The impact of dictogloss and blogging on EFL students’ writing skills in an Indonesian tertiary vocational college

Studies related to dictogloss and blogging have been conducted in tertiary education contexts in Indonesia. The nature of each technique and tool is practically interrelated to be implemented in learning writing. Therefore, revealing the effectiveness of the so-called hybrid strategy in learning writing needs to be conducted. This study concerns dictogloss and blogging in teaching writing to tertiary vocational students in a state university. The study aims are (1) to find out the effectiveness of implementing dictogloss and blogging towards the students’ writing skills and (2) to reveal their perspectives towards the two treatments given to them. This quasi-experimental design involves 24 students in the second year in the Business department of a vocational tertiary school in Indonesia. Half were assigned to the experimental class, and the remaining to the control class. The instruments used in this study comprise writing tests, questionnaires, and interviews. Overall, 36 per cent of the students in the experimental class achieved scores more than 70. On the other hand, 27.2 per cent of the students in the control class achieved the same; most were (20 per cent) at an excellent level. From this statistical data, it can be concluded that students in the experimental class achieved higher scores than those in the control class. It convinces that implementing dictogloss activities while writing using a blog is more effective than blogging without implementing dictogloss activities. Further, the students from both experimental and control classes perceive that blogging is beneficial in improving their learning interest, and dictogloss activities are essential in building their confidence in writing. It is advised that future research thoroughly examine other possible treatments which can guide students in writing through technological tools such as blogging.

