Exploring the Blogosphere: Use of Web Logs in the Foreign Language Classroom

 I found this article on the web, and it’s about the use of Blogs with different purposes that include individual pursuits, business endeavors and educational uses. This article focuses on the use of Blogs in the Educational field especially in the Foreign Language Classroom.

According to Wikipedia, a blog (or more formally a Web log) is a website on which members post regular entries. These entries can be text, pictures, videos, audio, or other media, in any combination. The beautiful thing about blogs is that they are a very fluid medium with which to create a community. The term “Blog” was introduced by Jorn Barger in 1997, who was one of the earliest blogger. 

As we have seem in the last few years, blogs or Web logs have received more attention and they have gained significant popularity and their functions as well as their use are quite varied. 

This article is a view of what are blogs? What they contain? How are they currently being used? What might be their potential use for language learning and teaching? And how blogs can be integrated into Foreign Language Classroom? 

Blogs reflect the author’s thoughts, personality and perspectives on different issues besides the language is generally informal. They can be kept and maintained by a sole individual and also highly interactive between the writer and the reader. Blogs also offer a personal and private space and they can be thematic.

In this article, the author mentions several advantages and describes many interesting features offered by Blogs, here are some of them: With the use of blogs, viruses and spam are kept to minimal levels; Messages posted can be edited and can potentially draw and interact with a larger and more diverse virtual community; Readers can leave comments but they cannot change what the author writes; Its software makes easy the design and doesn’t require any specialized technical knowledge.

The only thing that we must to take into account in relation to the use of Blogs is that they require updating by their contributors. 

But, the discussion of this article concentrates on Blogs in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning and the relevant question in how to integrate this forma of technology into Foreign Language Classroom? To response this, the author mentions the benefits of student blogging.     

Depending on the goal of the class and the level of students, teachers and students can design their own Blog. Blogging may foster critical thinking because students encouraged to carefully evaluate what they read and write. 

Discussion on cultural topics can be initiated in blogs. The class would have access to more cultural information from a variety of blogs and students would also have the option of following that relates to a personal interest and to enhance cultural learning and connections with other disciplines.

Also writing blogs offers students and interactive way to improve their writing skills and to encounter and build new ideas through discussion with other students. Another advantage is that blogs encourage students to pay closer attention to the content of their blogs as well as their language forms. Besides, Blogs reduce plagiarism because students can be required to link to their sources rather than to just cite them. 

Some address of Blogs for Foreign Language Courses that we can create, are offered in this article too: they are:

 

http:// www.xanga.com

http:// www.blogger.com

http:// www.livejournal.com

http:// www.blog- city.com

Among all these advantages and features of blogging it’s important to denote that through these tools students and teacher are able to create their own meanings in the foreign language. This is a tool that helps others to feel more comfortable in the classroom and gives students and teachers the opportunity to reflect whatever topic that they have discussed over a period of time. 

We can take all these advantages and aspects from these tools and use them in benefit of our work field. In mine, as a future teacher, it’s important to consider for what purpose these tools can be used in the educational environments and then apply them in the classroom.