Blogging, and Technology in General

I read the article entitled “Fostering reflective writing and interactive exchange through blogging in an advanced language course” by Lina Lee (!). After reading this article, I would definitely say that certain types of technology can be beneficial to students learning foreign languages, but I do not think that all types of technology/social media/social networking tools would be beneficial for this purpose.

            Since my first Spanish class at UNH, I have felt that blogs written in the target language are beneficial to foreign language students. As I read in the article, blogs allow students to reflect, write and read at their own pace, and since the learner is in charge of deciding what to write, how much to write, and when to publish it online, blogs promote learners’ autonomy. The open-ended nature of blogs allows learners to be creative, and collective group blogs allow learners to see multiple views on a subject. While I feel that blogs are, for the most part, very beneficial to students, I have seen their disadvantages in my own experiences with blogging. As mentioned in the article, some students’ blog posts on a certain topic will end up becoming very repetitive. For example, if the assignment was to watch a Spanish movie and then create a blog post to answer a few questions created by your professor, sometimes many of the students’ posts end up sounding very similar to each other. Another drawback to blogging in the target L2 language is when professors want their students to critique or give linguistic feedback to their peers regarding the blog posts. In my own experience I have found that most students simply say what they liked about the blog posts of their peers. While compliments are all well and good, they are not always constructive. I do not think that teachers/professors should expect their students to provide linguistic feedback to their peers because, like I read in the article, many students lack the confidence in their own L2 abilities to give constructive feedback to their peers. I think that students should read each other’s blog posts and comment on them if they choose, but I do not think they should be required to provide constructive, editing-like feedback to peers.

            With all of the new advances in technology coming out every year, every month and every day I feel like technology will continue to become more and more incorporated into the ways that students learn in this generation and in the generations to come. Students as young as elementary school aged are already navigating around smart phones, uploading pictures and videos to facebook and youtube, and reading stories on their kindles, nooks, tablets and laptops. Students are posting, blogging, listening and responding to different people from different places and cultures all around the world. When you really stop and think about it, the degree of connectedness that technology has provided is really quite amazing! With that being said however, I do not think every technological advance should be used for foreign language instruction. I think blogging is a good method, and I think some ways of connecting students to native speakers would serve as good methods (ex. emailing, facebook messaging, skyping with a “pen-pal” from the target culture). I think that teachers and professors should pick one or two technology-based methods of teaching/learning for their students to use, and they should keep it at that. If students want to explore and expand more on their own with other types of technology they should be encouraged to do so, but I think too many technological requirements could really frazzle some students who prefer more traditional methods of learning. If a class requires students to post in a blog and to contribute to their class Wiki page (like our LLC 791 class), I think that’s a reasonable expectation for all students. If a class required students to contribute to a blog, a wiki, a twitter, a facebook group, a skype account, a youtube account, and a “Second Life” account I can see where some students would get very overwhelmed. I think that if technology is used appropriately by the instructor and if the instructor knows how to create reasonable expectations for his/her students in regards to technology use, technology-based assignments can be very beneficial to many foreign language students.

            Also, in regards to using “Second Life” for language learning, I think that it is a pretty neat idea! Again, I think that teachers would need to be wary to not require their students to do too much technology-based work, but if this was used alone, in conjunction with one other tech-based assignment, or if this was used at the students’ own free will, I think this could be an extremely helpful learning tool, especially for speaking.