seperti yang termaktub di dalam AKTA RAHSIA RASMI 1972) TERHAD (Mengandungi maklumat TERHAD yang telah ditentukan oleh organisasi/badan di mana penyelidikan dijalankan) TIDAK TERHAD (TANDATANGAN PENULIS) (TANDATANGAN PENYELIA) Alamat tetap: PROF. MADYA. DR. MASDINAH LOT 3865, JALAN SEKOLAH ALAUYAH BINTI MD YUSOF KAMPUNG BANTING, 45200, NAMA PENYELIA SABAK BERNAM, SELANGOR DARUL EHSAN. Tarikh: 23 APRIL 2009 Tarikh: 29 APRIL 2009 CATATAN: * Potong yang tidak berkenaan. ** Jika tesis ini SULIT atau TERHAD, sila lampirkan surat daripada pihak berkuasa/organisasi berkenaan dengan menyatakan sekali sebab dan tempoh tesis ini perlu dikelaskan sebagai SULIT atau TERHAD. Tesis dimaksudkan sebagai tesis bagi Ijazah Doktor Falsafah dan Sarjana secara penyelidikan atau disertasi bagi pengajian sebagai kerja kursus dan penyelidikan atau Laporan Projek Sarjana Muda (PSM).

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Page 1: Weblog as a Writing Activity in ESL Classroom: A Survey on Students' Perception

PSZ 19 : 16 (Pind. 1/97)

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA BORANG PENGESAHAN STATUS TESIS

JUDUL : WEBLOG AS A WRITING ACTIVITY IN ESL CLASSROOM: A SURVEY ON STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION.

SESI PENGAJIAN : 2008/2009

Saya NURUL `ATIQAH BINTI MOHD NASIR

(HURUF BESAR)

mengaku membenarkan tesis (PSM/Sarjana/Doktor Falsafah)* ini disimpan di Perpustakaan Universiti Teknologi Malaysia dengan syarat-syarat kegunaan seperti berikut:

1. Tesis adalah hakmilik Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. 2. Perpustakaan Teknologi Malaysia dibenarkan membuat salinan untuk tujuan pengajian sahaja. 3. Perpustakaan dibenarkan membuat salinan tesis ini sebagai bahan pertukaran antara institusi

pengajian tinggi. 4. ** Sila tandakan ( √ )

SULIT

(Mengandungi maklumat yang berdarjah keselamatan atau kepentingan Malaysia seperti yang termaktub di dalam AKTA RAHSIA RASMI 1972)

TERHAD

(Mengandungi maklumat TERHAD yang telah ditentukan oleh organisasi/badan di mana penyelidikan dijalankan)

TIDAK TERHAD

(TANDATANGAN PENULIS) (TANDATANGAN PENYELIA)

Alamat tetap: PROF. MADYA. DR. MASDINAH LOT 3865, JALAN SEKOLAH ALAUYAH BINTI MD YUSOF KAMPUNG BANTING, 45200, NAMA PENYELIA SABAK BERNAM, SELANGOR DARUL EHSAN. Tarikh: 23 APRIL 2009 Tarikh: 29 APRIL 2009

CATATAN: * Potong yang tidak berkenaan. ** Jika tesis ini SULIT atau TERHAD, sila lampirkan surat daripada pihak

berkuasa/organisasi berkenaan dengan menyatakan sekali sebab dan tempoh tesis ini perlu dikelaskan sebagai SULIT atau TERHAD.

Tesis dimaksudkan sebagai tesis bagi Ijazah Doktor Falsafah dan Sarjana secara penyelidikan atau disertasi bagi pengajian sebagai kerja kursus dan penyelidikan atau Laporan Projek Sarjana Muda (PSM).

Page 2: Weblog as a Writing Activity in ESL Classroom: A Survey on Students' Perception

“I hereby declare that I have read this thesis and in my

opinion this thesis is sufficient in terms of scope and quality for the

award of the degree of Bachelor of Science and Education (TESL)”

Signature : _______________________________

Name of Supervisor :

Date :

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Masdinah Alauyah Binti Md Yusof

29th April 2009

Page 3: Weblog as a Writing Activity in ESL Classroom: A Survey on Students' Perception

WEBLOG AS A WRITING ACTIVITY IN ESL CLASSROOM:

A SURVEY ON STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION.

NURUL `ATIQAH MOHD NASIR

A report submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the award of the degree of

Bachelor of Science and Education (TESL).

Faculty of Education

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

APRIL 2009

Page 4: Weblog as a Writing Activity in ESL Classroom: A Survey on Students' Perception

ii

I declare that this thesis entitled “Weblog as a Writing Activity in ESL Classroom: A

Survey on Students’ Perception” is the result of my own research except as cited in the

references. The thesis has not been accepted for any degree and is not concurrently

submitted in candidature of any other degree.

Signature : _________________________

Name :

Date :

Nurul `Atiqah Binti Mohd Nasir

23rd April 2009

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iii

To the apples of my eyes,

ABAH, MAK,

Atina, Aizat, Aiman, Atira, Aimi Anis

and my TESL UTM family.

MAY ALLAH BLESS YOU.

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iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, there is only Allah whom I should be grateful and thankful

for giving me the opportunity to complete this thesis and who has put me in this level.

The next person that I would like to express my appreciation is my thesis supervisor,

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Masdinah Alauyah Binti Md Yusof for her constant guidance, advices

and motivation. Without her continued support and interest, this thesis would not have

been the same as presented here.

I am also grateful to have Tn. Hj. Mohd Nasir Abdullah and Pn. Hjh. Hasimah

Zailani as my parents who are always being there for me, giving me encouragement and

motivation. My fellow respondents should also be recognized for their help in doing the

task given voluntarily and also answering the questionnaire for this research’s data.

A big thank you also goes to my TESL classmates who have been there by my

side through out these four years of TESL programme. They shared, they taught and

they helped without any condition. Their views and tips are useful indeed. Unfortunately,

it is not possible to list all of them in this limited space. Once again, my appreciation goes to

all persons who have directly or indirectly involved in this research.

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ABSTRACT

Today, the use of weblog is becoming a very popular tool for people to express their

ideas and get them published on the internet for other people to comment or say

something on the published articles. In language classes, weblogs are also often used to

help students to improve their writing skills. However, the effectiveness of weblogs is

not apparent. Hence the purpose of this study was to find out some problems that the

respondents faced when doing writing activity, the benefits of using weblog as writing

activity in the classroom as well as the possibility of using weblog in ESL classroom. In

this study, the survey technique was employed and a set of questionnaire was given to

48 respondents after they were given opportunity to experience the activity of writing

and publish in the selected weblog. The data was collected and analysed using the

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software to obtain the frequency

count and the relationships between the variables. The findings indicated that the

respondents agreed they faced some problems when doing writing task. Besides that,

they also agreed that there are several benefits of using weblog as a tool of teaching

writing as well as the benefits towards the improvement of language skills. Last but not

least it is found that they viewed the implementation of weblog as a writing activity in

ESL classroom positively. Therefore, it is hoped that teachers could use weblog as a

means of language learning tool in teaching the ESL students.

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vi

ABSTRAK

Dewasa ini, penggunaan weblog adalah sangat popular di kalangan pengguna internet

untuk mereka mengutarakan dan menerbitkan idea ke dalam internet supaya pembaca

dapat memberi komen dan memberi pendapat tentang entri tersebut. Di dalam kelas

bahasa, weblog juga sering digunakan untuk membantu pelajar meningkatkan kemahiran

mereka dalam menulis. Walaubagaimanapun, keberkesanan penggunaan weblog masih

belum jelas. Maka tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk mengenalpasti masalah-masalah yang

dihadapai oleh responden semasa membuat aktiviti menulis, faedah yang boleh didapati

semasa penggunaan weblog di dalam kelas bahasa Inggeris dan juga kemungkinan untuk

menggunakan weblog di dalam kelas bahasa Inggeris. Dalam kajian ini, teknik tinjauan

telah digunakan dan satu set boring kaji selidik diedarkan kepada 48 orang responden di

mana mereka telah diberi pengalaman dan peluang menulis dan menerbitkan tulisan

mereka di dalam weblog yang disediakan. Data yang telah dikumpulkan kemudiannya

dianalisa menggunakan perisian Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) untuk

mendapatkan bacaan frekuensi dan hubungan antara dua pembolehubah. Keputusan

hasil kajian mendapati responden bersetuju bahawa terdapat beberapa masalah yang

mereka hadapi semasa aktiviti menulis. Kajian juga mendapati terdapat beberapa faedah

penggunaan weblog sebagai alat pengajaran dan juga medium untuk meningkatkan

kemahiran bahasa Inggeris. Selain daripada itu, persepsi responden terhadap

kemungkinan pengaplikasian weblog di dalam kelas bahasa Inggeris adalah positif.

