IMPROVING DESCRIPTIVE WRITING SKILLS USING BLOG-BASED PEER FEEDBACK

International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World (IJLLALW)

Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 299-‐308 Rostami, A., & Hoveidi, A ISSN (online): 2289-‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-‐3245 www.ijllalw.org

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IMPROVING DESCRIPTIVE WRITING SKILLS USING BLOG-BASED PEER FEEDBACK

Dr. Ali Rostami

Assistant professor, Kerman institute of higher education, Kerman, Iran Email: [email protected]

Ali Hoveidi

MA Student, Kerman institute of higher education, Kerman, Iran

ABSTRACT Aim of this study was to investigate the effects of blog based pair correction on students’ descriptive writing. To this end, thirty intermediate English language students (including 10 boys and 20 girls) were selected and divided into two groups, experimental and control, based on the results of their pretest. Students in both groups were asked to write six descriptive essays and post it on their blog. The procedure used in the study ran parallel for both groups except that students in experimental group were required to have peer correction on blog based on a scoring rubric. Analysis of covariance revealed that peer correction on the blog had positive impact on the grammar and word choice of students’ descriptive writing. It was also found that students had a positive attitude toward writing on blog and peer correction. Based on the results, teachers can implement the blog based peer correction technique to motivate students and enhance their descriptive writing skills and to provide an interactive environment to facilitate feedback. KEYWORDS: Blog, Peer correction, Descriptive writing INTRODUCTION Traditionally, language skills are categorized into the receptive skills of reading and listening and the productive skills of speaking and writing. Although writing is an important skill which must be mastered in order to effectively transmit new ideas and concepts, majority of foreign language students are not able to use this skill effectively. Fear of being corrected by the teacher always leads to students’ tendency to use avoidance strategies and many other problems. To overcome students’ problem in writing, peer correction can be used as a useful technique where students learn from their mistakes and provide collaborative learning and feedback to their classmates' work (Ellis, 2002). One way to carry out peer correction is a blog which can be used as a technological tool to improve descriptive writing skills.

A blog, short for weblog which was coined by Barger (1997) is a type of Web site in which items such as texts, images, media objects and data are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order (Taylor et al, 2007). The activity of authoring, keeping a blog or updating an existing blog is called “blogging”. Someone who keeps and posts these entries is called a “blogger” (Camilleri, et al, 2007).



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Blog and blogging and its impact on students‟ writing performance has been the subject of several studies and most of them confirmed that blogging improves students‟ writing skill (Campbell, 2003; Pinkman, 2005; Fellner & Apple, 2006; Hajiannejad, 2011; Cequena & Salle, 2013). In an attempt to write literature review of using blog in ESL/EFL writing, the first research was found in the work of Wu (2004). To discuss the advantages of blog in an EFL writing class, researcher gave a preliminary report about students’ reactions to the use of blog in two English classes, Most of students found blog as a useful tool to improve and upgrade their writing ability.

In another study regarding the use of blog in language education, Murray et al (2007) emphasized that most students perceived blogging as a reflexive tool on language learning in their study. In addition, they realized that blog can be as a means of self-expression for the students who are engaged with academic writing. Pedagogical Advantages of Blogs The popularity of this practical asynchronous computer-meditated tool, blog, has soared as a form of online diary writing among computer users (Barrios, 2003). Blog as a collaboration tool can be used to upgrade students' writing skills and also it can be considered as powerful tool in education. According to Stanley (2005), there are numerous pedagogical advantages for using blogs in education. One of the most significant pedagogical advantages of blog is that it can provide a real audience for student writing. In blog based writing classes, apart from the teacher, there are other audiences, students’ peers, their parent or other classes’ students and anyone who accesses to the internet. Second advantage of blog is that it can provide extra reading practice for learners. Further Godwin-Jones (2006) believed that blog provides a fertile ground for collaborative learning which encourages feedback. In this environment which is more student-centered, they can have debate and articulation of the ideas as well as critical analysis of each other’s writing which is generally called pair feedback. Pair feedback can be defined as the reflective criticism of the work or performance of other students by the use of previously identified criteria to provide feedback to them. This action could be done either by the use of a ‘one-off’ activity or a series of meetings during which students supply feedback to peers on increasingly polished versions of a piece of written work. (Falchikov, 2002) Statement of the Problem Despite a great deal of efforts and researches that have been done to improve students’ writing, there are still so many different problems in this area. Most of classes are held in the traditional ways. Technology has not gained its fundamental role in L2 writing. EFL learners find essay writing a difficult task because they need to cope with structural ambiguities and lexical complexities leading to avoidance strategies and writing blocks. In addition, they are not motivated enough to write.



