O. Kitchakarn (2012). Using Blogs to Improve Students’ Summary
Writing Abilities. Bangkok University Language Institute: Bangkok.
The advancement of internet and social media has increased rapidly from
year to year. Blog as one of the social media has been popular and used by
million internet users. As one of a social media, blog gives a chance to more
internet users from all around the country to criticize the posting published
by the bloggers (Xie, Ke, and Sharma, 2007). This kind of feedback is
considered to be able enhancing the students’ motivation in improving their
writing skill.
In every field of study, the students need to read some sources and make
the summary. Some students face difficulties when they have to write summary
for their assignment. In Kitchakarn’s paper, the difficulties can be both from
the students themselves who are lack of writing skill and the teachers who do
not have interesting method in stimulating the students to produce the summary.
Using blogs is one of the ways which is believed to be effective to solve the
problem.
The writer elaborates about how blogs can be used to improve students’
summary writing abilities by explaining some important aspects in blogs. There
are three types of blogs which can be implemented in teaching writing: tutor
blog, learner blog, and class blog. Every kind of blog has different contents
and function. Somehow all of them will be useful for both teachers and students
in reaching their writing goal.
Blog advantages in language learning are also mentioned by the writer.
There are many advantages of blogs such as giving a chance for the students to
write outside the classroom, the feedback which will be given by other students
who visit the blog, blogging can save students’ and teacher’s time. Blogs also
offer more restful atmosphere for shy and less-confident students. Considering
those advantages, the writer deems blog as an effective tool for students in
improving their writing. More than that, blogs even can encourage students to
be more critical thinking because the feedback to their writing does not only
come from the teacher and the students in the same classroom, but also from
global audience with different background of study.
To prove that blog can be a good tool to improve students’ writing, the writer
did a research by giving summary writing tests, questionnaire, and the posting
of the students in blog which is posted via blogger.com blog platform. The writer
decided a textbook American English File 3 to be summarized into 3 – 5
sentences and asked the students to form a group. The comments which are
becoming feedback from the other students and the teacher have been a good
stimulation for them to improve their writing. By using this method, the
students also can work more cooperative each other.
The writer’s idea to use blogger.com as the primary blog platform is
brilliant because this platform is one of the most blogger platform used by
bloggers around the world. Somehow, it is advisable to give more options to the
students to use more blog platform such as wordpress, tumblr, livejournal,
blog.com and many others. This consideration can be implemented in the research
because every blog platform has different tools which can help the student to
do their writings. Every student is also possible to have different interest
toward the kinds of blog platforms.
Besides explaining the types of blog, the writer should also have
explained about some chosen-blog platforms in her paper. The writer can make
comparison among the blog platforms. For example, blogger.com is free, has 1
gigabyte storage, very limited plugins but is automatic updating; on the other
hand, wordpress has more gigabyte storage, more free plugins, but the update is
manual (Wallagher, 2013). By giving the comparison to the chosen-blog platforms,
the students will have wider description about the blog that they will choose
to post their writing.
In her paper, the writer mentions that there are two students who make a
complaint for not having their own computer in the dormitory. This actually can
be a serious difficulty when other teachers from another area such as
Indonesia, especially Pontianak would like to use blogs as the tool to teach
writing. Even though nowadays laptop or personal computer has become a
must-have facility for many students, but in fact not all college students can
afford to have it.
The need of internet access also definitely becomes another big issue. The
writer did the research in her environment where the internet access is not a
problem. On the other hand, this is the fact that not all area has good
internet access; even some don’t have at all. When it is available, sometimes
the students will need more cost to provide it. Doing the writing can’t be
versatile anymore due to the absence of internet access.
Wrapping it up into a conclusion, Kitchakarn’s paper is still very
useful and helpful for teachers to improve their students in writing. It’s
comprehensible why the writer considers blogs as effective tools to improve
students’ ability in writing summary. The advantage of blogs for teacher and
students is one of the main reasons for it to be the effective tools. The
difficulty of gaining the computer as the main facility and the access to the
internet to some students, somehow, remains as the issues which are solvable.
Overall, using blogs to improve students’ summary writing is applicable
with some requirements and conditions. First, the teacher has to make sure that
all the students in the classroom have a personal computer or laptop, or at
least can initiate to borrow it from others. Second, the area where the blogs
method will be implemented must be full of internet access. After these two
things are fulfilled, the teachers may consider to use this method to improve
the student’s writing performance.
References:
Y. Xie,
F. Ke, P. Sharma (2007). The effect of
peer feedback for blogging on college students'
reflective learning processes. Journal of Internet
and Higher Education 11. Retrieved August 31, 2013 <http://mrwattsclass.pbworks.com/f/Blogging+reflection.pdf>.
Wallagher, Mike. "Blog Platform Comparison
Chart." Web log post. How
To Start A Blog. N.p., 04 June 2013. Web. Retrieved 05 Sept.
2013. <http://startbloggingonline.com/blog-platform-comparison-chart/>.
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