WEBLOGS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION. REAL AND PROMISED BENEFITS

Weblogs are seen as the perfect exercise in literacy (Goodwin-Jones, 2007; Carney, 2009; Raith, 2009; Van Compernolle and Abraham, 2009). This paper reports a project in which a blog was used in an English language classroom in the final year of secondary education in Flanders, Belgium. The project's aim was to answer four research questions: 1. Can weblogs motivate FL learners to write more? 2. Can Weblogs motivate FL learners to write better? 3. Can learners learn from one another in blogosphere, in terms of language? 4. Can learners learn form one another in blogosphere, in terms of content? Embedding the investigation in the literature on how technology has influenced learning theory, on how learning theory has affected instructional practice and on how effective instructional practice can improve students' writing ability in a foreign language, the paper discusses the value of using blogs on the basis of quantitative and qualitative data, gained via questionnaires, qualitative text analysis and software packages (WordSmith Tools, Lextutor and LIWC), yielding quantitative data on text accuracy, fluency and complexity and on mutual linguistic influence between blog texts. Analysing some of the promised benefits of blogs critically, the paper formulates a favourable yet careful conclusion regarding the added benefit of the use of blogs in foreign language writing education.