a process-based approach to academic writing: exploring the effect of technology

While the effect of communication technologies on second language academic writing has been widely addressed in previous sla research, the educational value of them has been rarely explored for writing courses in iranian contexts. this article addresses students’ collaboration, attention to form, and perceptions of blog and email. the present case study reports on eight efl learners’ contribution to a classroom blog and email communication during a 16-week writing course. a process-based approach to writing instruction is adopted and focus is placed upon the type and degree of students’ contribution to the blog and writing tasks as well as their attention to form while publishing their messages on the spaces. the study draws on lave and wenger’s community of practice and sociocultural perspective. the data for the study include the blog posts, the tasks submitted via email and students’ self-evaluation surveys. a total of 55 blog posts and 62 writing pieces along with the teacher’s feedback are analyzed. the results indicated that students developed both quantitatively and qualitatively to use the blog for posing their questions and disseminating solutions for peers, learning and reflections. they also appeared highly attentive to the form of their essays in terms of grammar, spelling, and punctuation and to organizational structure. above that, analyses of the writing tasks during the course indicated that there was a significant change in essay format, essay organization, punctuation, capitalization, coherence and unity, supporting sentences but not very much in grammar and choice of words. this study makes a contribution to research on process-based and technology-based writing approaches to academic writing courses in efl contexts and the potential of computer-assisted communication for promoting student-centered learning.