Diharapkan para guru dapatlah mengaplikasikan penggunaan weblog sebagai alat

pengajaran di dalam kelas bahasa Inggeris.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

DECLARATION

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

ABSTRAK

TABLE OF CONTENT

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ii

iii

iv

v

vi

vii

xi

xii

I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Background of the Study

1.3 Problems Statement

1.4 Purpose of the Study

1.5 Objectives of the Study

1.6 Research Questions

1.7 Scope of the Study

1

3

4

6

6

7

7

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viii

1.8 Definition of the Terms

1.9 Conclusion

8

9

II LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Approaches to Teaching Writing

2.3 Problems in Writing for ESL Students

2.4 Dialogue Journal

2.5 What is Weblogs?

2.6 Benefits of Using Weblog in ESL Classroom

2.7 Using Weblogs in ESL classroom

2.8 Conclusion

10

11

12

13

14

16

18

19

III METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Research Design

3.3 Respondents of the Study

3.4 Research Instrument

3.5 Research Procedure

3.5.1 Pilot Study

3.5.2 Actual Study

3.6 Data Analysis

3.7 Conclusion

20

21

22

23

24

24

25

26

26

IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Problems Faced by Students when Doing Writing

Task

27

28

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ix

4.2.1 Organization and Elaboration in

Writing Task

4.2.2 Problems in Application of Grammar

Rules

4.3 Benefits of Using Weblogs as a Writing Activity

4.3.1 Perception towards the Blog Publishing

Tool

4.3.2 Benefits of the Weblog as the Medium

for Writing

4.3.3 Benefits of the Weblog as a Tool to

Improve Language Skills

4.4 Implementation of Weblog as a Writing Tool

4.4.1 Perceptions towards the Implementation

of the Weblog as a Writing Activity

4.4.2 Possible Classroom Application for

Weblog

4.5 Conclusion

28

30

31

31

33

35

37

37

39

40

V CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Overview of the Study

5.3 Summary and Review of the Findings

5.4 Implication of Study to English Language

Teaching

5.5 Limitation of Study

5.6 Recommendation

41

42

42

43

45

45

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x

REFERENCES

46

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

50

54

55

58

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xi

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO. TITLE PAGE

3.1

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

4.6

4.7

4.8

Course of the respondents

Problems in organization and elaboration

Problems in grammar rules

Perception towards the blog publishing tool

Weblog as the medium for writing

Weblog as a tool to improve language skills

Response on the benefits of weblog

Implementation of weblog as a writing activity

Possible classroom application for weblog

22

28

30

31

33

35

36

37

39

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABBREVIATIONS

NO.

1.0

2.0

3.0

TITLE

CTL : Communicative Language Teaching

ESL : English as a Second Language

UTM : Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

In order to write, people have to plan. In order to plan, people need the idea. The

idea that is kept in mind, including good plan of writing will lead to an excellent

production of writing. However, as second language learners, writing in their own

mother tongue is slightly easier than writing in a second language. Sometimes, they

could be more expressive when they write in their first language rather than in the

second language. These are several reasons, why some students could not express their

ideas in the essay writing precisely. They are often too brief when describing, but more

often they sometimes astray from the intended topic.

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Writing is a skill needed by the language learners to improve their

communication skill. Five decades ago, the objective set by the teachers was that the

students have to focus on the product of the writing, instead of the process. The teachers

fixed how the essay, the report or story should look like. The essay must be accurate in

terms of grammar, and its content must suit the target readers. So, these criteria have

lessened the freedom for the learners to focus on the content and the message of the

essay.

However, after the communicative language teaching (CLT) has arrived around

1980s (Brown, 2001), the idea of writing is not only about how to be accurate in the

form of the language, but also with regards to meaning and the process of writing.

Brown (2001) stated that writing in the era of CLT focuses more on fluency than the

accuracy, introduces the use of authentic context in the classroom, and inculcates

intrinsic motivation to the writers. This trend was also adapted in the second language

learning.

Moving on to the issue of how to improve writing skill, Barrass (1982, page 30)

states that,

“If they are to improve their basic writing skills they will have to practise writing

themselves, and will continue to need encouragement, constructive criticism and

advice.”

So, from this explanation, we can see how practices can improve learners’ writing skill,

as the saying goes, “practice makes perfect”.

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There are many ways and tools for students to practise their writing. It started

with writing on paper and recently, with the increasing exposure of the technology, the

students have the opportunity to write with the latest medium that we have now, on the

internet. English as a Second Language (ESL) students are identified to have some

problems in their writing. Therefore, teachers and language experts are always working

on how to solve the problems. Many ways have been suggested and implemented. One

of the latest methods of teaching writing today is, to use weblog as a writing tool. As

weblog has been the most popular writing tool in recent decades, teachers might

recognize the importance or the advantages of implementing it to the writing class.

Weblog nowadays has become the most popular writing tool for people to

express themselves to the public. There are many advantages when someone writing on

the weblog. Therefore, this research will focus on possibility for teachers to implement

this writing tool into the language writing classroom.

1.2 Background of Study

The undergraduates in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) are required to take

six credit hours of English courses. Every English course in UTM would stress the four

main aspects of language skills which are writing, reading, speaking and listening.

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English for Academic Communication Skills (UHB 1412) is one of the English

courses that expose students to the academic communication skills where they are

exposed to notes-making from written texts and oral texts, producing academic

assignments as well as presenting the academic assignments. One of the objectives that

are set for the students of this course is to provide students with effective writing skills

and paragraph writing practice to construct an essay. Therefore, one of the outcomes of

this course is that the students should be able to write a clear, organised and coherent

essay.

On the other hand, for the purpose of this study, they were introduced to weblog

writing. They were asked to publish their writing in the weblog to prepare them for

impromptu speech activity which was also included in their assessment of the course.

This research is to find out the perception of the UHB 1412 students towards the

possibility of implementing writing activity using weblog in their classroom.

1.3 Problem Statement

Silva, cited in Brown (2001) said that second language learners have problem in

their writing due to lack of planning because they have insufficient vocabulary and

accuracy. Accuracy here means the wrong choice of words that they use in their essay.

When the learners have these problems, teachers would assume that they cannot express

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the ideas well, and this might lead students to get a bad grade in writing as a result of the

poor content quality.

A large number of teachers are worried when they look at their ESL students’

writing skills especially when the students need to write assignments as a requirement in

academic field. However, as said by Gupta (1998) ESL students have claimed that

writing is a very difficult skill to acquire. Students who are considered successful in

their writing are those who can express themselves well, giving a good flow of ideas,

making points that are considered as ‘thinking out of the box’, as well as having

confidence and enjoyment in the academic writing. These are the common problems

that occur to the ESL students that Basturkmen and Lewis (2002) have figured out.

The problems stated by Basturkmen and Lewis might also occur to the ESL

students in UTM. As the needs of writing in English is very important for the students

when doing their assignments and reports, they might encounter problems in their

writing. Thus, they need to improve their writing skills in order to express their idea

better and be accurate in their writings.

As stated earlier, to improve writing skills, a student needs to do a lot of writing

practice. The practices done will make the students be better in their writing. One way

to train the students to write is by giving them the opportunity to have a medium to write

and express their ideas. One of the medium for students to express the ideas is from

weblog entries. There are many benefits of writing in the weblog entries. So, the

possibilities of implementing weblog as a writing tool in the ESL classroom might be

high due to several reasons that will be discussed in this study.

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1.4 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of implementing

weblog writing to improve students’ skills in writing. This study was also done to find

out the perceptions of UHB 1412 course students towards the use of weblog for writing

purpose in their ESL classroom.

1.5 Objectives of the Study

This research was carried out to achieve the following objectives:

i. To investigate the problems ESL students face in writing.

ii. To determine the benefits of using weblog as writing tool in the classroom.

iii. To explore the possible way for teachers to implement weblog writing in ESL

classroom.

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1.6 Research Questions

This study was specifically designed to answer these three research questions:

i. What problems do the students face when writing?

ii. What are the benefits of using weblog as a writing tool in classroom?

iii. How can teachers implement weblog writing in ESL classroom?

1.7 Scope of the Study

This study involved the students who took the UHB 1412 class at Universiti

Teknologi Malaysia in 2008/2009 academic session. The respondents who were chosen

had the experience of using weblog in their English class. The questions that were asked

are about the problems that the ESL learners face when writing, the benefits of the

weblog, the factors that encourage students to write on the weblog and the ways that

teachers can implement weblog in their classroom.

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1.8 Definitions of the Terms

1.8.1 Weblog

Eastment (2005) has defined blog as online diaries. It is a log where the owner

can write anything such as reflections, things that happen in his and her daily life, or

even opinions or views.

Campbell (2003) defined weblog as ‘an online journal that an individual can

continuously update with his or her own words, ideas, and thoughts through software

that enables one to easily do so.’