Nowadays, most people must be proficient in English for its position as an international language (EIL), as its status as a Foreign Language (EFL) should not hamper students from becoming skilful in English to prepare human resources to meet future demands for intercultural communication in academic settings and global works. To help students prepare with it, English for specific purposes (ESP) needs to be evaluated and, if necessary, redesigned to sharpen students' communication skills.
In the ESP context, the high demand for English, such as in business courses, aims to fulfil the requirements for communication skills (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998). Communication can be either spoken or written form. In written form, people nowadays have easy access to the myriad presences of social media such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Those web 2.0 platforms are implementable to be used to apply EFL learning through blogging (Bista, 2015). There are also smartphones, laptops, iPods, and other devices that could be used in a pedagogical setting.
In ELT, blogging is a technological tool for interacting with people from all around the world (Pinkman, 2018) which can be used to facilitate writing skills, particularly content development in higher education context (Dowling, 2013). While blogging, students might be given a treatment that can optimize the success of writing activities on that platform. One of them is dictogloss. Vasiljevic (2010) believed that dictogloss is an approach that may be used in conjunction with collaborative learning to help EFL students improve their listening abilities. Listening activities offered by dictogloss are beneficial to scaffold students in writing through some instructions. Further, it helps to strengthen their analytical abilities and critical thinking skills, promote both writing and feedback, facilitate student-centred collaborative learning (Bista, 2015), exercise students' autonomy, a focus on meaning, diversity, critical thinking abilities, alternative assessment, and lecturers as co-learners (Istiqomah et al., 2022;Jacobs & Farrell, 2001).
For the rapid growth of technology, instructional practices recently integrated those digital tools into classroom settings. This study seeks its benefit by using one of the technological assistances called blogging and practicing the dictogloss technique while using the blog. Hence, revealing the result of such a hybrid strategy in writing class would be arguably interesting.
Writing is a cognitively and linguistically demanding activity for higher education students. It is even more challenging when writing in a foreign language like English. Therefore, students need to be scaffolded by both techniques and tools in learning writing. This study explored the use of the technique in teaching writing by using one of the popular methods called dictogloss while deploying blogging as the media of writing. It is oriented to uncover the effectiveness of the two treatments in improving the student's writing skills. Further, their perspectives towards blogging and dictogloss in writing activities are second to scrutinize.
Studies on the implementation of dictogloss in teaching writing are not novel for various objectives. For language skills and knowledge, the use of dictogloss has been oriented to finding out its effectiveness in improving students' listening at the secondary level (Akib & Saputra, 2019;Huda et al., 2014;Istiqomah et al., 2022;Susanti, 2014;Widiastuti & Padilah, 2022). Further, dictogloss seems popular at the tertiary level, as conducted by Samosir (2020) and Susanti (2014), who also use it for listening classes. Further, the use of dictogloss for writing skills (Ariyuni et al., 2021;Firmansyah, 2020;Rangkuti et al., 2021;Ratnaningsih, 2016;Sugondo et al., 2021;Tsuraya & Rauf, 2022;Zaki, 2022) and also grammar (Hermansyah & Santoso, 2018;Wacana, 2022) show that its widely used method is popular in the context of Indonesia in either secondary or tertiary level.
It is believed that even though the method is essential to optimize instructional practices, mediums such as blogging have a significant role too. This study tries to do a hybrid learning practice by using the dictogloss technique and blogging as a medium of writing for the students expecting better outcomes in writing skills. Studies on the use of blogging are common in many contexts. Some of them are by Sanjaya et al. (2020), who scrutinized its function in students' writing skills. Others also focus on writing skills when using blogging, such as Anggrarini and Wati (2019), Arini (2020), Arochman and Yosintha (2020), Arifin et al. (2022), and Mabuan (2018). Blogging was also used to improve students' speaking skills by scholars like Marzuki and Nurpahmi (2019) and Shih (2010). Finally, it was also applied to generate content (Dowling, 2013).
For a considerable number of studies on the use of dictogloss and blogging in English instructional practices, this study starts from the idea of combining the two to become a hybrid way of learning English for a theoretical basis that dictogloss encourages students to be able to jot down as much information as possible, then think critically and creatively (Wajnryb, 1990). They then create and reconstruct their knowledge within a small group to write what they understand, whether a keyword or a phrase, which they later collaborate to construct a text without altering the original text's meaning. Here is where blogging is functional. Wells (2006) and Dyrud et al. (2005) claimed that blogging is an effective interactive tool for fostering students' motivations for learning, both collaborative and autonomous, and notably for producing and reconstructing new knowledge. Laal and Ghodsi (2012) assert that three factors affect learning success: The first is that students can interact with their collaborative peers by providing argumentative and detailed explanations of their ideas. Second, socio-cognitive conflict encourages students to consider whether their prior knowledge conflicts with that of their learning partners. The debate process requires students to communicate to reach an agreement. Wolvin and Coakley (1985) noted that there are five distinct types of listening: 1) discriminative; 2) comprehensive; 3) critical; 4) therapeutic; and 5) appreciative.
In this study, the steps of implementing dictogloss using blogging as the medium of writing in the classroom context are summarized as follows: (a) the teacher instructed students to create blogs on websites they like and exchange them with their classmates; (b) the teacher provided five dialogues from native speakers (audio recorded, Book: Business Result, Intermediate, OUP); (c) the audio was played several times at an average speed, and the students were instructed to do nothing but listen carefully; (d) the audio was then played several times at an average speed, and students were instructed to jot down key words, a phrase, or a clause they could hear; (e) the teacher helped and gave clues written on the board; (f) the students then worked together in a small group of four to create and reconstruct the text collaboratively; (g) then they posted them on their blogs; (h) in the blogs, each student might give comment and made corrections after the scripts of the audio were given to them. Peer correction could take place outside of the classroom due to the student's use of online blogging. Roschelle and Teasley (1995) note that the collaborative process is primarily synchronic because synchronous activities require each student to communicate cooperatively; (i) last but not least, the teacher assessed the students' texts and provided feedback. A set of these activities potentially give the students some learning experiences, such as collaborative learning and critical thinking, which are beneficial for their future as collaboration and critical thinking are part of survival skills in the 21 st century.
The question is addressed to how significant is the role of dictogloss as a scaffolder in writing practice. To answer this question, 24 students of a vocational tertiary institution were involved. All of the students experienced learning writing using blogging. However, half of them were scaffolded using the dictogloss technique, while the other half were not. Therefore, this study focuses on (a) finding out the effectiveness of implementing dictogloss using blogging as the learning medium compared to using blogging without dictogloss technique as well as (b) revealing the students' perspectives on the use of blogging with and without dictogloss technique.

