Blog: A Platform for Out-of-class Language Learning An Exploratory Study

摘要

Blogs have drawn increasing attention in educational circle.More and more teachers use it as a pedagogic tool in instruction.This paper describes how a class blog can be integrated into Comprehensive English Course for English majors in China in an attempt to provide an out-of-class space for language practice and for sharing course-related ideas and information. It summarizes the strengths of using blogs with classroom learning on the basis of the observation and analysis of the students' blog contributions and their responses to two surveys.This study shows that blogs can play a significant role in students' language learning in a variety of ways: promoting learners' sense of real writer, fostering collaboration among learners, etc.For this to happen, however, more efforts and time are needed to be devoted to the blog on the part of the teacher.