1.8.2 Writing Tools

According to Oxford Dictionary the Seventh Edition the word writing is related

to the activity of writing, in contrast to reading, speaking or listening. It can also be

defined as letters or symbols that are written or imprinted on a surface to represent the

sounds or words of a language. Meanwhile, tool, as being defined by Oxford is a thing

that helps you to do your job or to achieve something.

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Therefore, writing tools can be defined as the instrument that is used in order for

a writer to write. Some examples of tools to write are dialogue journal and weblog.

1.8.3 Perceptions

Oxford Dictionary (2005, page 1122) defines perception as the way you notice

things, especially with the senses. In other word, it means the opinion of individual or

group of people who have the same social environment towards a particular topic.

1.9 Conclusion

This chapter has explained the overview of the study, the introduction,

background of study and the statement of problem. The purpose, objectives and the

research questions of the study are also included in this chapter. Last but not least, the

scope and the definition of terms were also discussed in this chapter.

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the major aspects that are related to this study. It is

divided into two main topics which are writing and weblog. In the first topic, the

approach to teaching writing and the difficulties faced by ESL students in writing will be

discussed. Then, in the weblog area, the overview of the weblog and the studies about

weblog in the ESL classroom are included.

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2.2 Approaches to Teaching Writing

Writing, as being said by Lenneberg (1967) is not naturally learned like walking

or speaking. In order to learn writing, there are steps or procedures to be followed before

the learners know how to write, for examples, learning the letters by associating them to

the sound and learning how to write sentences.

Teaching writing has been taken into a serious study beginning in the 1930’s

where the teachers were focusing on how to motivate the students to write and looking

for the best approach for students to write more meaningfully. Ten years later, in the

1940’s teacher had struggled to choose the topics that matter to students. According to

Reid (1996) around 1950’s, teachers emphasised on error corrections and they focused

on the basic skill of writing.

In the 1960’s, the approach to teaching writing has changed. The writing

activities done by teachers are more product-based compared to process-based approach.

Basically, product-based approach is when “the process of writing is neglected and the

focus is on obtaining a sample of the target product (Chitravelu, 1995). While process

approach focuses the students attention on the process of writing, thinking of something

to write about, selecting what to include, giving shape to these ideas by organizing them

into an outline or plan, writing a draft, revising and editing the draft and producing a

final version (Chitravelu, 1995). Therefore, when students are focusing on obtaining

good outcome of essays without being shown the writing procedures, this may decrease

the students’ interest towards writing.

Later in the 1970’s, teaching writing was not taught as the main skill but as

supporting skills where, to teach writing means doing grammar exercises, answering

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reading comprehension or giving dictation. There was less effort to teach writing such as

composing an essay or a story. Maxwell and Meiser (1996) said that “writing was

regarded as a technique to add interest to lesson” only.

The focus on writing later has shifted to the process approach in the 1980’s. As

being mentioned earlier, it focused on the process approach such as the thesis statement,

paragraph writing and organizational strategies. Until now, teachers seem to accept this

approach because the steps taken encourage students to explore a particular topic and

share it with their friends and teacher. It can brush aside the complexity of writing.

However, the product approach is still accepted due to the fact that it is not time

consuming.

2.3 Problems in Writing for ESL Students

Writing may not be as simple as speaking. For example, to write something,

people need to be specific and clear because the writer is hardly to get feedback from the

audience compared to speaking. So, the writer needs to be very clear when explaining

their ideas in order to avoid misunderstanding or disagreement (Garlikov, 2000).

There are many factors that contribute to the problems of writing that students

face in ESL classroom. Reid (1996) stated that students usually will straight away start

the writing process before they even plan it. They would not draft the essay and began

writing “without secure plan or strategy”. Students may have the ideas on the content of

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the topic, but since they do not take the effort to draft it on paper, the ideas might fade

away when they reach the middle part of their essay.

Reid’s statement is argued by Ebinezar (1997) who suggested that some students

recall “by repeating the ideas”. However, it might become fragmented and incoherent,

that the sentences seem clumsy and redundant with pompous statement. They might

repeat the words without expanding the ideas of the points.

Cheong and Chow (1998) in their study said that second language learners are

usually hesitant in writing and lack of assurance in tackling writing task. They are

lacking the skills to express idea in English. Furthermore, they get demotivated because

they need to learn some complex rules of grammar which is different from their mother

tongue’s grammar rules.

2.4 Dialogue Journal

There are many ways for learners to practice their writing. One of the popular

methods for teachers to help learners to improve their writing is a dialogue journal.

O’Mahony(2003) defined dialogue journal as the “conversations carried on in print over

extended periods of time by teams of two. One partner initiates a journal and other

partner responds to it”. By having a partner to respond to the journal, one will get

positive or negative feedback upon their writing. So, with the feedback given, learner

will know what mistakes they have done and will try to correct their mistakes in the next

journal entry. Usually the feedback that the learners will get is only from their teacher.

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The concept of sharing journals among classmates is later introduced. Anson

and Beach (1995), cited in Lowe and Williams (2004), has “encouraged teachers to

extend the principles behind the dialogue journal to peer dialogue journals, where

working in pairs or groups of three, students share journal entries”. Here, the

respondents of the journals are increased, and the learners will get more feedback. This

activity also encourages students to socialize among each other.

Due to some difficulties of coordinating the activity, Anson and Beach has

transferred the journal exchange on paper to the “emailed peer dialogue journals”. This

activity seemed to be more interactive and everyone felt that they should be an active

participant. However, the journal exchange was still restricted inside the classroom.

Later, this phenomenon turned out to be more worlds wide where the journal writing

activity has transferred to weblogs.

2.5 What is Weblog?

There are many definitions given to the term weblog. Weblog as compared to the

journal writing on paper is where, the writer of the journal publishes his or her writing

on the internet and people all over the world can read it. On the contrary, paper journal is

where the writer writes in a book and keeps it to him or herself and teachers will read

and give feedback.

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To start with, Jones (2006) has stated that, the idea of “Web logs” started in

1993. Then in 1997, it became a coined term, and later in 1999 it was shortened to

“blogs”. In addition, in the beginning period of blogging, it serves a few genres such as

journalism, diaries and knowledge-work as well. So, it was not a unified genre for

writing (Ward, 2004).

Eastment (2005) has defined weblog as;

“ ...simply online diaries. They are logs (weblogs – hence the name) of

thoughts, reflections, and events in the writer’s life. A space for individuals to

write whatever they choose, with an option for readers to comment what they

have read.”

On the other hand, Campbell (2003) suggested that,

“A weblog can be thought of as an online journal that an individual can

continuously update with his or her own words, ideas, and thoughts through

software that enables one to easily do so. Unlike a standard website, weblog

entries can be typed directly into the browser and with the click of a button will

be instantly published on the internet.”

Blood (2002) and Stauffer (2002) explained, “a blog post frequently consists of a

title, link, comment, date and time of the post, and archival information.” However,

nowadays more features have been included in a blog, such as, advertisement, chat box,

calendar, and blog readers’ information at the side bar of the page.

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2.6 Benefits of Blogging in ESL and EFL Classroom

Chan and Ridgway (2006) stated that there is no strong proof that indicates

blogging can enhance writing skills. However, since blogging has become one of the

latest writing tools, teachers should explore the ability and contribution of blogging

towards the learning process.

In the study that Chan and Ridgway (2006) conducted, they reported 80 percent

of students said that it was ‘easy to write and post entries using blog environment’. This

is because they do not require high technical skill in order to publish their entries in the

blog. This may be because the structure and the layout provided by the blogging

software are understandable and user friendly. They also found that students seem to like

to use blog for writing purpose. Therefore, in terms of technical skills, weblog is easy to

use due to its user friendly features and simple structure of the layout.

Weblog is now being accepted as an online diary where bloggers put their

thoughts, feelings or anything and it provides a link for readers to comment on entries.

Thus, it can be seen here, weblog can be a medium for students and peers as well as for

teachers to communicate instead of face-to-face communication.

Moving on to the benefits that one can get from blogging in terms of writing

skills, Bernstein (2004) has listed some possible ways of how weblogs can improve

writing. Firstly, frequent writing can improve writing; when the blog owner updates his

or her blog frequently, it requires writing frequently, and it will improve writing. He or

she can improve writing by receiving the comments and feedback from others in terms

of the idea and grammar rules. As Krashen (1988) stated that in his input hypothesis, the

language learners would improve along the ‘natural order’ when they receive ‘input’ that

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is not in their schema or knowledge. By receiving the input, it will gain the knowledge

of the learners. This hypothesis is also known as the ‘i + 1’ hypothesis. Secondly,

writing for audience can improve writing skills. This means that, when we have

audience to read our blog, we will tend to elaborate our idea effectively so the audience

can understand what we are trying to say.

Johnson (2004) states that weblog is a useful supplemental aid for teachers.

