The Effectiveness of Weblogs on Writing Tendency

Introduction

Writing skills have many definitions made by different authors in the literature. According to many authors writing skills are the regulation of emotions, thoughts, wishes, dreams and experiences in writing (Karasoy et al., 2007; Erkul, 2004; Demirel, 2002; Coşkun, 2007; Özkırımlı, 1994; Paul & Elder, 2003). The importance of writing skills, in general, can be explained by both personal and social needs. It is not only writers who are involved in writing to be remembered with their emotions and thoughts, but also the scientists describe their discoveries in writing and like those working in various professions feel obliged to write to serve the society by fulfilling their duties (Kantemir, 1995; Bayramıçlılar et. al., 1990). Therefore, writing also assumes social responsibility. The effort to write, both personal and social, expands the world of emotion and thought. It gives people a place and respected personality in the society (Karageçi, 2006). Santangelo et al. (2007) emphasizes the importance of writing by stating that writing is an extremely powerful tool today because it establishes a connection between time and distance, collecting and preserving information, presenting information on a newly organized or expanding subject and providing a flexible environment for artistic, spiritual, political issues and self-expression. However, he states that writing is a difficult task and that mostly even expert writers complain about the complexity of planning, editing, evaluation and the review stages that is required for a good writing.

Most of the instructors, from primary education teachers to teaching staff in higher education, mention that the students do not have sufficient writing skills based on assignments and examination papers and the development of writing skills is difficult to get for that reason. As Karatay (2011) emphasizes, writing skill is an intrinsically complex process that originates from its core structure. However, in writing activities in schools, writing skills develop slowly or do not develop as necessary due to reasons such as poor follow-up of self-assessment, teacher and peer review, feedback and correction stages; negative experiences in these stages and in addition to that excessive class sizes or problems related to teacher-based practice. As mentioned by Baş and Şahin (2013), these difficulties hinder the students' pleasure in writing, their willingness to write and their desire for writing in lifetime. In this context, it is very important to give students the tendency to write at an early age, to popularize writing and to increase their writing performance.

It can be said that in order to develop writing skills, it is a necessity that students' tendencies regarding writing skills be determined and developed in a positive way and to focus on writing activities not only on cognitive dimension but also on affective and psychomotor dimension (Bağcı, 2011; Çeçen & Deniz, 2015). In order to give positive writing tendency, first of all, teachers believe that writing is a developing skill and make students feel this belief through learning activities positively affect student's attitude towards writing and mentally make them a part of the process. Considering the writing performance of the student and enriching the writing with different activities is an important factor in increasing the writing tendency (Sever & Memiş, 2013).