Abstract
Taking a corpus approach, this study analyzed writing samples collected from student bloggers and non-blogging students. The aim was to determine whether the two groups of students wrote with different linguistic features (tokens, types, token-type ratio, parts of speech, and lexical features). Any similarities and differences found in the comparison between the writing samples would have implications for the effects of the blogging approach on student writers. The results show that the non-blogging student writers wrote more (tokens, types) than the student bloggers did; there were also differences between the two groups of students writing in terms of POS tags in their writing and the results of keyword analysis. However, a closer look at the differences found here suggests no particularly significant variations between the textual information created by the two groups of students. Nevertheless, taken together, the results tend to suggest that classroom blogging had a relatively weaker effect than the conventional teaching approach on Taiwanese EFL student writers.
Highlights
Blogs are an online digital writing and publishing tool for writing journals
The results show that the non-blogging student writers wrote more than the student bloggers did; there were differences between the two groups of students writing in terms of POS tags in their writing and the results of keyword analysis
A total of 15 words stood out in the keywords when the control group (CG)-Corpus wordlist was used as a reference (Table 7), while 19 words in total were found to reach the log likelihood significant level when the blogging group (BG)-Corpus wordlist served as a reference (Table 8)
Summary
Blogs are an online digital writing and publishing tool for writing journals. They first appeared in the cyberspace community in 1998 (Blood, 2000). More research and teaching have been conducted to introduce blogs in language classrooms, using blogs as online platforms on which students can engage in journaling writing on various subjects (e.g., Lin, 2015; Lin, in press; Pinkman, 2005; Sun, 2010). This practice has been reported to bring about many positive effects on student writers, such as promoting students’ reflective thinking ability, learning motivation, and the command of languages (e.g., Chen, 2016; Holmes & Moulton, 1995; Lee, 2015; Lin, 2015; Lin, in press; Wong & Moorhouse, 2018; Xie, Ke, & Sharma, 2008; Tuan, 2010).
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