Article Review

The article that I have chosen to review entitled “Voice Blog: An Exploratory Study of Language Learning” from the Language Learning & Technology, Volume 13, Number 2, pp. 88-103. This research was done by Yu-Chih Sun from The National Chiao Tung University. It is a qualitative study, which incorporates survey and interview as the methods of data collection. It was conducted with the concern that computer-mediated communication (CMC) activities have the potential to encourage students to reduxe anxiety, enhance motivation, and foster learner autonomy as well as promoting cooperative learning (Beauvois, 1992, 1998; Godwin-Jones, 2003; González-Bueno, 1998; Kern, 1995; Pellettieri, 2000; Shield & Weininger, 1999 as cited in Sun, 2009). Therefore, in this study, the teacher-researcher incorporated voice-blog to enhance oral-communication skills and improve students’ language ability and proficiency.

This study was conducted based several purposes, which are 1) to report on the integration of class blogs into the second language speaking course, 2) to examine the effect of blogs on the participants’ learning processes and learning strategies, and 3) to examine the participants’ perception of the learning experiences offered by blogs. The teacher-researcher conducted this study with the aimed to provide the findings of this study as theoretical and pedagogical foundation for the premise that extensive practice on blogs can constitute an integral part of instruction and that blogs enable stdents to structure their thoughts and to make them publicly available in a way that is rarely possible in other media. In order to collect data to serve the purposes, the teacher-researcher used survey nd retrospective interviews with the students as the methodology of the study. Before conducting both the survey and interviews, the teacher-researcher described and illustrated the functions of the class voice blogs that the teacher-researcher had set up and required each student to upload 15 voice-blog entries and 5 voice responses to classmates’ voice blog entries by the mid-term week and the final- exam week. Altogether, each student has to upload 30 voice-blog entries and 10 response entries. After this interval, then the teacher-researcher conducted the survey and selected some students for the retrospective interviews.

The participants involves in this study were 46 college students in Taiwan in two oral-communication classes. The sample comprises 15 female and 31 male students whose average age was 20.67. Amongst the 46 subjects, one was freshman, 14 sophomores, 8 juniors, 22 seniors and one graduate student. All the participants had learnt English as foreign language for about 9 years and majority of them never studied abroad particularly English-speaking countries. The subjects majoring in variety of technical disciplines, such as electronic and mechanical engineering, information management science, and electrophysics. All of them had little exposure to English in the content-based classes.

Based on the findings of this research, blogs seemed to have different effect on participants in terms of their learning processes. The teacher-researcher reported the learning processes in terms of time students allocated on creating a blog entry. Result shows that 24% of the samples spent fewer that 5 minutes to create a voice-blog entry, 31% spent 5 – 15 minutes, 38% allocated 15-30 minutes, and 7% took more than 30 minutes to create an entry of voice-blog. However, the study recorded that the learning strategies of the participant were rather unanimous. In order to create a voice-blog, students would go through certain stages such as conceptualizing (planning, coming up with appropriate topic, listening to others’ blogs for ideas, consulting dictionary, Internet searching, and note-taking), brainstorming (outlining details, translating from mother tongue to English and writing down the scripts), articulation (rehearsing before recording, recording and uploading), monitoring (listen to the recorded file before uploading, monitor blog entries in terms of content, organization and language usage), and evaluating (evaluate blog content, organization and language use and redoing). Findings also reported that 71% of the particiapants found it difficult to come up with an appropriate topic, however, 49% of the participants reported that the topic selection became easier with continual practice. 47% of the subjects coveyed that the usually wrote down the script before recordingit. 55% os the students rehearsed several times before recording and 56% of the participants always listened to the recorded file before uploading it to the blog. As for overall, the results of this study revealed that students went through a series of blogging stages, including conceptualizing, brainstorming, articulation, monitoring, and evaluating, and used a wide variety of strategies to cope with blogging-related difficulties. In addition to that, students perceived blogging not only as a means of learning, but also as a means of self-presentation, information exchange, and social networking. From the findings, it can be concluded that blogs constitue a dynamic forum that foster motivation, development of learning processes and extensive practice.

As a student who is currently taking CALL class and as future educator, I found this article as interesting as it presented a meaningful and creative way of teaching second language. By incorporating blogs students will have first hand speaking experience and this method allows each student to have same opportunity to speak and express opinion. As compared to the traditional classroom, time concstrain had always be the reason for some students for not getting the opportunity to express their thoughts. This method changes the method of teaching from teacher centered to student centered kind of learning. Students are given autonomy to decide on their own learning by having freedom on what to speak and how long the time they want to allocate for each task. This will provide less pressure on the students. By having this activity as part of a language lesson, students will be more analytical by revising their own materials and responding to others’ work. By this, students will pay more attention and concern on every aspect of a language including grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary and eventually will help them improving their second or foreign language proficiency and ability.

This research has been conducted very well as the teacher gave students opportunity to familiarize with the voice blog before conducting the survey and interview. By this, the results in both methods of data collection are reliable and valid, as the students have already gained the knowledge on the subject matter, in this case voice blogs, of the study. The only thing that I found lacking is the findings and discussion on the items included in the survey.

This study provides a good suggestion of activity that could be incorporated by teachers teaching second or foreign languages. Even in Malaysia and in any part of the world, this method can be applied to help providing a more meaningful and fun learning process of English as second language. This research provides a new dimension of teaching method that is far better and engaging as compared to the traditional chalk and talk method. By applying this method, teachers can encourage students not only to speak but also helps in enhancing students’ self-confidence and self-esteem.

ARTICLE: http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num2/sun.pdf