Gretel Victoria Calderón Ruiz is a professor at the University of Pinar del Río Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca. She teaches Integrated English Practice in the first year of the Foreign Languages Major. She is interested in cross – cultural topics and the development of written expression. E-mail: gretvictcald@gmail.com.

 

Introduction

It is well known that written expression has an important role in the training process of the future English teachers in our universities. And also that it is one of the most difficult skills for them because of the difference with writing in their mother tongue and writing in a foreign language. In most of cases, they prefer memorize texts instead of the process of creating something new. The teaching - learning process is in constant update, that is why new techniques and procedures have been used as a tool to increase the quality of teaching this particular skill. In the other hand, blogging has become a real and new technique to work written expression, because through it, students´ creations are read by a real global audience and may get corrections and feedback by native speakers and by other English learners, learn new vocabulary, phrases, about real culture, real world and how it works, share ideas and also get rewarded by them. The better you write, the better you will get followers and this is an interesting way to motivate our students to develop their writing skill, to think well, to analyze, to show concern, to agree, disagree, to give advice or to express their points or view about something. This research is taking place as part of the author´s MS studies in Educational Sciences and its main purpose is to demonstrate that blogging may become a useful tool to develop writing in the English teachers trainees.

 

Development

We probably write more than we realize on a daily basis, both with pen and paper and electronically. Writing can include e-mails, reports, shopping lists, essays, online forms, “tweets”, or social media messages, reminder notes and posters. Writing is an important skill.  Writing activities may be controlled writing activities such as copying, matching and dictation, guided writing activities such as gap fills and sentence completion and free writing activities such as story writing and essays. Controlled and guided writing activities may be more likely to focus on accuracy while free writing activities may be more likely to focus on communication. Sub skills for accuracy such as spelling, punctuation, and good grammar are important in writing, although it could be argued that they are less important in e-mails or text messages that may use a variety of abbreviations. Some sub skills for communication such as appropriate style and organization, are generally essential in all forms of writing. It is more meaningful and interesting for learners to complete a writing task if they feel that there is an audience, context and purpose. When we write outside the classroom we do so with these elements in mind. (British Council “How to Teach Writing Online Course” Complementary Resources)

 

Blogging

Blogging, in its primary meaning, implies informal diary-style entries or posts. The person who makes blogging it´s called blogger. Bloggers are free to write about any topic they are interest about into their blogs and automatically share the content with a real audience, followers and readers, and they can post comments about your work (how they felt when reading, suggestions for improvements, if they agree with you or not, if your content is worth or not). In blogging platforms there are also communities for specific thematic in which bloggers must follow community rules (words amount, topics, politeness and posting guidelines). In that communities, moderators and administrators frequently invite bloggers to participate in initiatives (daily, weekly or monthly) taking into account special and important dates, cultural celebrations, world´s events or free topics that they want to share about with the community. You should post your entries before a deadline and interact with those who read your content. There are curators that recognize quality and reward the author and there are some users that only pay attention into the use of artificial intelligence (AI) that it is not allowed. They only encourage and support original and creative content. It is better if you use images or drawings made by you to improve your content and to offer a more dynamic and enjoyable reader´s experience.

This is based on the author´s experience into Web 3 blockchain Hive and in its social media dapps, specifically Ecency. You can find the author´s profile and blogs in the platform like @gretvictcald. It constitutes a safe place to practice and develop student´s written expression due to the atmosphere description given before.

 

Advantages and disadvantages

It constitutes a safe place to post student´s creations and to encourage them to avoid plagiarism and the use of artificial intelligence in their writings (to be original), and to encourage them to think in a real context, in a real audience and to raise their interest into this kind of activities. This also foster collaborative work between the students when revising and editing before posting, and it is significantly different from the writing tasks in courses and books. It is more centered in the content´s message through the process approach than in how it will look like (product – oriented approaches) and it allows the student to keep writing even out of the classroom. There are few aspects that may be considered as disadvantages, such as it is an online platform, so if the students would not have internet connection, it will be impossible to upload the final result.

 

How to use it

First of all, the students that will be involved in this activity will need a Hive account. As the professor previously is a platform user, she will provide a referral link that will make that process easier, later they should create a username and select a profile photo. Then, the professor and the students should have a first meeting in order to orient them into the first steps and the first post (a person´s introduction). It should have more than 500 words and from five to ten images that show to the audience that is not a robot´s account, they must show the person, their hobbies, favorite food and what the person wants to show. It should be posted in a community dedicated to introduction posts, and they should know how to use markdowns to highlight post´s format and final view and what specific hashtags they should add.

After that first publication the professor will prepare weekly prompts for the students to write about and the students may receive feedback in the comment box of the post or by private message in Whatsapp. The rest of the week, they are free to post in the communities that they desire. In case of having difficulties when using Ecency, the professor may use another platform with the same objective, or even create a website to publish the students´ creations.

 

Results

By this moment, this kind of activity was developed with a fourth year student that showed a real and significant improvement in her writing pieces and blogs.   

The following step that will be held by the author is to implement this technique with a sample of students of the first year of the Foreign Languages Career in the Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca University (Pinar del Río province).

 

Conclusions

More technology will be developed by scientists and experts, that is why we, as teachers, should be constantly updating our methods and techniques in order to provide our students a better and more modern learning experience. Understanding how the world is changing, will allow us to get well prepared students and better English professors in the future. This research has shown the way in which this method should be used by professors and students in a clear and simple way. Blogging is a wonderful way to connect with natives and to practice and master written expression, not only for our students, for professors and mentors too.

 

References

British Council Online Course “How to Teach Writing” .2023. Downloadable materials

Montaner Villalba S. “Written Expression in English for Specific Purposes Trough Blogging and Cooperative Learning”. 2020. The Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes

 

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