Using blogs in an EFL writing class Using blogs in an EFL writing class

Since 1998, weblogs (or ‘blogs’) have gained increasing notice in the cyberspace community because even people without programming experience can also easily update and publish their personal web sites (Blood, 2000). More and more foreign educators have applied this user-friendly technology to classroom instruction and language learning (Campbell, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Richardson, 2004a); however, it seems that relatively few English teachers have ever used blogs in an EFL writing class here in Taiwan. Although not originally created for use in language education, blogs have formidable potentials as a useful tool for the teaching of EFL writing class. The main objectives of this paper are (1) to give explicit instructions to set up a personal blog with ‘Blogger ’ (a free blogging service), (2) to discuss the advantages of blog in an EFL writing class, (3) to give a preliminary report about my students ’ reactions to the use of blog in two English classes, and (4) to suggest some further research on blogs and some other application of blog to English learning and teaching