Teachers can create, edit or delete the materials such as notes, homework assignments

and review materials from any computer connected to the Internet. The latest updates

from the teachers will be placed on the top of the weblog. Thus students will find it easy

to access the materials.

Campbell (2004) postulates that weblogs are able to promote exploration of

English websites. If teachers put various links of learning English websites, students

would have more opportunities to read related articles in the websites linked.

On the other hand, the other benefit that can be seen when using weblog in the

ESL classroom is the use of feedback to the entry. Grami Mohammad A.Grami (2005)

found that the ESL students in his research also believed that they can improve their

writing in terms of accuracy and fluency. Ferris and Hedgcock (cited in A.Grami, 2005)

states that students appreciate the feedback from their teachers and pay a great deal of

attention towards the response. This might happen to this study’s respondents too where

they could give their teachers a good response and then will improve their writings.

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2.7 Using Weblog in ESL Classroom

A study carried out by Chan and Ridgway (2006) investigated the students’

perception of using weblogs as a tool for reflection and communication. The study was

designed ‘to explore the potential of blogs to support reflection and communication in

realistic circumstances’. This is based on the principles of social-constructivist that

predicts the development of students’ knowledge is gained if they are actively engaged

in the co-construction of knowledge with peers, and with their tutor. In blogging, when

one entry is posted by a student, his or her friends and tutor would give feedbacks

through the commenting section. By doing this, the students who posted the entry can do

a reflection on him or herself after getting the feedbacks from peers and tutor. When the

students and peers are communicating, they would improve their understandings as well

as the knowledge on certain topics.

In a different study Jones (2006) states that, many teachers nowadays have used

weblogs in their classes. She has listed possible classroom applications for teachers who

use weblogs such as learning journals, learning logs or thinking journals, reflective

journals, audio learning logs, reflective or writing journals, visual learning logs, group

discussion and collaborative writing spaces, knowledge management, dialogue for group

work, and e-portfolios. This shows that the possibility for teachers to use weblog in the

ESL classroom is positive.

In the same study Jones (2006) states that,

“scholars and researchers see Weblogs used as a means of building grammar and writing

skills (product and process writing), representing and expressing self and forming

identity (process), facilitating student-centered learning, contributing to collaboration

and social interaction, creating and building community, disseminating information

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(process and post-process), and recognizing audience and context (post-process and

genre); and lastly, as a means of writing for audience, situation, and various purposes as

well as using types of text for those specific purposes (genre)”(Page 79).

As seen in the statement above, she has suggested possible ways to use weblogs in the

language classroom.

2.8 Conclusion

In a nutshell, this chapter has discussed the approaches to teaching writing, the

problems that ESL students usually face, some explanations on what weblog is as well

as the benefits of weblogs in ESL classroom. Last but not least, the use of weblogs in

language classroom is also discussed in this chapter.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the research design, instruments as well as the samples

of the study. Other than that, it also consists of the research procedures to collect the

data, and ways to analyze the data. There are two parts of research procedures which are

the pilot study and the actual study.

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3.2 Research Design

In this study, the survey technique was employed to gather the required

information from the respondents. This research was designed to investigate the

problems that respondents faced when writing, the benefits of blogging, as well as the

possibility of implementing weblog in writing classroom from the respondents’

perspective. This research is quantitative in nature as it uses questionnaire to collect the

data. However, in the questionnaire there were two open-ended questions that ask about

the respondents’ opinions. The result of the survey was based on the analysis of the

frequency of the answers given by the respondents. As this research does not have any

interview, it is not a qualitative study.

All of the respondents were given a set of questionnaire to be answered. The use

of questionnaire for the data collection is the most rational method for this study. The

reason why questionnaire was chosen as a method of data collection is because the

questionnaire is cost-effective if we compared to face-to-face interview. In this study,

the respondents chosen were around 48 students. So, to interview 48 respondents is not

effective in terms of cost and time. Furthermore, a questionnaire is easy to analyze.

There are software packages that provide data analysis by only entering the data that we

have collected. One of the software packages, for instance, Statistical Package for the

Social Sciences (SPSS) was used in this study to analyze the data gathered.

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3.3 Respondents of the Study

A group of 48 students in a UHB 1412 class (English for Academic Skills) were

chosen to be the respondents of this research. They were selected based on the

convenient sampling where the researcher knows them. In addition, they were chosen as

the respondents because of their experience writing on a weblog. These respondents

were invited as the contributors or writers in a weblog which was prepared for this

study. Therefore, this experience is very valuable for this study as they know the

benefits of using weblog in the classroom.

The Table 3.1 below shows the background information of the respondents based

on the courses they are taking in UTM.

Table 3.1 Course of the Respondents

Course Number of Respondents

TESL 11

Industrial Chemistry 27

Industrial Mathematics 6

Pure Chemistry 4

There are forty eight respondents from four different courses involved in this

study. Eleven of them or 23 percent are from Bachelor Science and Education (TESL

(SPL)) programme. Twenty Seven or 56 percent of the respondents come from the

Bachelor of Science (Industrial Chemistry (SSC)), while six or 13 percent of the

respondents come from Bachelor of Science (Industrial Mathematics (SSM)). The

course which has the least number of respondents is from Bachelor of Science

(Chemistry (SSA)) where only eight percent of them were involved. All of the

respondents have one thing in common where they took UHB 1412 (English for

Academic Communication) class.

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3.4 Research Instrument

According to The Oxford Wordpower Dictionary for KBSM (2000),

questionnaire refers to a list of questions that will be answered by many people. A

questionnaire is one of the instruments that were used to collect the data for this study.

There are many other instruments or method that can be used to collect data, such as

interviews, observations and tests. However, in this research, the instrument used to

collect data was the questionnaire. Basically, this instrument was used because of

several reasons. First, by distributing the questionnaire, it enabled the researcher to

gather data from a big number of respondents. Secondly, it provided the researcher with

the responses that can be analysed quantitatively. Thirdly, it enabled the researcher to

analyse the relationship between variables.

The questionnaire (Refer Appendix A) was designed by referring to certain

studies that were related to this research, such as Garnikov (2000), Reid (1996),

Ebinezar (1997), Chan and Ridgway (2006), Bernstein (2004), Johnson (2004) and

Jones (2006). It consisted of four main sections.

i. The first section of the questionnaire was the demographic information of

the respondents such as gender, age and MUET result.

ii. The second section of the questionnaire was related to the view of the

respondents about writing task.

iii. The third section of the questionnaire was related to the benefits of

blogging which will lead the researcher to obtain findings for the second

objective of this study.

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iv. The last section of the questionnaire focused on the possibility of

implementing weblog as a writing tool in the ESL classroom.

Apart from the questionnaire, a weblog was also used as the instrument. It was

used as a place where the respondents publish their writings and get the experience of

blogging. The address of the weblog is http://mysay9.blogspot.com (refer Appendix B)

and it is a free weblog provided by Google. This weblog was prepared for the

respondents to prepare themselves for impromptu speech which is also one of the

assessments for the UHB 1412 class. They can write about any topic which they thought

would be asked to talk about for the impromptu speech. In addition, the researcher had

also suggested a list of topics as a guideline for them to write such as, ‘My first day in

UTM’, ‘The best movie I’ve watched’ and ‘The most memorable event in my life’.

3.5 Research Procedure

3.5.1 Pilot Study

In order to make sure the items in the questionnaire is reliable and valid a pilot

study was conducted on a group of ten students who have the experience in writing in a

weblog. They had participated in a weblog as a tool for writing activity in UHB 1412

classroom during the 2005/2006 academic session.

As one of the objectives of conducting pilot study is to check the reliability of the

questionnaire, a reliability analysis was done according to the sections allocated. The

result of the reliability analysis of section B was 0.556, 0.822 for section C, and 0.914

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for section D. Since the acceptable number of reliability statistics is 0.6 and above, all

of the sections are considered reliable (when the points are in rounded to one decimal

point).

Other than the reliability analysis, comments about the items of the questionnaire

were also considered. After receiving the feedback from the questionnaire, there were a

few amendments done which include the items in demographic section (example was

given and improved the items) and also for the open-ended question, (improvised the

questions as they were quite confusing).

3.5.2 Actual Study

In the initial stage, the research focused on the selection of the respondents.

Before collecting the data from the respondents, they were assigned a task where they

need to contribute their writing to the following blog; http://mysay9.blogspot.com. They

were given a few weeks to publish their writings and give feedback to their friends’

posts. Since they have to be invited before contributing their writings in the blog, the

administrator of the blog asked for their emails and invited them to register as one of the

authors.

Next, after they accepted the invitation and published their writings on the

weblog for a few weeks, they were given the questionnaire to be answered. The items

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prepared in the questionnaire were related to their view on writing task, the benefits of

writing in the blog, and the possibility of implementing blog as a writing activity.

3.6 Data Analysis

All the data gathered was analyzed to seek answers to all the research questions.

