By
Tri
Hari Nurdi
Writing
skill is perceived to be a significant skill that students need to develop in
their English learning. In this digital era, students who are considered as the
digital native generation have their own ways in learning things, especially a
foreign language. Meanwhile, some teachers who belong to digital immigrant
generation may find difficulties to vary their activities to fit the students’
learning way. Considering this situation, there are some challenges in the
teaching and learning of English writing skill: 1) Teachers need to improve
their competence to develop good quality of teaching-learning activity for
English writing skill, and 2) Students need to be encouraged to foster their
engagement during the teaching-learning process of English writing skill.
In order
to face these challenges, using a language exchange social networking site
(SNS) can be an alternative method. By using this portal, L2 learners can post
their journals and make friends with the English native speakers and other
English learners. The active users post their journals, read others’ journals,
and give feedbacks to each other. Students will develop their interest and
motivation in writing when others read and give feedbacks to their writing. At
the same time, students who get more motivation are likely to develop their engagement
in the teaching-learning process.
The portal that
will be analyzed in this study is lang-8.
This study is aimed to analyze the potential use of lang-8 web-based journal in
enhancing teacher autonomy and student engagement in the English writing
teaching-leaarning process.
Lang-8.com is a language exchange social networking
website geared towards language learners. The website is run by Lang-8 Inc.,
which is based in Tokyo, Japan. Currently, there are over 750,000 users
spanning more than 190 countries and 90 languages.
One such community [1] is Lang-8 (www.lang-8.com).
The basic idea is that, once you register, you receive a blog that can be used
just like any other blog. You can write blog posts, each with a header, a main
text (in which you may include links, images, embedded media, etc.) and a field
for tags. Just like with ‘free range’ blogs, i.e. blogs maintained for
non-educational purposes, blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological
order and readers can comment on what has been written. There are a number of
ways in which Lang-8 differs from other blogging services though. Firstly, it
has an additional tag field, in which bloggers indicate what language their
blog post has been written in. This in itself would not be very important if
each blog were not part of a bigger blogging community. When you log onto
Lang-8, you do not arrive directly at your blog, but at a dashboard that shows
a list of the most recent blog posts in your target language(s) and native
language(s) and invites you to read them and to comment on them or to correct
them.
This is where the second major difference comes into
play. In addition to normal comments, readers can easily make grammar
corrections on learners’ blog posts. They do not need to copy and paste text
from the blog posts since the software provides a copy of the original blog
posts to individuals who wish to make a correction. It also provides all the
layout features customary for making corrections, such as strike-through, ‘red
ink’ and ‘blue ink’.
The community works on the basis of reciprocal
feedback. Learners blog in their target language(s) and correct or comment on
blog posts of learners of their native language(s).
This mechanism can be helpful for learners who might
feel insecure posting ‘imperfect’ texts online. The community is an environment
in which one practices one’s language skills, which includes making mistakes
and receiving feedback on one’s mistakes. Each ‘teacher’ is, at the same time,
a learner. Generally, the atmosphere is very friendly and supportive, even
though no formal moderation process is in place. Even fairly crude attempts in
a foreign language receive supportive feedback, as the reviewer can attest from
her own attempts at blogging in Japanese.
Lang-8 is a free (advertising financed) service.
While paid-for accounts also exist, all functions can be used with a free
account as well. Importantly, learners can protect their privacy by deciding
with whom to share their texts (everybody, only other users, only users one has
befriended, nobody).
References
Razaei, A.R. (2010). Using social networks for
language learning. In Dodge, D. & Gibson, B. Proceedings of society for
information technology & teacher education international conference 2010,
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Schlickau, S. (2009) Social media in culture hegemony:
Pragmatik – Didaktik – Intercultural communication. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.
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