THE EFFECTS OF BLOGGING AND MICROBLOGGING ON THAI UNDERGRADUATE LEARNERS' ENGLISH WRITING PROCESS AND WRITING ANXIETY

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how blogging and microblogging affected Thai undergraduate learners’ writing process and writing anxiety. Two intact groups were required to use either blogging (n = 24) or microblogging (n = 30) to complete seven writing assignments. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected on their writing process and writing anxiety via blogs/microblogs, related documents, a questionnaire, retrospective semi-structured interviews, and the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory developed by Cheng (2004). The study findings revealed that both technologies appeared to have similar effects on participants’ writing process. Before technology use, both groups’ primary assignment strategy was to generate drafts simultaneously using Thai and English. Their completion of writing assignments also lacked recursion and external input. After ten weeks of technology use, there seemed to be less Thai in the participants’ writing process and a greater awareness of writing as a recursive process. Additionally, the technologies permitted participants to view their peers’ writing and to receive feedback on their own writing. Some of this feedback seemed to correspond to textual alterations. However, the use of blogs/microblogs did not appear to have any effect on the participants’ writing anxiety. The average writing anxiety they had at the study’s start, as measured by the SLWAI, was maintained to the end of the mandatory technology use period. Finally, where the groups differed was in how they requested and gave feedback, the timing of textual revision, and the seeming abandonment of technology use by some members of the microblogging group.