Each item in the questionnaire was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social

Sciences (SPSS) software to obtain the frequency as well as to see if there is any

significant relationship between the variables. After getting the result for each question,

they are presented in the form of tables and charts.

3.7 Conclusion

In this chapter, the methodology of this research was explained by discussing the

research design, instruments, procedures (pilot study and actual study), as well as the

method to analyse the data.

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CHAPTER 4

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Introduction

This chapter will be discussing the findings on the study based on the data

gathered through the questionnaire. The findings are divided into three major sections

which are; problems faced by students when doing a writing task, benefits of weblog as

a writing activity and the possibility of using weblog as a writing activity in ESL

classroom. These three major sections are divided according to the research questions of

this study.

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4.2 Problems Faced by Students when doing a Writing Task

4.2.1 Organization and Elaboration in Writing Task

Table 4.1 Problems in organization and elaboration

Disagree Agree

P1 I usually draft my essay before I start

to write.

33.3% 66.7%

P2 I could write a clear thesis statement

(main idea) in my essay.

41.7% 58.3%

P3 I usually have problems to organize

my ideas well.

37.5% 62.5%

P4 I usually could elaborate my

supporting ideas clearly.

52% 48%

Table 4.1 that above is the data representing the problems faced by the

respondents when doing a writing task. The problems in this table are categorized as the

problems in organizing and elaborating the essays. There are four common problems

that students face in their writing task which are; drafting the essay, writing a clear thesis

statement, organizing ideas, and elaborating supporting ideas clearly (Reid, 1996;

Garlikov, 2000).

For the first problem in terms of drafting and planning the essay, 66 percent of

the respondents agreed that they usually draft their essay. For the second problem, the

respondents were asked whether they could write a clear thesis statement in their essays.

The result obtained was that 58.3 percent of the respondents believed that they could

write a clear thesis statement and supporting ideas, while 41.7 percent thought that they

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could not. As for the third problem, when the respondents were asked whether they

have problems in organizing their idea for their essays, 62.5 percent agreed that they do

have problems in order to organize their ideas in the essays whereas 37.5 percent of

them said that they have problems organizing their essays. The fourth problem shown in

the table is about the ability of the respondents to elaborate the supporting ideas clearly.

There are 58 percent of the respondents who admitted that they have problems

elaborating their supporting ideas while 42 percent of them did not think that they have

problems.

For the first and the second item asked to the respondents, it seems that the

percentage of the respondents who agreed that they always draft their essays and could

write a clear thesis statement are higher than the percentage of the respondents who did

not draft the essays and could not write a clear thesis statement.

In order to see the relationships between two variables, they were crosstabed.

The result of the cross-tabulations shows the relationships between the variables is

significant, (p=0.00), since the indicator of the significance is lower than, p=0.05. This

means, the relationship between the respondents who could not draft before starting to

write and the respondents who could not write a clear thesis statement in their essay is

dependent with each other.

According to Reid (1996) students who do not plan their essay, they will tend to

lose the ideas when they reach the middle part of their essay. This happens because,

they are not able to recall or remember what they have plan in mind before starting to

write. Therefore, it will be best for every student to plan and draft their essays every

time they want to write an essay.

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The other cross tabulation was made to see the relationship between the P2

(Could write a clear thesis statement and supporting ideas) and P4 (Could elaborate the

supporting ideas clearly). Since the score of the chi-square test is lower than p=0.05,

which is p=0.00, there is a strong relation between these two problems. Students who

could not write a clear thesis statement will not be able to elaborate their supporting

ideas clearly.

4.2.2 Problems in Application of Grammar Rules

Table 4.2 Problems in grammar rules

Disagree Agree

P5 I could apply the correct grammar rules in

my essay.

64.6% 35.4%

P6 I always make common errors in terms of

grammar rules.

27.1% 72.9%

The table above shows the percentage of the respondents responding to the item

P5 and P6 in the questionnaire. For item P5, there were 64.6 percent of the respondents

who could not apply the correct grammar rules in their essays. For item P6, majority or

72.9 percent of the respondents agreed that they always make common errors in

grammar rules, while 27.1 percent did not think so.

When these two items were crosstab to find out whether they are significantly

related. The result of the cross-tabulation was 0.00. This shows that the respondents

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who could not apply the correct grammar rules are also always making common errors

in terms of grammar rules.

In a different study, Cheong and Chow (1998) said that the students of ESL get

demotivated in doing writing because they need to learn some complex rules of grammar

which is different from their mother tongue’s grammar rules. Therefore, this might be

the factor that they are having problems in grammar.

4.3 Benefits of Weblog as a Writing Activity

4.3.1 Perception towards the Blog Publishing Tool

Table 4.3 Perception towards the blog publishing tool

Disagree Agree

B1 It is easy to publish entries using weblog. 8.3% 91.7%

B2 I need to know HTML code to publish my

entries.

58.3% 41.7%

B3 The blog hosting that I use is user friendly. 12.5% 87.5%

The table above represents the perceptions of the respondents toward the weblog

hosting provider. The blog publishing tool (Blogger.com) is the place where the

respondents published their writings. Therefore, their experience in the particular

weblog hosting provider was investigated and the data in the table was obtained.

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The first item asked was the easiness of the respondents to publish their entries in

the weblog. 91.7 percent of the respondents agree that it is easy to publish their entries

in the weblog whereas only 8.7 percent of them think that publishing their entries in the

weblog was difficult. The respondents who thought that publishing entries is easy may

be because they are familiar with the blog hosting provider template. In addition, they

probably always publish their entries by using the blog hosting as well as they

understood well the instructions and navigation links displayed on the web. As for the

second item, it asked whether they need to know HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language)

coding in order to publish their entries. 58.3 percent of the respondents thought that they

do not need to know HTML coding to publish their entries and 41.7 percent of the

respondents thought that they need to know HTML coding to publish their entries. The

third item asked the respondents whether the blog hosting provide a user friendly layout

or not. The response received from the respondents was 87.5 percent of them agreed the

blog hosting that they use is user friendly. Only 12.5 percent of the respondents thought

otherwise.

In terms of the easiness of using the weblog, Chan and Ridgway (2006) in their

study also found that 80 percent of the respondents said that it was ‘easy to write and

post entries using blog environment’. This is because they do not require high technical

skill in order to publish their entries in the blog. This may be because the structure and

the layout provided by the blogging software are understandable and user friendly. They

also found that students seem to like to use blog for writing purpose. Therefore, in terms

of technical skills, weblog is easy to use due to its user friendly features and simple

structure of the layout.

In this section, we could see that most of the students agreed that the blog

publishing tool that they used was easy to be used to publish their writing and user

friendly. They do not have to know HTML code to publish their entries. Many blog

hosting provider nowadays seem to have simplified their layout for bloggers so that they

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could manage and write easily in the weblogs. As the respondents have the experience

of publishing their entries using one of the blog publishing tools (Blogger.com), they

know how the layout looks like and they do not have problem posting their entries.

4.3.2 Benefits of the Weblog as the Medium for Writing

Table 4.4 Weblog as the medium for writing

Disagree Agree

B4 I often can write better after receiving

feedback from my peers.

14.6% 85.4%

B5 I think that weblog is a useful tool to share

my ideas with others in the cyberspace.

4.2% 95.8%

B6 I agree that posting my articles on my

weblog is a good idea.

14.6% 85.4%

B7 I believe weblog is an appropriate way to

publish my thought.

16.7% 83.3%

As can be seen in the table above, the respondents’ perception towards the

benefits of weblogs as the medium of learning method is presented. The first item asked

whether they can write better after receiving feedback from their peers. 85.4 percent of

the respondents agreed that they can write better after receiving feedback from their

peers whereas, 14.6 percent of them did not agree.

The result obtained from the second item (B4) which is about the usefulness of

the weblog as a tool to share ideas with others in the cyberspace. The result shows that

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95.8 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that weblog is a useful tool to

share ideas with others in the cyberspace. On the other hand, Grami Mohammad

A.Grami (2005) found that the ESL students in his research also believed that they can

improve their writing in terms of accuracy and fluency. Ferris and Hedgcock (cited in

A.Grami, 2005) states that students appreciate the feedback from their teachers and pay

a great deal of attention towards the response. This might happen to this study’s

respondents too where they could give their teachers a good response and then will

improve their writings.

As for the third item (B6) in the table, the question was whether it is a good idea

to post their writings in the weblog. From the Table 4.4, we can see that 85.4 percent of

the respondents thought that it is a good idea to post their writings in the weblog, while

14.6 percent of them did not think it is a good idea. The fourth item (B7) in the table

asked whether weblog is an appropriate way to publish their thought. From the table we

could see that 83.3 percent of the respondents agreed that weblog is an appropriate way

to publish their thoughts whereas 16.7 percent of them did not think so.

