Learner-Centered Blogging: A Preliminary Investigation of EFL Student Writers' Experience

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of integrating a learner-centered blogging approach into the EFL writing classroom in Taiwan. For this purpose, a 16-week experiment was conducted, involving an intact class of 18 university-level Taiwanese EFL student writers. During the experiment, the participants first created their own blogs on Lang-8, a free online language blogging platform, and then were encouraged to post at least seven entries on any issues that they wished to blog about. To better assess the effects of such an approach, both quantitative and qualitative inquiries were employed. Two writing tests were used to examine the participants’ writing performance, a questionnaire investigated their learning attitudes, and in-depth interviews explored the student bloggers’ learning experience in detail. The results suggest that the integration of learner-centered blogging into EFL writing instruction helps students develop writing skills as well as motivation and selfefficacy. However, their subjective blogging experience was mixed: although they conveyed enthusiastic support for the approach and strong belief in its effectiveness, this enthusiasm did not translate into much actual blogging activity. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for remedying the problems identified, and opening up avenues for further research.