Group 2

NEWSLETTER
May 11, 2019

The Role of Technology in

Improving Students’
Writing Performance

What’s in this issue:

WHY WATTPAD TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING
2

WHY BLOGGER TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING

3

1
READING AND WRITING AT THE SAME TIME? GOODREADS CAN HELP
5
 WHY WATTPAD TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING?
Writing is a medium of human
communication that represents language
and emotion with sign and symbol. Within
a language system, writing relies on
many of the same structure as speech,
vocabulary, grammar and semantics with
the added dependency of a system of
signs or symbols.
Instead of having the best writing, writers
should develop themselves in reading.
Reading is a major skill leads the writers
to broaden their knowledge. For the last
10 years, people could read only with
books. Due to the improvement of
technology , the readers can easily read
the books online by using their computer
or their smartphone at anytime and
anywhere.
I am going to recommend the readers to
the Wattpad.
WHAT IS WATTPAD?
Wattpad is an internet community for
readers and writers to publish their
stories in different genres, such as
classic, fiction, non-fiction, poetry,
spiritual, humor and teen fiction.
Growth and Funding
In February 2007, Wattpad announced
the addition of over 17,000 ebook from
project Gutenberg making them available
to mobile users. As January 2018,
By: Khuoch Ray
Wattpad had received almost $ 117.8 M
in funding from investor.
Awards
In December 2011, Toronto based
Wattpad was select as the hottest Digital
Media Company in the country at the
Canadian Innovation Exchange. In the
same year co-founder and CEO Ivan
Yeun was also recognize as a top
Canadian entrepreneur at the impact
infused awards, sponsored by Deloitte.
Wattpad Books
Wattpad acquisitions uses a mix of their
DNA Machine Learning Technology
(algorithms) learning with human editors.
This human and digital acquisitions team
look to Wattpad’s large and existing
digital library (over half a billion titles) in
order to select notable material for
publication.
Copyright Issues
Early in its history, some of the large
volumes of users upload material hosted
on Wattpad was copyrighted material
created by authors who did not grant
republication rights. The Wattpad
website notes “We do not welcome
upload of material that violate its
copyright terms” but also states “it is
simply not possible to screen and verify
all posted content”.
 WHY BLOGGER TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING?
By: Jane Igid
Writing skills is a vital aspect in
learning. However, teaching to write is one
of the hardest job of many teacher
especially if the learners don’t have
enough foundation or not motivated.
Scholars in education continuously search
for the best strategy to address the gaps in
learning specifically writing.
Since, we are living in a modern era
with an up-to-date technologies in which,
learners are highly engaged and
knowledgeable. The higher education level
up their teaching skills such as integrating
technologies in the teaching process.
Today, educators can utilize social
networking sites such as Blogger, Tumblr,
Facebook, and Multiply as platforms in
honing students’ writing skills. Among
these sites, blogger is the most widely
used domain in ESL writing classrooms
(Cequena, 2013).
Blogger is a blog-publishing
website that allows students to create their
own blogs (weblogs) that enables them to
upload their essays, poems and other
creative works. Campbell (2003) defines
weblogs (blogs) “A as an online journal that
an individual can continuously update with
his or her own words, ideas, and thoughts
through software that enables one to easily
do so”. Several researches shows that
writing in a weblogs promotes critical
thinking, creativity, communication skills
on learners as well as in enhancing their
writing skills.
The Effect of Blogging on the
development of writing skills. (Alsamadani,
2017).
Alsamadani (2017) had conducted
a study about the effectiveness of using
online blogging for students’ individual and
Group writing. He highlighted 4 interesting
indicators about how blogs have
contributed to their macroscopic and
microscopic writing skills. These 4
indicators were also supported by other
researchers.
1. Content- The researcher
claims that blogging helped both individual
learners and groups come up with more
engaging ideas, which in turn made their
writing lengthier than it had been prior to
their interaction with blogging materials.
2. Language Mechanics- The
use of punctuation as observed in the
individual work seems to have improved
only somewhat: several cases where
capital letters should have been used were
left unattended, and several commas and
full stops passed unnoticed as well. As for
grammar, mistakes in tense were observed
before and after the use of blogging
materials. Likewise, Bernstein (2004)
stated that weblogs improve writing given
that frequent writing on a computer for an
audience provides practice, thus improves
writing.
3. Word Choice- While using
blogging, learners feel it is easier to verify
the words they are unaware of or unsure
about. This also helps them avoid first-
language interference as much as
possible. Also, Blogging provides users
with words that are more appropriate in
terms of register and genre.
4. Style- Blogging is a helpful
tool that provides learners with good
reading models, which in turn help them
imitate or even surpass these materials
written by bloggers.
Similarly, Ozdemir, E. and Aydin, S.
(2015) in their research paper entitled “The
Effects of Blogging on EFL Writing
READING AND WRITING AT THE SAME TIME? GOODREADS CAN
HELP.
By: Thayanuth Tep
What is Goodreads?
Goodreads is one of the largest websites
for book recommendations, first
launched in January 2007. This platform
has become a common ground for
readers to track books they have read as
Achievement” which was administered to a
40 EFL learners in Turkey. The result of the
study shows that there is really a positive
effect of using blog on the development of
students’ writing skills. The researchers
concluded that “the use of blogs in EFL
writing in a process-based approach
positively affects writing achievement. In
other words, when blogs as an online
writing environment are used in a process-
based approach, learners considerably
increase their achievement in terms of
content, organization, discourse markers,
vocabulary, sentence construction and
mechanics of writing”.
In conclusion, Blogging when
utilized by the teachers accordingly will
have a positive effect on enhancing their
learners’ writing skills. Teachers should be
well versed in the usage of blogging to
avoid demotivation from the students in
using it.
well as express their opinion on the
books they have read. According to
company’s data, Goodreads has more
than 50 millions user reviews posted.
The site allows reader to find books that
are best suitable for them based on their
preferred genre. One special feature
about Goodreads is the freedom of
criticism and praise on books. Registered
readers can openly critique and evaluate
the books they have read.
itself. Writing and analyzing what they
read in a private discussion that could be
created as a topic in the group itself.
Teachers can easily track the result and
mark the outcome of the students.

Why Goodreads?

In order to improve writing, one needs to

read and write at the same time. Reading
exposes you to different writing style,
different vocabulary, different forms and
different voices. If you spend more time
to read, you will have more ideas to write.

With this similar concept, Goodreads is

also the same. Read then write. You can
spend some time reading books that
would most suitable to you. You can
choose to read the reviews from previous
readers first before going on your reading
journey. Absorb what is there in the book,
distinguish the nuances of the language
before evaluating the quality of the
writing, whether it is poor or professional.

Goodreads in classroom:

Language teacher has always struggled

to get their students to read and write, but
now, they can use Goodreads as a
platform for students to perform both
activities in a less-control environment.
Teacher can create group and ask the
whole class to choose on a story to read
based on the students’ preference.
Students can spend their time reading
the book then in their own words,
students can be the judge of the book