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I think blog discussion and email communication in English are different. I can talk lots of things to my British teacher because I’ve already known her. Most of the time, we just say hello to each other and talked about her family, who I know well, too. But on the blog, I had to talk to a group of people I did not know and they did not know me, either! I had to think what I could say and how to say it clearly. Otherwise, I think my [international] partners might not know what I said (Interview#6, January 20, 2009).
Compared with email communication, blog communication posed more
challenge for her. It was her first time to voice her thinking on the blog and she felt it was different from the interaction she had had with her teacher in England. Daphne could say anything to her teacher because they were familiar with each other.
However, it was a different case when talking to people whom she had never met. She felt a little worried if her English abilities would help her communicate with the international partners without shared knowledge.
Taking an active attitude toward the challenge of communicating in English
Even though Daphne thought it was not easy to express her opinions in English, she still adopted an active and positive attitude toward this challenge. Based on the researcher’s observation, while most of the other local students tended to interact with the international partners with the words and sentences they had already known, Daphne wrote comments or posts based on what messages she wanted her partners to know. In order to express her thinking completely, she often checked Chinese-English online dictionaries or asked for the instructor’s help.When I did not know how to translate my thinking into English, I checked the Yahoo Online Dictionary or asked my teacher to help me translate. Before I published the posts or comments, I asked my teacher to check them again to make sure there are no mistakes. I think I’ve learnt more new words this way.
(Interview#6, January 20, 2009)
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立 政 治 大 學
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The following blog comments posted on the “A day at my school” demonstrated the strategies Daphne mentioned above to express her thinking in English. The words or phrases Daphne learnt either from the on-line dictionary [a]or with the instructor’s help are underlined [b].
(1) Not only the stories are arresting [a] me, I also love Greek, too. It has the most blue [sic] sky in the word, and the white buildings. It's so beautiful and romantic. (Blog comment, September, 18, 2008)
(2) As for [b]our Nap time, not all of us will sleep in that time, they can choose to sleep or reading quietly with friend [b].Sometimes our school will arrange some activities, listening speeches, or when it was in Teacher's Day, we have activities of showing our respect to teachers in this class [b].
(Blog comment on “A day at my school”, October, 15, 2008) Daphne’s using different strategies in writing blog posts and making comments in English shows that she tried to figure out ways to interact with others in English.
She was willing to learn new words to express her ideas and thought it was an
opportunity to improve her English. From her positive attitude toward the challenge, it showed that Daphne really enjoyed learning English and blog interaction. She even reinforced her confidence when she got her partners’ many positive responses as she said:
I thought it would be very difficult. Now it is not that difficult to write English on the blog because [from the international partners’ feedback] I know they understand what I want to tell them (Interview#6, January 20, 2009).
Phase 3-4: Having more motivation to practice English abilities on the blog
Since Daphne was aware that many international partners would read her posts and comments, she felt much confident exchanging more information with them in English. “I’m glad that so many people read my comments and could give me some responses. And that made me want to know more about them and talk more [to them],” she said (Interview#6, January 20, 2009). The motivation to interact with international partners pushed her to spend more time practicing reading and writing
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立 政 治 大 學
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blog posts and comments. She even asked the instructor if she could come to the computer classroom often during the school recess in order to read more feedbacks from the international partners and write response to their posts (Teacher’s log, November, 20, 2008).
In addition to developing more interest in English communication through
blogging with international partners, Daphne also mentioned the multimedia resources on the blog gave her the situated learning environment with asynchronous
communication, which was another factor to encourage her to read and write in English.
Though I wish I could talk to them [international partners] face to face, I think it’s also ok for me to talk on the blog because I could still see their faces and hear their voice in their videos. And I think it’s better because I did not get nervous!
They talked about what they really did in their life and I could tell then my life or my opinions through words, website links or videos. If I did not have enough time to give [my international partners] comments at school, I could do it at home (Interview#6, January 20, 2009).
For Daphne, the blog environment, though it was not like face- to- face contact that she hoped to have, still offered her virtual communication opportunities through multimedia. Later she found out, compared with direct communication, it was much better to talk on the blogs because she did not worry she would not be able to reply to her partners’ posts immediately. She could enjoy the process of communicating and learn more new knowledge by taking the time to think about ways to express herself.
Since feeling comfortable with practicing English abilities in the blog
environment, she was more willing to devote more time to sharing her school life. In fact, she spent more time than other students in making multimedia works in order to present her school life. She also thought making multimedia works helped her provide as many details as she could about her school life. For example, in her video of
introducing school sports day, she chose many pictures of sports day and, below each
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of her pictures, Daphne wrote a short but detailed description about what students did in the opening ceremony, sports competitions, and the close ceremony. This is her first multimedia work with the most detailed English description during the project. When I asked her what pushed her to write so many descriptions in her video, she smiled and said:
I chose many pictures of my school sports day and put them in my videos. I wrote lots of description based on these pictures. When making the video, I would like to give more details about my school life. I think it is a good way to practice English because I feel I can talk more to others in English.
(Interview#6, January 20, 2009) Daphne considered that blogs gave her the chance to experience the practical usage of English for real communicative purposes. The multi-functions of the blog environment also helped her express her thinking in various ways. It could be seen that communicating in English in the blog environment improved Daphne’s linguistic self-perception