Promoting English writing skills of vocational high school students by using blogs

The purpose of this study was to reveal whether using blog would enhance the English writing skills of vocational high school students or not. This study was designed as quasi experimental and the data was gathered with quantative instruments such as pretest, posttest and questionnaires and qualitative instruments such as writing tasks, teacher observation notes and semi-structured interviews. This research was conducted at a vocational high school in Turkey in the fall term of 2019-2020 academic year. The participants of the research were 50 ninth grade students, 25 of whom were placed in the experimental groups. Before the treatment, a pretest was applied to the participants in experimental and control groups in order to see if there was any significant difference between control and experimental group participants' writing skills. And also an internet questionnaire and semi-structured interview regarding English, writing and technology, was applied to both groups. This study lasted eight weeks and all the participants completed their tasks according to the certain topics which had been taught before. Experimental group completed their writing by using blogs and control group completed their writing in a traditional way. After the treatment, a blog use questionnaire and semi-structured interview were applied to the experimental group so as to get their opinions and thoughts related to blog use in writing classes. Additionally, the researcher took fieldnotes while observing the participants of both groups during the treatment. The results of the tests demonstrated that there was no significant difference in writing performances of the participants. However, the students in experimental group performed better than the control group's students. According to the analysis of the interview and questionnaire, it is concluded that the use of blogs can be a beneficial tool to enhance writing skills.