Boosting English skills through blogging: Does it work?

Blogs, which were once just used as online journals, have become powerful communication platforms, with some reaching millions of people from all corners of the world. In recent years, they have made a further transition, gaining popularity as a learning medium in language classes. In addition to providing learners with a real life way to use English, blogs have been credited with building learner confidence and developing their language skills while simultaneously introducing IT skills that will help them in a world that increasingly expects computer literacy from its citizens. Such benefits are attractive, but to what extent can they be realized? Having successfully implemented a blogging project to five English classes at two Japanese universities in the first phase of this project, this phase sought to assess the language benefits of blogging. To that end, 74 students were asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate the impact blogging had on their English development. The results were very positive, with most students indicating that the blogging project helped them improve in many areas, including boosting their reading and writing skills, developing their grammar and vocabulary and increasing their confidence in using English.