If we look at the overall results for this section, we could see that majority of the

respondents agree with all the benefits listed in the questionnaire. Since the respondents

have reached the tertiary level of study which is in their university level, they had gone

through many learning methods to acquire language skills including writing. Therefore,

when they were asked to write in the weblog, which is a new approach to them, they

know that this activity give them a lot of advantages and benefits.

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4.3.3 Benefits of the Weblog as a Tool to Improve Language Skills.

Table 4.5 Weblog as a tool to improve language skills

Disagree Agree

B8 I believe keeping a weblog can improve my

confidence in writing.

14.6% 85.4%

B9 I believe keeping a weblog can enrich my

vocabulary.

16.7% 84.3%

B10 I believe keeping a weblog can improve my

grammar.

22.9% 77.1%

B11 I think weblog writing in classroom can

improve my English.

14.6% 85.4%

The Table 4.5 above indicates the percentage of the respondents’ responses from

the aspect of the benefits of weblog towards for improving language skills. There are

three items related to the perception of the respondents towards the weblog in terms of

language improvement.

The first item in the table show that 85.4 percent of the respondents believed that

they can improve their confidence in writing by keeping a weblog. However, 14.6

percent of them did not believe by keeping weblog can improve their writing

confidence. As for the second item in the table, it was about their opinion whether they

can enrich their vocabulary if they have a weblog. From the table above, we can see that

84.3 percent believed that they can enrich their vocabulary if they keep a weblog. 16.7

percent of them however thought likewise. The third item in the table is about the

improvement of grammar if the respondents keep a weblog. There are 77.1 percent of

the respondents who believed that they can improve their grammar if they keep a weblog

while 22.9 percent of them believed it will not improve their grammar.

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As for the last item in the table, they were asked whether they can improve their

English if they keep a weblog. There are 85.4 percent of the respondents agreed that if

they keep a weblog, they can improve their English language. 14.6 percent of them

however disagreed that keeping a weblog can improve their English language.

Their perception on the benefits of weblog towards language skills was second

by some respondents who thought that the use of weblog in ESL classroom can improve

their English in terms of vocabulary and grammar. The respondents wrote their opinion

in an open-ended question that was given in the questionnaire (Refer Appendix C). The

question to the respondents was ‘In your opinion, should weblog be used to promote

writing in ESL classroom and why?’. Nine of the respondents wrote weblogs can

improve their writing, grammar and vocabulary skills.

Table 4.6 Reponses on the benefits of weblog.

Student 1 : participants can improve their writing skills…

Student 3 : Can improve our grammar and level of English.

Student 4 : it can improve English.

Student 5 : because can improve our grammar.

Student 24 : it will improve the writing skill.

Student 28 : because it can improve our vocabulary skills and correct our

grammar.

Student 33 : weblogs will help us much as we can improve our writing…

Student 36 : … it can improve our writing skill and make less grammar

mistake.

Student 42 : because as we know that weblogs can help us to improve our

grammar and our writing confidence.

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As we know, to write an excellent essay, we must use appropriate vocabulary, be

accurate in using grammar rules, a good elaboration and organization and a lot of writing

practice certainly. Therefore, if a student publishes his or her writing frequently, the

more feedback he or she will get and there will be more room for improvement.

This finding is also supported by Bernstein (2004) where he states that frequent

writing can improve writing. When the respondents update their blog frequently, this

means they need to write frequently. Then when they receive feedback from their friends

and the teacher, they will gain good input of language. Krashen (1987) in his input

hypothesis also states that the learners would improve along the ‘natural order’ when

they receive ‘input’ that is not in their schema or knowledge. By receiving the input, it

will gain the knowledge of the learners. This hypothesis is also known as the ‘i + 1’

hypothesis. Therefore, it is important for language learners to practice their writing

frequently and receive comprehensible input to improve their writing.

4.4 Implementation of Weblog as a Writing Tool

4.4.1 Perceptions towards the Implementation of the Weblog as a Writing

Activity

Table 4.7 Implementation of weblog as a writing activity

Disagree Agree

US1 I am comfortable to use weblog as one of the

tools for the writing activities.

16.7% 83.3%

US2 I enjoyed using weblog as a writing tool. 22.9% 77.1%

US3 I will continue using weblog in the future. 12.5% 87.5%

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The Table 4.7 above shows the results of the respondents’ perception towards the

implementation of weblog as a tool for the writing activity. The first item in the table

asked the respondent whether they are comfortable to use weblog as one of the tools for

the writing activities. 83.3 percent of the respondents said that they are comfortable to

use the weblog, whereas 16.7 percent disagree with the statement.

As for the second item (US2), they enjoyed using weblog as a writing tool. 77.1

percent of the respondents said that they enjoyed using weblog as a writing tool whereas

22.9 percent of them did not enjoy the weblog as a writing tool.

The third item (US3) in the table is about their opinion on whether they will still

use weblog in the future. 87.5 percent of the respondents said that they will use weblog

in future whereas 12.5 percent of them said they will not use weblog in future.

The overall result seems to show that the respondents have positive perceptions

towards the implementation of weblogs as a tool for the writing activity. When they

have experience using weblog to publish their writing, they know that using weblog in

the classroom is applicable and beneficial.

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4.4.2 Possible Classroom Application for Weblog

Table 4.8 Possible classroom application for weblog

Disagree Agree

US4 I think that weblog can be used as a medium for

communication in classroom.

10.4% 89.6%

US5 I think that weblog can be used as journals for

writing practice.

14.6% 85.4%

US6 I prefer to get written feedback from my teacher

rather than face-to-face method.

37.5% 62.5%

The Table 4.8 shows the respondents’ opinion about the possibilities of weblog

to be used in the classroom. 89.6 percent of the respondents thought that weblog can be

used as a medium for communication in classroom. For the second item, 85.4 percent of

the respondents agree that weblog can be used as journals for writing practices. Last but

not least, 62.5 percent of the respondents thought that weblog can be used to get written

feedback from their teachers. They prefer to get written feedback rather than face-to-

face method.

In a study that Jones (2006) conducted, she states that many teachers nowadays

have used weblogs in their classes. She has listed possible classroom applications for

teachers who use weblogs such as learning journals, learning logs or thinking journals,

reflective journals, audio learning logs, reflective or writing journals, visual learning

logs, group discussion and collaborative writing spaces, knowledge management,

dialogue for group work, and e-portfolios. This shows that the possibility for teachers to

use weblog in the ESL classroom is positive. Here we can see that the respondents

agreed that there are at least two possible applications which are listed by Jones that can

be used in the classroom.

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As what we can see from the overall picture of this section, the respondents

agreed that there are some possibilities of implementing the applications of weblog in

ESL classroom.

4.5 Conclusion

This chapter has discussed about the findings and the discussion that lead to

answer the research questions which are, the problems students face in the writing

activities, the benefits of writing in weblogs and the possibility of implementing weblog

in ESL classrooms.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1 Introduction

This chapter will discuss the overview of the study, summary and review of the

findings, implications of the study to the English Language Teaching, limitation of study

as well as some recommendations for future study.

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5.2 Overview of the Study

This study was carried out using survey technique where the objective of this

study was to find out the students’ perception towards the use of weblogs in ESL

classroom. The perception of the students was obtained using questionnaire as the

instrument of the study. There were three research questions that related to the study

which are; the problems faced by students in writing task, the benefits of writing in the

weblogs, and the possibility of using weblog as a writing activity in ESL classroom.

The respondents of this research were picked randomly based on the convenient

sampling.

5.3 Summary and Review of the Findings

This study highlighted some problems that the respondents faced in their writing,

the benefits of writing activity in a weblog as well as the possibility of using weblog in

the ESL classroom. For the first research question, it was found that the problems faced

by the respondents were planning and organising the writing as well as problems in

grammar rules.

Next, the study found that there are benefits of doing weblog as a writing activity

which were divided into three sections. The first one is the perception of the

respondents towards the blog publishing tool. The respondents agreed that the blog

hosting provider that they used to publish their writings was user friendly and easy to be

used. Then, the respondents agreed that they often can write better after receiving

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feedback and thus it is a good idea to publish their writings in the weblog. The last

section for the benefits of the weblog is about the benefits in terms of to improve

language skills. From the findings, it shows that majority of the respondents agreed that

weblog can improve their English in terms of writing skills as well as their vocabulary

and grammar.

Last but not least, the last research question was presented in the findings. It was

about the possibility of using weblog in ESL classroom. In this section, there are two

parts of findings were reported. The first one was about the perception of respondents

towards the implementation of weblog in the ESL classroom and the study found that

they have a positive perception towards the implementation of weblogs in the ESL

classroom. The second part is about the possible classroom application for weblog.

The overall result and findings of the research show that there is a possibility of

using weblog as one of the writing activities. This means that teachers can apply the

weblog writing as one of the tool for activities in the language classroom as a new

method of teaching.

