Blogging for Self-reflection among Pre-service English Language Teachers in Saudi Arabia: An Exploratory Study of Students Own Reflections

This study examines the involvement of blogging as a novel practice within a graduation project course for undergraduate students. The course involves writing a sound research proposal followed by accomplishing research in one of three main areas of study: linguistics, literature and translation. The participants consisted of fifty-five students learning E nglish as foreign language. They managed to create their own personal blogs, using Blogger, which were personal journals composed of their reflections and understanding of the process of writing a research paper in the form of multimodal literacy. The analysis of the data was qualitatively based through two means: an analysis of blog content and an open-survey for those who create such blogs. The survey includes questions such as whether the participants want to use blogging for other courses or not and why and what the merits and demerits of integrating blogs are with remaining courses. Through this practice, the students started to build on existing writing experience along with maximizing opportunities for autonomous thinking. This practice has also led the participants to consider writing research projects for advanced levels such as how to write a Masters dissertation.