Abstract:
This study was conducted in order to gather adult
learners’ perceptions on the use of blogs for assessing their
English writing skills in terms of the perceived benefits,
drawbacks, and technical constraints. Being a case study, the
research involved a group of adult ESL learners following an
English proficiency course at the undergraduate level in a state
university in Sri Lanka. It was conducted by using a survey-type
questionnaire shared with the purposive sample of year one arts
undergraduates who were in the second semester of study.
Descriptive statics were used for data tabulation and
percentages were generated to decipher the sample’s reaction to
a blog-based assessment given to them during the first semester
of study. The findings from the data analysis indicate that these
students perceived blogs as a valid, acceptable, and beneficial
form of assessment that can also improve and motivate them to
write in the second language. However, they also admitted that
challenges remain when authoring blogs, such as poor
bandwidth and lack of connectivity, difficulty in understanding
instructions on creating blog accounts, having their content
plagiarized, and technical constraints. From the findings, there
is a suggestion to first promote the use of blog entries to assess
students’ writing skills as a continued practice and second to
formulate strategies to counteract the challenges. To sum up, the
main findings reveal that in spite of some difficulties, these ESL
learners had a highly positive attitude towards the use of blogbased
assessments for testing their English writing skills.