5.4 Implication of Study to English Language Teaching

There are several benefits and advantages for the ESL students who publish their

writings through weblogs which are; can improve their English in terms of writing,

vocabulary and grammar skills.

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On the other hand, from the respondents’ perception towards the benefits of the

weblog as the medium of learning method, they believed that they can write better after

they received feedback from their peers. Therefore, as a teacher of ESL classroom, he

or she can ask the students to publish their writings in the weblog so that they can give

feedback to each other in order to lead the students to write better. It is not only their

peers who can give feedback to the published writings but, the teacher can also read the

writings and then give his or her feedback to the students. In addition, weblogs can also

be a means of communication medium between teacher-students as well as students-

students communication.

In order to implement weblog in ESL classroom, teachers could also apply the

use of weblog as a medium for response writing. This means, after the teacher done

with reading activity, he or she could ask the students to write something in response to

the reading in the form of review or discussion.

Other than that, according to the result of the study obtained, the majority of the

respondents agreed that a weblog can be used as a medium for journal writing.

Therefore, from this finding it is suggested that the teacher ask the students to use their

weblogs as journals which is written on the internet instead of using the conventional

method, writing on papers.

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5.5 Limitation of Study

The researcher is fully aware that there are a number of possible shortcomings of

this study that are mostly attributed to the lack of time and space.

The questionnaire answered by the respondents had managed to produce the

study’s results that were required by the research questions. There was also an open-

ended question asking the respondents about their opinion towards the use of weblog in

the ESL classroom. However, in the researcher’s opinion, there should be some

interview sessions with the respondents in order to know their feelings and their opinion

towards the study. If their feelings and opinion are taken into account, they can become

a stronger data support for the research.

In this research, the level of proficiency of the respondents was not taken into

account as it was only about their perception in general. There might be a different point

of view from two different levels of language proficiency respondents. The lower

proficiency students might think differently from the higher proficiency students.

5.6 Recommendation

There are a few recommendations based on the findings of this study for the

future research. Firstly, the weblog which was used by the respondents to publish the

writing could be examined by looking into their writings to see whether their language

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skills has improved. If their writings show some improvement, it might be a great

significance of the effect of the weblog as a medium of writing activity.

In future study, the relationship between the respondents’ background and the

answers of the questionnaire could also be done. There might be a significant result that

can be obtained through this method.

The teachers’ perception towards the implementation of weblog could also be

asked as a further research. Different point of view regarding this issue could be

obtained from their opinion and perception.

In this study, the perception of the respondents regarding the use weblog in ESL

classroom was done in general context. Therefore, for the future research, the context of

the respondents could be specified in terms of their course, in other words; the effect of

weblog writing on the language skills and proficiency from the aspect of their related

field of study.

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REFERENCES

Barrass, R. (1982). Students Must Write. Routledge, London.

Basturkmen, H. & Lewis, M. (2002). Learner perspectives of success in an EAP writing.

8. 31-46.

Bernstein, M. (2004). Do Weblogs Improved Writing? Available online:

http://markbernstein.org/Jan0401.html#note_35302.

Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language

Pedagogy 2nd Edition. Pearson Longman: New York.

Campbell, A.P. (2003) Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes. The Internet TESL Journal,

9(2). Available online: http://iteslj.org/ Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html.

Accessed on: 4th September 2008.

Campbell, A.P.(2004) Using LiveJournal for Authentic Communication in EFL Classes.

The Internet TESL Journal. 10(9). Available online:

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-LiveJournal. Accessed on: 13th October

2008.

Cecilia Cheong & Daniel Chow. (1998). Sub-stratum Transfer among Low Proficiency

Students in Written English. Available online:

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Chan, Kan-Kan & Ridgway, J. (2006). Students’ Perception of Using Blogs as a Tool

for Reflection and Communication. Available online: www.dur.ac.uk/resources/

smart.centre/Publications/ALT-CEdinburghCHAN.doc. Accessed on: 30th July

2008.

Eastment, D. (2005). Blogging. ELT Journal. 59(4) Page 358-360.

Ebinezar, J. (1997) Writers Block in Process of Writing: A Case Study. Unpublished

term paper for B. Ed. (TESL) Universiti Putra Malaysia.

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Garlikov, R. (2000) Significant Differences Between Writing and Talking: Why Talking

Seems Easier. Available online : http://www.garlikov.com/talkwrite.htm.

Grami Mohammad A.Grammi (2005).The Effect of Teacher’s Written Feedback on

ESL Students’ Perception: A Study in a Saudi ESL University-Level Context.

Available online: http://www.ecls.ncl.ac/uk/publish/Volume2/Grammi/grammi.htm.

Accessed on: 18th Sept 2008.

Gupta, R. (1998). Writing with a different tool. In C. S. Ward and W. A. Renandya

(Eds.). Computers and Language Learning. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional

Language Center.

Hornby, A.S (2005) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford University Press:

United Kingdom.

Johnson, A. (2004). Creating a Writing Course Utilizing Class and Student Blogs. The

Internet TESL Journal, 10(8). Available online:

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Johnson-Blogs

Jones, S.J. (2006). Blogging and ESL Writing: A Case Study of How Students

Responded to the Use of Weblogs as a Pedagogical Tool for the Writing Process

Approach in a Community College ESL Writing Class. (Doctoral dissertation,

University of Texas , 2006.

Lennerberg, E.H.(1967). The Biological Foundations of Language. John Wiley & Sons:

New York.

Lowe, C. & Williams, T. (2004). Moving to the Public: Weblogs in the Writing

Classroom. Available online:

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Maxwell, J.R & Meiser, M.J. (1996). Teaching English in Middle and Secondary

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Nesamalar Chitravelu, Saratha Sithamparam, The Soo Choon. (2006). ELT

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Write Stuff. Available online : http://www.melta.org.my/modules/sections/ll.doc

Raimes, A. (1985). What Unskilled ESL Students Do as They Write: A Classroom

Study of Composing. TESOL Quarterly. 19(2). Pp 229-258.

Reid,J.M. (1996). Teaching ESL Writing. Prentice-Hall: New Jersey.

Schütz, R. (2005) Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition. Available

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Wen-shuenn Wu. (2005). Using Blogs in an EFL Writing Class. Available online:

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on: 6th Oct 2008.

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APPENDIX A

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

TOPIC: WEBLOG AS WRITING ACTIVITY IN ESL CLASSROOM: A SURVEY ON STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION

Dearest respondents,

This research is only for academic purpose. It is designed to find out the possibility of

using weblogs in ESL classroom as a writing activity. Your answer will be very useful

for the study. All answers and your identity will be kept confidential.

This questionnaire contains four sections; A, B, C, D and E.

Section A: Demographic Information

Section B: View on writing task.

Section C: Benefits of blogging.

Section D: Using weblogs in ESL classroom.

Please answer all questions. Your honest and sincere answers would be much

appreciated. Thank you for your valuable time and cooperation.

Nurul `Atiqah Mohd Nasir.

4 SPL.

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SECTION A : DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Instructions: Please tick (/) in the suitable column and write the appropriate answer

1. Gender:

Male ( )

Female ( )

2. Race:

Malay ( )

Chinese ( )

Indian ( )

Others (state)…………………

3. Year/Course: ………………… (eg. 1 SSC)

4. MUET result band: ………………… (1 – 6)

5. English SPM result: ……………. (A1 – G9)

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SECTION B : VIEW ON WRITING TASK

Instructions: Please indicate the level of agreement with each statement by ticking (√) the appropriate column. Indicators:

• Strongly Disagree (SD) • Disagree (D) • Agree (A) • Strongly Agree (SA)

SD D A SA

1. I usually draft my essay before I start to write.

2. I could write a clear thesis statement (main idea).

3. I usually have problems to organize my ideas well.

4. I usually could elaborate my supporting ideas clearly.

5. I could apply the correct grammar rules in my essay.

6. I always make common errors in terms of grammar rules.

7. I do mind if my friends correct my grammar.

8. When I write an entry on my blog, I do look up an English

dictionary.

9. I ask someone else when I have problems expressing my

ideas in English.

10. I prefer to write on the web rather than on paper.

SECTION C : BENEFITS OF THE WEBLOG

SD D A SA

1. Before I was asked to blog, I have already known what

weblog is.

2. It is easy to publish entries using weblog.

3. I need to know HTML code to publish my entries.

4. The blog hosting that I use is user friendly.

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5. I often can write better after receiving feedback from my peers.

6. I think that weblog is a useful tool to share my ideas with

others in the cyberspace.

7. I agree that posting my articles on my weblog is a good

idea.

8. I believe weblog is an appropriate way to publish my

thought.

9. I believe keeping a weblog can improve my confidence in

writing.

10. I believe keeping a weblog can enrich my vocabulary.

11. I believe keeping a weblog can improve my grammar.

12. I believe keeping a weblog can improve my

communication skills.

