BLOGGING FOR PRE-SERVICE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS

There is no denial of the inevitable influence of information communication technology in our present age. Most web pages are now created with an interactive facility. Readers are no longer in a receptive mode only; on the contrary, they are able to express their views on the topic of their interest and receive responses in return to their comments. Weblogs do provide a platform for such an atmosphere. Based on this premise, this study aims to provide a fair picture of seventy pre-service English language teachers reflecting on their experience drawn from a blogging activity that provides support for each other regarding their topic presentations in a Contextualized Grammar Course which lasted a full academic term. The study combined both qualitative and quantitative approaches including weekly blog tasks and interviews as data sets. Content analysis was conducted to analyze these sets of data. On completion of the course, participants expressed their views about the effect of this particular activity. While a great majority stated that they improved their both academic and social knowledge thanks to pedagogical comments received from peers, a very small number of the participants questioned the activity for its being too much learner-centered, without involving the instructor’s scaffolding in classroom setting. Findings of this study may have some significant implications for language learners, instructors and administrators regarding the implementation of blogging as part of the syllabus in language education courses.