Taiwanese College Students’ Responses to the Class Blog in an English Grammar Class
From the perspectives of sentence patterns and sentence making, this study aims to explore 129 Taiwanese college students’ (mixed genders and majors) responses to the class blog (http://blog.sina.com.tw/f_2a/) offered in a required course in English Grammar in the spring of 2007. The research question is: How did the Taiwanese college students relate the class blog to their learning about sentence patterns, practicing sentence-making and increasing sentence-making ability? Data collection included 6-scaled course evaluation questionnaires together with free comments, the instructor’s journal entries, and the students’ reflection papers. The results of the study indicate that overall the participating students reported that the class blog significantly helped them to learn about sentence patterns (M=5.21), practice making sentences (M=5.53) and increase their ability to make sentences (M=5.31), which are particularly supported by the students’ reflection papers. Further, a number of possible reasons have been listed to explain why three and one neutral responses to learning about sentence patterns and boosting sentence-making ability respectively. Suggestions are also made for interested teachers who are using or will use blogs; implications are produced for interested researchers to work on further studies related to class blogs.
Keywords: Class Blog, Sentence Pattern, Sentence-making, Grammar
Dr. Ching-Huang Wang
Associate Professor, Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Formosa University
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Ref: LS7P0047