- 學位論文
A Study of Blogging for Enhancement of EFL College Students' Writing
以部落格提升大學生寫作之研究
摘要
Tremendous worldwide growth in weblogs has attracted language teachers to explore their impact on various aspects of language learning. With succinct features of archiving, hyperlink, comment, and instant/self-publishing, several projects have been conducted on the use of weblogs for second language writing. The commenting functions of blogs are particularly worth investigating since they may make blogs an effective environment for peer review activities, helping students interact with each other and refine their writing. The existing literature deemed peer review training as a crucial factor for its success. To make students more effective reviewers and thus enhance the effectiveness of peer review on student writing in the context of computer-mediated peer review, EFL students should be trained to become better peer reviewers. Furthermore, writing instructors increasingly recognize the value of visual elements for meaning making in an electronic age. Most of the previous weblog research examined students’ perceptions on either online participation or peer review, and some presented students’ multimodal compositions and discussed about students’ multimedia use and meaning expressions. Still, few studies moved beyond the perceptions, and investigated revision quality (given peer feedback) and the quality of multimodal texts after receiving instructions. The present case study explores the impact of peer review training on students’ peer comments and revisions, their use of multimedia representations, and their perceptions on the blog-enhanced writing class. Thirteen EFL students participated in a semester-long writing class, in which they wrote four formal assignments, seven journals, and one multimodal project in their individual blogs. The students went through a writing cycle designed according to the process approach which included pre-writing activities, drafting, composing, peer response as blog comments, and last revision. Peer review training was held based on rhetorical conventions when students wrote their second and third assignments. Additionally, they completed a multimodal project in which they described or advertised an imaginary technological product and draw or find one or more pictures to represent it. Evaluation questionnaires and interviews were conducted at the end of the semester. The data collected and analyzed in the study included students’ peer comments, drafts for the first and fourth writing assignments, the multimodal project, questionnaire results and interviews. Results indicate that students made more revision-oriented peer comments and had more success in revising their compositions after acquainting themselves with writing on blogs and doing peer review tasks. Nevertheless, students only adopted less than 50% of the peer comments to their revisions of drafts partly because they valued more the social function of blogging and lack of confidence about giving useful feedback. Fortunately, over 80% of the peer comments adopted by students led to revision success, revealing that students still benefited from peer review activities. As for their multimodal texts, although they generally performed well, they did better in writing rather than creating or finding appropriate pictures. In their perception data, students agreed that blog-enhanced instruction stimulated their interests in improving their writing and enjoyed using the various features of blogs, particularly the interactive functions. Three of the interviewees did not like peer review activities since they did not believe themselves or their peers to have the ability to provide quality feedback; instead, they preferred to use the commenting functions of blogs for socializing purposes. Regarding the task of multimodal writing, students believed that adding multimodal elements to their compositions would enrich the content and make it more easily understood by the reader. Frustrated by their limited photo-editing skills, the four interviewees remarked that they needed more instructions. With the empirical evidence presented in the study, blogs could serve as a suitable platform for EFL writing instruction concerning in-class interaction and multimodal compositions. Future research can examine the patterns of students' peer comments in a stress-free context, link students from different cultures or disciplines in a blog community and see the possible synergism, and report on students' multimodal texts after giving students detailed instructions on creating and analyzing such texts.
並列摘要
近年來部落格已於網路世界快速普及。部落格擁有留言、文章自動分類、快速出版、多媒體支援等功能，許多外語寫作教師與學者皆對部落格應用於語言教學的潛力抱著極大的期望。在部落格的功能裡，特別值得關注的是留言功能，能夠讓學生於部落格平台上輕鬆地閱讀同學文章並進行同儕互評活動。過去的語言教學研究文獻指出提供學生訓練給予同學建議是讓同儕互評活動能夠成功的重要因素，在電腦環境下也不例外。學生接受訓練後，同儕互評活動之效能才能提高。另一方面，研究者逐漸開始注意圖像或其他多媒體元素在文章裡的表意功能，在現今數位化時代裡，學生需要具備用文字以外的媒介表達自己的能力。過去關於部落格的研究通常只呈現學生對部落格寫作的觀感或分析學生在多媒體作業裡使用圖像元素的方式，若深入探討學生在同儕互評活動後修改文章的成功率，以及多媒體作業圖像與文字部分與整體表現，將補足電腦輔助教學在上述層面的不足。 本研究探討同儕互評訓練對學生交流意見及修改文章成功率的影響、學生在多媒體使用上的表現、及他們的課後觀感。十三位英語系大一的學生參與了這項研究，他們在一學期的時間內，完成了四篇正式作文、七篇學習日誌和一項多媒體作業，並貼在他們個別的部落格內。學生寫每一篇作業時，都經過課程設計的寫作過程：寫作前的暖身、擬草稿、撰寫正文、交換互評意見並貼於部落格上、修改。同儕互評訓練於學生寫第二及第三項作業時進行，內容主要關於英文作文文類組織方式及相關層面。除此之外，學生也完成了一項多媒體作業，內容指定他們描寫或宣傳一件想像中的科技產品並畫圖表示。完成這些作業後，學生於期末填寫回饋問卷並接受訪問。綜上所述，研究資料包括學生的互評意見、第一和第四項作業的草稿及修改後之文章、多媒體作業和問卷及訪問資料。 研究結果顯示經過訓練後，學生能夠提供更多與文章修改相關的意見，在修改文章上也更成功。即使他們修改文章時只採用不到百分之五十的同儕互評意見，超過百分之八十被採用的意見都讓修改後的部分較原稿成功。關於多媒體作業，他們展現創意，文字上的表現優於圖片使用。在問卷及訪問資料裡，他們表示不喜歡同儕互評活動，因為不相信自己或同學有能力就文章修改給予好意見，他們偏好將部落格留言功能用於人際互動功能。而多媒體作業方面，學生相信使用多媒體元素能使文章更豐富，更能讓讀者了解想表達的意思。四位受訪者皆認為自己電腦繪圖的能力不足，希望課堂上能教授此種技能。 根據本研究的結果推斷，部落格適合使用在英文寫作教學的互動活動和多媒體創作。未來的研究可以探討學生在沒有指定內容的情境下的留言分析，用部落格社群連結不同領域或不同專業的學生並觀察其中的互動及最後學習成效，也可以教學生如何創作和分析多媒體文章後，討論學生在多媒體作業上的表現。