Abstract

This study aimed to explore two classes of Taiwanese freshmen’s (N=119; M: 19, F: 100) responses to a paragraph writing assignment on a university e-campus blog (http://e3.nfu.edu.tw/ecampus3/learn/) in the English Grammar I and II courses. The English Grammar courses were offered to Applied Foreign Languages (AFL) freshmen in a mid-southern Taiwan university of science and technology in the academic year of 2009-10. Data collection included a six-point-scaled questionnaire together with a space for free comments, blog paragraph writings, and the students’ reflection papers. As the results of the study suggested, overall, 98-100% of the responding students reported posting on the blog significantly helped them to learn about English sentence patterns (M=5.03) and paragraph writing (M=5.05), as well as practicing sentence making (M=5.15) and paragraph writing (M=5.11). Significant correlations were found between the e-campus blog posting assignment and their ability (86%-98%; M: 4.36–5.01), cognition (84%-98%; M: 4.46–5.08), emotion (88%-94%; M: 4.42–4.79), and behavior (78%-96%; M: 4.19–4.91). The positive results of the questionnaire were particularly echoed by the students’ reflection papers. Based on several students’ free comments in the questionnaire and reflection papers, a number of possible reasons are listed to interpret the negative responses to certain items. Implications are drawn for interested (instructor) researchers to conduct similar or further studies on writing on blogs, which can contribute to the research, theory, and practice of blog usage and writing.