My Reflection: Blogging and Grammar Lessons

After reading two recommended reading materials Blogging for ELT and Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes and creating this blog, an idea hit my mind. Why don't I ask my students to create their own blogs (learner blogs) to extend their learning experience outside the classroom? I believe a good idea should be worth trying.

I'm a teacher at the English Education Study Program  of  the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education in a private university in Surabaya, Indonesia, aiming at producing English language teachers for elementary and secondary level of education. One of the subjects I'm teaching this semester is English Grammar 2. It focuses on the mastery of most English tenses and other sentence structures, such as Passive Voice, Elliptical Constructions, and so on. The students are required to master the Form, Meaning, and Use of those grammatical points in order to be able to teach their students in the future.

The students are learning the materials using Cooperative Learning (CL) approach. I've been trying my best to make them apply the good principles of CL. First of all, of course, they have to study the materials individually and do the assignments prior the classroom. This will enable the students to attend the lesson with something they have possessed in their heads, not coming to the class with empty knowledge of what is going to be discussed in the lesson. By having self-study before, I hope they can immerse themselves in group discussions, practicing what they learned in the group of four, and teach their group mates if they need further explanation. I, the teacher, act as the last resource if they need further help or explanations. I believe that the students will get better insight of the materials they are learning  when they are actively engaged as suggested in the Learning Pyramid diagram.

So far, the results have shown that the majority of the students achieve satisfying scores. I assume if I can ask them to create their own blogs to provide better opportunity for them to apply the grammatical points they've learned, it'd be a good idea. In addition to the advantages of having learner blogs mentioned in above articles, the students will be very motivated to go online as well as express their ideas/stories in blogs. Their learners blogs can contain their experience or stories using certain grammar points (e.g. Past Tenses). I hope it will work well as I imagine.


I welcome any comments or inputs upon what I've written above.