reflection

__**Teaching/ Learning Using Blog **__ English language here is used as a second language for the students. It is important for students to improve their grammar skills and understanding in English, especially in writing. Writing, according to Shastri (2010, p. 85) “has three aspect—mechanical, linguistic and communicative.” Therefore, the project based activity such as the class blog like this will enable students to improvise their writing aspects in English language. It also provides room for improvement and broad opportunity to practise their writing skills in English which mirrors their English proficiency; particularly the verb tenses in the past tense. When every student contributes their ideas and participates in this project based activity, it makes their English competency improved and stronger from time to time, especially when how they portray articulately their ideas, give constructive comments critically on their peer's writings and how they put their words forward when defending or opposing any points discussed. This makes teacher’s role easy to evaluate their students' understanding, and to check simultaneously the students' progress. Thus it serves indirectly the students' needs to get appropriate feedback from teachers regardless of time and place. Blog, as it is accessible everywhere especially in the mobile smart phone, brings the student-teacher relationship better and effectively improving for teaching and learning purposes. In reality, most interaction during the lesson period is teacher to student; as teacher needs to instruct, to guide, and to scaffold students' knowledge prior to the assessment and students’ autonomous learning time. However in cyberspace world, the interaction between teacher to students, students to teacher, and students to students is highly active and impressive as students contributing their writings and leaving comments on their peer's works. Blog makes the lesson interactively engaging for the students. Interestingly, it is also a good place for educational discussion to argue and defend their ideas against criticism. At the same time, this enables teacher to see students' progress through the portrayal of their critical and analytical thinking and writing. Additionally, it helps teacher to monitor their students' English development since it provides “an effective virtual meeting place for e-learners and coaches to interact” and “interactive learning experiences” (Jain et al, 2002, p.76) One of the pedagogical approaches implied here is ‘Presentation-Practice-Production’ (PPP) approach which means specifically identified language points or rules are taught and learners are asked to practise and produce them (Whong, 2011). Presentation is the essential part of the lesson because this is the time for students to get sufficient information of what to do in the practice part. Students are taught about the function and structure of past tense verb. During the practice part, the exercises given will help them to familiarise with the lexis and syntax pattern of past tense. This automatically leads them to feel confident to contribute their writings in the blog; the stage where students should reproduce what they have learnt. References: Whong, M. (2011). //Language teaching theory and practice// [Electronic version]//.// Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Jain, L.C., Howlett, R.J., & Ichalkaranje, N.S. (2002). //Virtual environments for teaching and learning// [Electronic version]. River Edge, NJ, USA: World Scientific. Shastri, P.D. (2010). //Communicative approach to the teaching of English as a second language// [Electronic version]. Mumbai, India : Global Media.