SECTION D: USING WEBLOG AS A WRITING ACTIVITY

SD D A SA

1. I think that weblog can be used as a medium for

communication in classroom.

3. I think that weblog can be used as journals for writing

practice.

4. I am comfortable to use weblog as one of the tools for the

writing activities.

5. I enjoyed using weblog as a writing tool.

6. I prefer to get written feedback from my teacher rather than

face-to-face method.

7. I think weblog writing in classroom can improve my English.

8. I think it is a good idea if I could find a small group of

students from another country to establish a joint blog.

9. I will continue using weblog in the future.

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54

Tick (√) at the suitable box.

1. How often you post your entry on the weblog?

Once in two weeks

Once a week

Everyday

1. In your opinion, should weblogs be used to promote writing in ESL

classroom? Why?

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

2. You could give any suggestion/comment/opinion about this topic.

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION

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APPENDIX B

Interface of the weblog

Example of the entry

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APPENDIX C

SECTION B: VIEW ON WRITING TASK

SD D A SA

1. I usually draft my essay before I start to write. 1

2.1%

15

31.2%

21

43.8%

11

22.9%

2. I could write a clear thesis statement (main idea)

and supporting ideas in my essay.

1

2.1%

19

39.6%

25

52.1%

3

6.2%

3. I usually have problems to organize my ideas

well.

1

2.1%

17

35.4%

30

62.5

_

4. I usually could elaborate my supporting ideas

clearly.

1

2.1%

24

50%

21

43.8%

2

4.2%

5. I could apply the correct grammar rules in my

essay.

1

2.1%

30

62.5%

14

29.2%

3

6.2%

6. I always make common errors in terms of

grammar rules.

1

2.1%

12

25.0%

34

70.8%

1

2.1%

7. I do mind if my friends correct my grammar. 7

14.6%

17

35.4%

17

34.5%

7

14.6%

8. When I write an entry on my blog, I do look up

an English dictionary.

5

10.4%

21

43.8%

19

39.6%

3

6.2%

9. I ask someone else when I have problems

expressing my ideas in English.

1

2.1%

4

8.3%

35

72.9%

8

16.7%

10. I prefer to write on the web rather than on paper. 5

10.4%

31

64.6%

9

18.8%

3

6.2%

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57

SECTION C: BENEFITS OF WRITING IN THE WEBLOG

SD D A SA

1. Before I was asked to blog, I have already known

what weblog is.

1

2.1%

12

25%

31

64.6%

4

8.3%

2. It is easy to publish entries using weblog. 4

8.3%

_ 43

89.6%

1

2.1%

3. I need to know HTML code to publish my entries. 3

6.2%

25

52.1%

18

37.5%

2

4.2%

4. The blog hosting that I use is user friendly. _ 6

12.5%

41

85.4%

1

2.1%

5. I often can write better after receiving feedback from my peers.

_ 7

14.6%

39

81.2%

2

4.2%

6. I think that weblog is a useful tool to share my

ideas with others in the cyberspace.

_ 2

4.2%

39

81.2%

7

14.6%

7. I agree that posting my articles on my weblog is a

good idea.

1

2.1%

6

12.5%

37

77.1%

4

8.3%

8. I believe weblog is an appropriate way to publish

my thought.

_ 8

16.7%

34

70.8%

6

12.5%

9. I believe keeping a weblog can improve my

confidence in writing.

_ 7

14.6%

34

70.8%

7

14.6%

10. I believe keeping a weblog can enrich my

vocabulary.

_ 8

16.7%

33

68.8%

7

14.6%

11. I believe keeping a weblog can improve my

grammar.

_ 11

22.9%

30

62.5%

7

14.6%

12. I believe keeping a weblog can improve my

communication skills.

_ 10

28%

31

64.6%

7

14.6%

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58

SECTION D: USING WEBLOG AS A WRITING ACTIVITY

SD D A SA

1. I think that weblog can be used as a medium for

communication in classroom.

_ 5

10.4%

39

81.2%

4

8.3%

2. I think that weblog can be used as journals for

writing practice.

1

2.1%

6

12.5%

36

75%

5

10.4%

3. I am comfortable to use weblog as one of the tools

for the writing activities.

_ 8

16.7%

37

77.1%

3

6.2%

4. I enjoyed using weblog as a writing tool. 1

2.1%

10

20.8%

36

75%

1

2.1%

5. I prefer to get written feedback from my teacher

rather than face-to-face method.

2

4.2%

16

33.3%

25

52.1%

5

10.4%

6. I think weblog writing in classroom can improve my

English.

1

2.1%

6

12.5%

37

77.1%

4

8.3%

7. I think it is a good idea if I could find a small group

of students from another country to establish a joint

blog.

_ 3

6.2%

40

83.3%

5

10.4%

8. I will continue using weblog in the future. _ 5

12.5%

38

79.2%

4

8.3%

Tick (√) at the suitable box.

1. How often you post your entry on the weblog?

Once in two weeks 40

83.3%

Once a week 8

16.7%

Everyday -

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APPENDIX D

Q: In your opinion, should weblogs be used to promote writing in ESL classroom? Why? Student Responses

Student 1 Yes, participants can improve their writing skills through writing weblog.

Student 2 I think this is good way to be used to promote writing in ESL classroom

because the teacher can find some funny stories to us then can attract our

attention easily. And it is a new way to us.

Student 3 Yes. Can improve our grammar and level of English.

Student 4 Yes, it can improve English.

Student 5 Yes, because can improve our grammar.

Student 6 Yes, because weblog let the students to express their views and opinion

independently. Plus, student allowed being creative in writing.

Student 7 Yes, of course. This is because it is another convenience way of learning

how to write in proper way for both students and lecturer.

Student 8 Yes because students can practice their writing.

Student 9 Yes, do more exercise and get more experience in writing but if we use

weblogs sometimes we don’t care about grammar words and so on.

Student 10 No. It is good as practice for writing but in classroom it is not suitable

because usually weblog text contain lots of grammatical errors and

inappropriate content cannot apply as academic papers.

Student 11 Yes, it is another fun way to learn English.

Student 12 Yes, it can encourage the students.

Student 13 Yes because it makes English more interesting.

Student 14 Yes because it is easier than using the old method.

Student 15 Yes because student would write better when they get a good feedback

Student 16 Yes, to enhance communication skills and more confident.

Student 17 Definitely, because now is IT era, we should use the way that suitable to

new generation.

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Student 18 Yes, because its have own benefits.

Student 19 Yes, because it have it owns benefits.

Student 20 Frankly no. First, not everybody has internet connection in their room. As

for me, by using the net as PSZ, I couldn’t have my privacy. Plus, I’ve got

another thing to get done besides ESL.

Student 21 I think weblogs should be used to promote writing in ESL classroom

because I can express our idea and share our idea. The people read our idea

may not know our identity so we do not feel shy when post an essay on

blog.

Student 22 Yes, because this weblogs can help students to improve their own English

skills.

Student 23 Yes, I think it should as it is good medium to communicate and to know

each other.

Student 24 Yes, it will improve the writing skill.

Student 25 Yes, students can share ideas with other.

Student 26 Yes, because it will help you in any side.

Student 27 No, because I don’t prefer to write in a blog. I do not like to be in front of

computer instead.

Student 28 Yes, because it can improve our vocabulary skills and correct our

grammar.

Student 29 Yes, because when we used weblogs, we are enjoy to read and know

something about the new story and opinion.

Student 30 Yes.

Student 31 Yes

Student 32 Yes. Listening might be boring sometimes. Blog can be used to attract

students’ interest.

Student 33 Yes, weblogs will help us much as we can improve our writing and also

get new information from another students’ writings.

Student 34 Yes. Nowadays students love something related to technology. Weblogs

are apart of technology.

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Student 35 Yes, here all the students can exchange their ideas and opinions better

rather than asking them to join the blog alone…, can understand other

better.

Student 36 In my opinion, the weblogs should be used to promote writing in ESL

classroom, because it can improve our writing skill and make less

grammar mistake.

Student 37 Yes. This is because by doing this can help us to improve our English

language and at the same time we can know some new friends over there.

Besides that, when we receive comments we can learn from the comments.

Student 38 Yes, because it is fun and also we can write any topic that we like.

Student 39 Yes, because it can improve our skill in writing or communication with

each other.

Student 40 Yes, it is easy to learn English.

Student 41 Yes because we can increase our vocabulary and gain idea from friends.

Student 42 Yes, because as we know that weblogs can help us to improve our

grammar and our writing confidence.

Student 43 Yes, because writing in weblogs can increase person’s confidence in

writing in ESL classroom.

Student 44 Yes, because it can help student in English and also technology by using

computer. Student will not only gain knowledge from the subject itself but

they can learn other things too.

Student 45 Yes, because students can share ideas with others on that time.

Student 46 I think weblog should be used to promote writing in ESL classroom.

Students can share their ideas and exchange opinions in the blogs. This

help student to write better.