Fostering reflective writing and interactiveexchange through blogging in an advancedlanguage course

Blog technology is a potential medium for encouraging reflective writing through selfexpressionand interactive exchange through social networking. This paper reports on a studyusing blogs as out-of-class assignments for the development of learners’ language competence.The study involved seventeen university students at advanced level who kept personal blogsover a14-week period. Data collected from blog pages, post surveys and final interviewsreported affordances and challenges of using blogs for personal expression and collaborativeinteraction. The results showed that regularly creating blog entries had a positive impact onlearners’ writing fluency and increased their motivation to write for a broad audience.Importantly, a four-skill integrated approach to task-based activities afforded opportunitiesfor students to use the target language for blogging. The findings also indicate that peerfeedback on the content prompted further discussion, whereas linguistic feedback from theinstructor encouraged focus on form for language accuracy. The study concludes that learners’critical thinking and technological skills are essential for the implementation of blog projectsin L2 instruction