METHOD Research Design
A quasi-experimental design was used to determine the effectiveness of using blogging guided by the dictogloss technique in writing skills. Hence, there are two types of research subjects to be compared. They are the control class and the experimental class. Further, to reveal the students' perspectives on using blogs as a writing medium, a questionnaire was distributed to 24 students. Then, an interview was also involved in crosschecking the results of the two previous instruments. Data collection and analysis in the quantitative study uses inferential statistics, including normality and homogeneity test. Table 1 shows the model of quasi-experimental design (Gay & Airasian, 2000).

Population and Sampling
There were 24 Business department students in a vocational tertiary school involved in this study. The students were taken from the only class in the cohort and then randomly divided into two groups. One group consists of 12 students assigned to the experimental class. The remaining twelve students were assigned to the control class. Questionnaires were delivered to the two groups to collect data on the students' perspectives of class implementation utilizing blogging and dictogloss. The control group had no instruction in blog writing, whereas the experimental group received training in blog writing and collaboration among blog members. Instruments used to collect all the data are writing tests in the form of instruction, questionnaires, and interviews.

Writing test
The writing test was conducted by instructing to write a functional text in the blog each student has created. Practically, after the treatment was done in each class, every student was given similar writing instruction. To measure the students' writing competence, the scoring rubric was designed. The indicators include grammar, cohesion and coherence, content, and vocabulary. Table 2 depicts the indicator and score distribution.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire is designed to reveal the students' perspectives towards the use of blogging and what they think of the implementation of guided writing using dictogloss, and no guidance in writing has made any difference to the quality or competence of their writing skills. More specifically, items of the questionnaire were developed based on the following inquiries: (a) the use of blogging in writing activities; (b) the benefit of guided collaborative blogging; (c) affective domain's writing on the blog; and (d) whether adopting blogging to improve their writing. The scoring system used a Likert scale with four choices ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, with each choice having its score to be converted into a per centage. The authors developed the items and involved one expert to validate (face validity).

Interview
The interview in this study aims to crosscheck the result of the writing test and questionnaire. It was a semi-structured interview asking four students from each control and experimental class. Eight students were chosen randomly and given some questions after they finished the writing activities and followed the test. Hence, the interviews were to deeply analyse and provide a reason for the writing scores obtained by students from the experimental and control groups and crosscheck the questionnaires' results in depth.

FINDINGS Students' writing achievements
The students were given five sets of writing exercises during the study. A different treatment was guided writing, where the experimental group was given the dictogloss technique using a book entitled Business Results: Intermediate Student's Book (Hughes & Naunton, 2008). Further, the experimental group was also led to collaboration and peer feedback while blogging within the implementation of dictogloss. On the other hand, the control group was not given any treatment but blogging, in which they were free to use the blog. Using the same exercises, the data from each group were compared to reveal the effects of the treatment. Table 3 depicts the result of writing practices in the experimental class.  Table 3 informs the students' writing achievement in five assigned tasks. Six scoring levels started from lower than or equal to 50 to 90 -100. It was found that the students' most frequent score is between 71 to 80. There is a slightly different range of scores of 12, which were 81 -90. Even though there were five occurrences in which students' scores in this class were lower than 50, it was only a small number of five. Surprisingly, ten papers obtained almost perfect scores. The remaining others were scored 51 to 60 and 61 to 70 with equal occurrences of 10. On the other hand, students in the control group were also given similar tests. Table 4 depicts the score results.  Table 4 shows a quite different result score compared to Table 2. It was informed that most of the scores obtained by the students from test 1 to test 5 are lower than or equal to 50, with 18 out of 60 papers written by 12 students in the class. Score 51 to 60 and 61 to 70 are similar to 15. Further, only one paper achieved 91 -100 or excellent writing. It can be concluded that there was a significant difference in results compared to] experimental and control classes. It means that dictogloss implementation while using blogging gives dramatic differences in results in the students' writing achievement. The comparison of significant differences in writing achievement can be more clearly understood by looking at Table 5.  Table 5 shows a considerable achievement difference between the experimental and control classes. Specifically, only 5 out of 60 students obtained scores lower than 50 in the experimental group. Contrastively, 30 per cent of the whole papers scored lower than or equal to 50 in control lass. Further, 16.6 per cent of the students achieved a level of excellence, while only 1.6 per cent obtained the same level in the control class. Overall, 36 per cent of the students in the experimental class achieved scores more than 70. On the other hand, 27.2 per cent of the students in the control class achieved the same; most were (20 per cent) at an excellent level. From this statistical data, it can be concluded that students in the experimental class achieved higher scores than those in the control class.

