Blogging about The Covid-19 Pandemic in EFL Writing Courses

Abstract

This study aims to find out whether EFL instructors at Saudi universities use blogs; whether EFL students blog about themes related to the Covid-19 Pandemic in EFL course; to show EFL instructors how a class blog can be used to blog about the Covid-19 Pandemic and to give examples of topics related to the Covid-19 Pandemic that can be utilized in blogging activities. Results of surveys showed that EFL instructors do not use blogs in their EFL courses and do not blog about the Covid-19 Pandemic in their writing courses.  Therefore, this study presents a model for blogging about the Covid-19 Pandemic in EFL writing courses. Topics about the Covid-19 Pandemic are characterized by being current, familiar, tangible, specific and widespread. The students will have no problem in generating ideas and will only need to focus on organizing ideas, and linguistic aspects. A class blog can be selected and used as a supplement to in-class EFL writing instruction for freshman students. The students can search for articles, photos, or videos related to the Covid-19 topic assigned and write a short paragraph or s summary of the article or video and posted in the blog. They post questions, comments, reactions and feedback on their classmates’ blogposts’ form and content. The instructor serves as a facilitator while the students are blogging. She encourages the students to write and interact. The article ends with some recommendations for expanding the blogging activity of EFL students in writing courses.