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In spite of great significance of the descriptive genre, to have a sort of domain that can appear in other sort of genres (McCarthy, 1998), learners have difficulty to write a descriptive text. They are only provided by some explanations about the generic structure and the method of writing descriptive text by their teachers. They are unable to describe things in lively detail and they are almost always unmotivated and bored with writing (Hami, 2011). RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES

The study is guided by the following research questions and hypotheses. 1. To what extent does the use of blog based peer correction improve student’ descriptive

writing? How? 2. To what extent can the blog and blog based peer correction techniques improve students’

motivation and attitude toward writing? Also based on the nature of questions of the study, there are four different kinds of hypotheses. The first null hypothesis is that the test scores of the control group are equal to the scores of experimental group. The second null hypothesis is that the test scores of the females are equal to the scores of males. On the other hand, in compare to the null hypotheses existed in this part, there are two other hypotheses. The first one is that the mean scores of the experimental group are higher than the mean scores of control group. The last hypnosis is that the test scores of the females are not equal to the scores of male.

METHODOLOGY Participants In this study, thirty Iranian English language students (including 10 boys and 20 girls) were selected among the students of Jihad-Daneshgahi Institute of higher education at Qom (a provincial city located nearly in the center of Iran). They all were relatively at the same age group, ranging from 18 to 28 years old, with the same cultural background. Moreover, the proficiency of the students was measured by the pretest revealing that all the students were at the intermediate level. It is also worth to mention that all students were informed that participation in the study is on voluntary basis. The class had an English composition class once a week lasting for 60 minutes. Instruments and Materials Two types of instruments and one material were used in the study. Firstly, to have students write about descriptive essay, six descriptive topics out of twenty topics were chosen based on the students’ interest. All students were given a prompt to analyze their peers’ writing. By the use of that prompt, they could have peer feedback and peer correction. The prompt has one to five score to measure students’ descriptive writing skills. The criteria involved in that prompt include introduction (organization), grammar and spelling (conventions), adding personality (voice), word choice and conclusion (organization). Additionally, a popular and easy-to-use free blog, Blogfa, was used in which student could post their entry.



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Lastly, In order to elicit and measure the students’ attitudes toward blog, the researcher adopted a Likert-scale questionnaire. The questionnaire presented in this study consisted of three major parts. The first part of the questionnaire presented some information about its purpose and elicited background knowledge on the participants’ gender and educational level as well as access to the blog. The second part of the questionnaire consisted of thirty four items to gauge the learners’ attitudes toward blog. The last part of it involved six open ended questions to figure out students’ opinions about the merits and demerits of blogs in learning English, and the difficulties and benefits students encountered in using a blog. Questions presented in the last part of the questionnaire are listed below. It is also worth to mention that quantification of the questions in the questionnaire was done by a Linker-scale of 1 to 5(1 = Disagree, 2 = strongly disagree, 3=undecided, 4= agree, strongly agree). For the reliability of the questionnaire, a pilot study was carried out. Result of Cronbach Alpha (α =0.78) revealed a reasonable reliability for the questionnaire. Procedure At the beginning phase of the study, in an attempt to have homogeneous class in term of English proficiency, students were given a pretest. Two independent evaluators evaluated students’ descriptive writing task based on a standard descriptive writing rubric. As a result of pretest, students were randomly divided in two groups, A and B which can be defined as A: control group and B: experimental group. Both groups were required to put their entry, descriptive writing task, into their blog. The only subtle difference between these two groups was that students in group one, they all write their descriptive essay and put it in their blog with voluntary peer correction. On the other hand, students in another group did all procedures that were mentioned as well as required peer correction. To begin both classes, the same English teacher was used for both classes. It is worth to mention that, both classes lasted for twelve sessions from October 16 to November 28. The class had an English composition session twice a week lasting approximately for 60 minutes. During these six weeks students were required to write six descriptive essays. To avoid technical problems related to making a new account, the first session of the class was held in IT branch of Jihad institute which is equipped by the computers and internet. In this session, students in the both group were informed about the whole procedure used in the study. Furthermore a brief introduction to the blog, concept of blog, how to send comment and how to make a new account in Blogfa was explained by the instructor (researcher). Then to be one of the members of his blog and to create group blog, he asked students to register their necessary information in his blog which was created in advance. Issues related to writing and writing assignments were discussed in the second session in the both classes. In this session students were taught about different genres particularly generic structure of descriptive essay as well as significant lexicogrammatical features of descriptive text such as using vivid nouns and adjectives, use of figurative language and simple present tense. Having