Students' Perspectives
The findings of questionnaire-based interviews with students indicated that they were interested in the method used; it is known that 12 students expressed interest, five expressed less interest, and three did not respond. Dictogloss can assist students in achieving language teaching and listening objectives such as creative thinking, listening, writing, autonomous learning, and collaborative learning. Jacobs and Small's (2003) research shows that students have a better knowledge of texts when the lecturer reads them repeatedly while the students listen, and then the students write them down according to their understanding.
A quantitative method is taken so that the results of teaching and learning techniques involving creative thinking and collaborative learning via blogging can be described more descriptively. To enhance creative thinking, it is utilized as an independent variable to evaluate the dependent variable, namely listening and writing skills, because these activities are interrelated and will allow students to practice both skills concurrently. The findings of the dictogloss and creative thinking listening tests indicate that these strategies can be utilized to improve students' writing abilities. The students' reactions to five assertions about their blogging experience were summarized in Table 6. The statements covered 1) writing style and register, 2) writing structure, 3) word choice and spelling, 4) grammar, and 5) editing. Editing was unanimously recognized as the most critical component and was the only one on which all students agreed. 66.7 per cent highly agreed, while 33.3 per cent felt that blogging prompted them to revise their work by carefully rewriting their arguments and presenting ideas. The participants deemed editing critical because writing is permanent, and they needed to maintain their language, particularly as ESP learners.
Grammar was the second most agreed-upon component, with 97 per cent agreement (42.4 per cent strongly agreed and 54.6 per cent agreed). Students stated that writing on the blog taught them to be more conscientious about grammar usage. Only one student (3 per cent of the class) expressed disagreement with the assertions-the third most crucial context concerned word choice and spelling.

