Developing writing fluency and lexical complexity with blogs By Terry Fellner and Matthew Apple

In the article the authors present their research which was conducted in September 2004. The aim of the research was to compare The researchers used student blogs in an integrated CALL program for low proficiency low motivation Japanese university language learners in a seven-day intensive English course. The goal of this research was to identify the impact of blogging on the learners’ writing fluency and lexical complexity. The researchers compared the number of words and word frequency levels in student blogs at the beginning and at the end of the program.

I would like to speak a bit about the criteria which the researchers choose while designing the program. The criteria were:

1. Language Learning Potential-improve both as writing and reading

2. Learner Fit-the use of blogs fit with students’ interest

3. Meaning Focus-students were responsible to write clearly for their classmates to understand

4. Authenticity-bogs are forum for people to express their thoughts and share information

5. Positive Impact-students acquire not only new vocabulary but also useful computer skills

6. Practicality- blogs imposed no extra financial burden on either the university or the student

7. Enhancement-blogs are much more practical to use tan paper diaries and journals

The interesting fact is that the researchers didn’t know the definition of writing fluency and how to assess it. So, according to the authors the importance when assessing fluency is whether the learners bring their vocabulary knowledge into communicative use. However to avoid some problem the authors decided to define fluency in writing as the number of words produced in a specified time frame, together with lexical frequency.

The results of those seven day program showed an overall increase in words produced and improvement in their lexical frequency by students from the beginning of the program through the end of it. The main focus was writing so the task provided students with more opportunities for meaningful negotiation via “comment” feature in the class blog. The interactive aspect was the most interesting and maybe useful part for learners.

The researchers believe that only communicative writing encourages students to write expressively resulted in overall improved writing fluency for the 21 students in this study.
Here are some more  articles about the blogs as tools for learning. I think they worth reading :)

http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/2187/1/hall_davison_blogs_draft.pdf,


http://eprints.qut.edu.au/13066/1/13066.pdf?BXCTX=AD:BLACK_AND_WHITE;DDO:DC-PREVIEW;RSV:E0

http://studentcenteredlearning.pbworks.com/f/Instructional+Blogging.pdf