“The improvement of Iraqi Non-specialist learners' writing motivation and performance through the blogging technique: A Case Study”

Abstract

The current study probed the impact of the blogging technique on Iraqi non-specialist students' writing motivation and competence to provide further insight into the value of weblogs in learning contexts. Convenience sampling was used to choose 50 Iraqi non-specialist students from two intact university courses to participate in the study. Next, 25 students were assigned to the experimental group, while 25 students were assigned to the control group at random. In the procedure of instructing writing skills, the experimental group's students used blogs to publish their homework, while the control group was given conventional instruction without utilizing blogs or any additional technology. Data were collected using a pretest along with a posttest that consisted of the L2 writing motivation measure and the IELTS tests for writing. The results shown that while the two groups’ writing skills and motivation increased, the blog group's students outperformed the control group, indicating the use of the blogging procedure in instructing significantly improved the writing skills and motivation of non-specialist students. Such results can have important ramifications for teachers who teach non-specialist students.