Abstract:

Educational blogs have drawn growing interest of researchers and language teachers due to the user-friendly interfaces as well as the powerful archiving features. The purpose of the current study is two-fold: (1) to examine the effectiveness of extensive speaking practice on speaking performance in voice blogs, and (2) to examine learners’ perceived gains in extensive speaking practice via voice blogs. The participants of the study were 46 college students learning English as a foreign language in Taiwan. They were required to post voice blog entries on a class blog as a supplement to the insufficient speaking practice in the class. The participants’ gains in speaking skill were evaluated by two raters who examined the learners’ first three and last three voice-blog entries, whereas data on the participants’ perceived gains in speaking skills were collected through questionnaires. The results indicate that students generally perceived gains in their speaking proficiency. However, there was no significant improvement in their pronunciation, language complexity, fluency, or accuracy. The results corroborate with previous studies that the personal and authentic nature of blogging might encourage students to focus more on meaning expression, rather than accuracy.

Author: Yu-Chih Sun