On the use of blogging in the classroom of English for Specific Purposes in times of COVID-19 to promote written skills: a collaborative approach

This study presents the results of a blogging project that was carried out in a course in English for Tourism during the lockdown in Spain in March-May 2020. This course, aimed at students who already possess a B1 level (according to the CEFRL, 2001, 2018), intends to help them reach a B2 level. The course is normally based on blended learning. However, given the fact that students could not attend the face-to-face follow-up sessions, blogging was used as an extra activity, so that they could practice their written skills online. The project consisted of the following: students were invited to write an entry for the course blog, created with the tool Blogger. They also had to comment on each other’s posts, and there was a phase of peer review. Results show that the rate of success among the students who took part in this project was significantly higher than those who did not.