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finished the explanation about descriptive text, teacher asked students to write a descriptive essay about one of the given topics and post it on the weblog before the following session. The procedure in this session ran approximately parallel for both groups. The only difference was that students in experimental group were asked to send their comments in the blog based on the given rubric. The cycle was repeated until students wrote six descriptive writing essays during six weeks. Afterward, a post test was conducted for both groups. In order to minimize the stress of the students for the test they were asked to write one more composition but they were not told it is their posttest and it was regarded as the post test of the study. Similar to students’ pretest, two independent raters scored their last writing tasks. The scores of each student’s assignment as well as total scores of each group were saved. Lastly, during last session of the class, students were given a set of questionnaire to answer. The questionnaire was used to investigate how blogs activities might help students to develop their language skills and writing skills. RESULTS AND DISCUSION Results for Blog-Based Peer Correction on Students’ Descriptive Writing In an effort to answer the first question of the study, how the use of blog-based peer correction techniques can help students improve their descriptive essay writing, writing performances of two groups, control and experimental, were compared. To obtain the result, two independent raters marked the pre and posttest of both control and experimental group. Then mean scores of them were gathered and by the use of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) they were compared. The result of analysis showed that using blog based peer correction may have positive impact on the development of students’ descriptive writing. Table 1 presents the measurement of the mean on the posttest and pretest for the different levels of descriptive writing (independent variable):

Table 1: Means for Group Variable (pretest-posttest)

pretest posttest control experimental control experimental

Introduction (Organization) 2.40 2.53 3.33 3.47 Grammar and Spelling (Conventions) 2.40 1.60 2.60 3.27 Adding personality (Voice) 3.00 3.13 3.07 3.20 Word Choice 3.00 2.67 3.20 3.33 Conclusion (Organization) 2.13 2.20 2.80 3.07 Total scores 12.93 12.53 14.93 16.27

As it is revealed in this table, measurement of the mean on the pretest for control group (total scores) was 12.93; measurement of the mean on the pretest for experimental group (total scores) was 12.53. Measurement of the mean on the posttest for control group (total scores) also was 14.93; measurement of the mean on the posttest for experimental group (total scores) was 12.27.Overall, the main mean difference between pretest and posttest for experimental group was observed on Grammar and Spelling (MD= 1.67). The second difference was observed on the



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mean of introduction (MD= 0.94). The third discrepancy was noticed on the mean of conclusion (MD= 0.87). The next to the last difference was observed on the mean of word choice (MD= 0.66). The insignificant difference was noticed on the mean of adding personality, voice, (MD= 0.13). Figure 1 (below) also shows the variations of the means on the pretest and posttest for different levels of descriptive writing (dependent variable) using a bar chart: :

Figure 1: Means for components of descriptive writing The main section of the results is presented in table 2, as shown below. Table 2

Table 2: Ancova analysis of control and experimental group differences

Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta

Squared

Corrected Model 74.442a 4 18.610 31.525 .000 .835

Intercept 14.893 1 14.893 25.229 .000 .502

Total score1 45.042 1 45.042 76.299 .000 .753

group 14.226 1 14.226 24.098 .000 .491

gender .026 1 .026 .044 .835 .002

Error 14.758 25 .590

Total 7390.000 30

Corrected Total 89.200 29

a. R Squared = .835 (Adjusted R Squared = .808)



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reveals that the ANCOVA procedure was statistically performed. Based on the results (F = 24.09, df = 1, α<0.05),there was an overall statistically significant difference in blog based peer correction descriptive writing method (posttest) between the different intervention of (group variable) as their means had been adjusted for blog descriptive writing method (pretest). This is highlighted in the table above. Also an overall statistically significant difference between the different intervention of (gender variable) as their means had been adjusted blog based peer correction descriptive writing method (posttest) was not observed (F = 0.44, df = 1, α<0.05). This is also highlighted in the table above. Furthermore, to be more specific for the result of the study, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed on the mean scores of grammar and spelling of control and experimental group and following result was observed. According to the result (F =50.497, df = 1, α<.000) there was an overall statistically significant difference in grammar and spelling of experimental group (posttest) between the different intervention of (group variable) as their means had been adjusted for grammar and spelling of control group (pretest). This is highlighted in the table above. Further an overall statistically significant difference between the different intervention of (gender variable) as their means had been adjusted for the grammar and spelling of experimental group (posttest) was not observed (F = .231, df = 1, α<0.635). This is also highlighted in the table above. Moreover, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed on these mean scores of word choice of control and experimental group and following result was observed. According to the result (F =29.345, df = 1, α<.000), there was an overall statistically significant difference in word choice of experimental group (posttest) between the different intervention of (group variable) as their means had been adjusted for word choice of control group (pretest). This is highlighted in the table above. Further an overall statistically significant difference between the different intervention of (gender variable) as their means had been adjusted for the word choice of experimental group (posttest) was not observed (F = .363, df = 1, α<0.552). This is also highlighted in the table above. Additionally, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed on mean scores of adding personality and conclusion of control and experimental group but there were not an overall statistically significant differences in their mean scores. Figure 2 (below) also show analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on the mean scores of the pretest and posttest for different levels of descriptive writing (dependent variable) using a line chart:



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1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

control Pretest

experimental Pretest

control Posttest

experimental Posttest

Figure 2: Plot for analysis of variance (pretests and postests)

Result of Questionnaire on Students’ Motivation and Attitudes To probe the second and third questions of the study, qualitative and quantitative data were gathered based on the questionnaire which was administered at the end of the project. There were three main parts in the questionnaire. First part of it was started with three questions related to students’ gender, educational degree and familiarity with blog. The second part of questionnaire consisted of thirty four multiple questions to gauge about students attitude toward blog and peer correction. The last part of it involved six open ended questions about blog and pair correction. Detailed analysis of different parts of the questionnaire including descriptive statistics of students’ responses to the multiple choice questions in the survey were presented in the following sections. Discussion Discussion about findings of this study is divided into two parts. The first part of it is attributed to the result of pre and posttest of students in both groups. Further second part is regarded to the result of the questionnaire. Analysis of findings regarding mean scores of students’ pre and posttest in both groups, control and experimental, indicated that blog based peer correction improved student descriptive writing. Additionally, the result of ANCOVA (F = 24.09, df = 1, α<0.05), revealed that there was an overall statistically significant difference in blog based peer correction descriptive writing method (posttest) between the different intervention of (group variable) as their means had been adjusted for blog descriptive writing method (pretest). It can conclude that peer correction on the blog can improve quality of descriptive writing. Therefore, the first null hypothesis of the study in which the test scores of the control group are equal to the scores of experimental group, that is, the mean of the experimental group is equal to the mean of the control group, was rejected.



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Based on the result of the ANCOVA (F = 0.44, df = 1, α<0.05), it was also found that there was not an overall statistically significant difference between the different intervention of (gender variable) as their means had been adjusted blog based peer correction descriptive writing method (posttest).Thus the second null hypothesis of the study in which the test scores of the females are equal to the scores of male, that is, the mean of the female participants is equal to the mean of male participants was substantiated. Moreover, more in-depth analysis of covariance on mean scores of different parts of descriptive writing revealed that peer correction improved grammar and spelling in addition to word choice of students’ descriptive writing. In addition, it was found that there was not an overall statistically significant difference between the different interventions of (gender variable) as their means had been adjusted for grammar and spelling as well as word choice for experimental group (posttest), that is, there was not any significant difference between test scores of male and female participants. Analysis of questionnaires, Likert scale and open ended, indicated that most of students in both groups were not familiar with blog in advance. Moreover, it was revealed that the overall attitude of the students towards the blog project and blog based peer correction was positive. Based on these results, it can be concluded that students’ attitude toward learning writing skill through blog was positive. More in depth analysis of questionnaire revealed that blog based peer correction can enhance productivity as well as creativity of students. Thus they tend to use more structures and words in their writing task. Moreover, comparing both group’ responses to the Likert scale questionnaire, revealed that a simple blog form cannot be an effective incentive tool to motivate students to write different genres of writing. In EFL contexts like Iran in which blogs have not earned much reputation among language learners, they may become frustrated or unmotivated to operate their own blog. To make them more motivated to use their own blog despite their deficiency, lack of computer literacy, peer correction can be used as an effective technique. CONCLUSION To sum up, it was concluded that blog based peer correction was a useful technique to help students improve their descriptive writing skills, more specifically grammar and spelling and word choice of it. In addition, blog along with peer correction can be used to motivate students to write descriptive writing. Further it could be utilized to help students have a positive attitude toward writing. Limitations of the Study The study encountered with some limitations. Firstly, this study was limited by its sample size. The sample size could have been expanded by including more students in each group. Further some students were not exposed to blogging until they registered for this course. These students did not participate as actively as did the group members who were familiar with blogs. Another



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limitation of the study was word processing program existed in the computer and blog which checked automatically students’ writing for spelling and some minor grammatical problems. REFERENCES Barrios, B. (2003).The year of the blog: Weblogs in the writing classroom. Retrieved October 17,

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IMPROVING DESCRIPTIVE WRITING SKILLS USING BLOG-BASED PEER FEEDBACK

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