earticle

영어

This paper examines the effect of blogs on EFL learners’ oral proficiency. 194 Korean EFL learners participated in this study. They were third- or fourth-year college students taking a speaking class to improve their oral proficiency at the school of information technology. For the experiment, thdy were divided into three experimental groups and one control group: voice and text blogging (n=47), voice blogging (n=47), text blogging (n=52), and control (n=48). There were fifteen blog sessions in total. During the experimental period, the voice and text blogging group posted both voice- and text-blog entries. The voice blogging group uploaded only voice-blog entries, while the text blogging group produced their text-blog entries. Oral proficiency pre- and post-tests were administered before and after the experiment based on ACTFL OPI. Individual interviews were conducted at the end. Paired samples t-tests were run to compare pre- and post-test scores. One-way ANOVAs were employed to compare group differences. Content analysis method was applied for qualitative analysis of interview data. Findings revealed that participants in all groups improved oral proficiency. Particularly, the voice and text blogging group outperformed the voice blogging group and the control group. Interview results turned out to be positive. Pedagogical implications were suggested for EFL teachers.