Figure 1. Examples of students' feedback
Grammar errors by blog students typically fall into the following categories: Sentence patterns with a subject and a predicate. The sentence pattern 'he work' contains inconsistencies. 'He works' should be substituted for 'he work'. Further, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students could construct paragraphs. Even though there are still grammatical faults in 'Barbie Needs,' the topic sentence is considered in conjunction with the supporting sentence. They can use 'Pronouns' as a tool for cohesion. Additionally, they employ 'Transitions ' to provide extra explanations for supporting sentences without sequencing properly. For example, they write 'Finally' without writing the preceding phases such as 'First,' 'Second,' and 'Third.' Students continue to make frequent errors regarding the subject + predicate sentence form. They assume that the singular subject is identical to the plural subject in form. Students continue to struggle with the tenses in the second text. Students are unaware of the appropriate tenses for dialogue/text. Despite having the same level of agreement (97 per cent) with the second highest component, only 12.1 per cent strongly agreed, and 84.9 per cent agreed that writing blogs had caused them to be more careful with their word choice and spelling. With 90.9 per cent agreement, the fourth highest component was the writing structure. 9.1 per cent strongly agreed, and 81.8 per cent agreed that blogging had taught them to be more conscientious about sentence and paragraph structure. Three students (9.1 per cent) disagreed, claiming that writing on the blog had yet to teach them to be more conscientious about the structure of their writing. The component with the lowest agreement rate was the style and register of writing. 12.1 per cent of students (n=4) strongly agreed, whereas 72.7 per cent (n=24) agreed that blogging required them to utilize academic writing style and register. The remaining 15.2 per cent of respondents expressed disagreement with the assertion. According to the findings in Table 7, it was clear that most participants had a favourable attitude about using blogs for writing. 54.5 per cent of participants (n= 18) strongly agreed with the statement that they loved posting on blogs to improve their writing skills. The findings show that teaching writing via blog might pique students' interest in the subject due to the participatory element of the blog, which allows users to contribute materials such as photographs, music, videos, and applications. 93.9 per cent (n= 31) of participants agreed that their argumentation and descriptive writing might be better by online blogging. The students' favourable attitudes and comments indicated that blogging was an effective tool for practising writing, motivating them to improve their writing skills. This conclusion recommended that blogging be integrated into the English language classroom's writing instruction. The students' attitudes toward the notion that blogging improved their English writing were summarized in Table 8. Concerning issue 8, more than 60 per cent of participants strongly believed that blogging was an effective method of teaching English writing. This indicated that a blog may be a more dependable method of teaching writing than the more traditional method. Teaching writing through a blog allows for interaction between the teacher and students in both formal and casual learning environments. Meanwhile, 39.4 per cent (n=13) agreed, and 57.6 per cent (n=19) strongly agreed that blogging may help academic writers improve their quality. The public nature of the blog pushes users to focus more on the topic and language used in their writing. Eight per cent (n=27) of respondents stated that blogs could drive them to write more actively and interactively. As participants attempted to build an emotional connection with the reader through talks on personal subjects, their postings made them feel emotionally attached and eager for feedback.

DISCUSSION
The role of dictogloss as a guide in writing using blogs has a significant effect in optimizing the students' writing achievement. Dictogloss enhances their ability to communicate in writing. The current study confirms prior research (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001) by demonstrating that the dictogloss technique can promote collaborative learning activities in groups that display knowledge of tenses. Additionally, the study's findings are similar to the research results of Mehdiabadi and Arabmofrad (2014), indicating that listening training utilizing the dictogloss technique produces superior results compared to writing without training. Consequently, 75 per cent of students believed that writing a blog using dictogloss increased their awareness of vocabulary and spelling, and 67 per cent said that it increased their understanding of grammar. While 93.9 per cent of students believed that writing on a blog may help them improve their argument and description, they had a favourable view of using the blog to motivate their writing abilities. It concludes that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning. Further, the students' perspectives towards guided writing, such as the dictogloss technique, are essential in writing. It is in line with Firmansyah (2020) and Sugondo et al. (2021), who claimed that students feel supported and more confident in writing when dictogloss is given to them. Students agreed that their writing skills through blogging provided invaluable experience, as they gained fresh motivation for expressing their ideas more positively and constructing their belief in learning English as a result of this task. However, other students stated they still lack the vocabulary necessary to personalize their ideas. Therefore, they posted text that varied in length. As can be seen, 62.5 per cent of students responded that blogging improves their English writing skills. 41.7 per cent of students responded that blogging is an alternate method for learning to write well in English, while 50per cent of students stated that writing through blogging can drive them to be more active and engaging. The other explanation could be related to the quality of peer input. Additionally, it assists students by increasing their access to competent peers who provide constructive criticism. Using Vygotsky's concept of 'Zone Proximal Development' (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978), students can engage with capable peers from various areas of the world. Students who strongly agreed to use blogs to study developed a more critical perspective as their writing became more logical and unified. While the outcomes of writing in a grammatically correct structure are encouraging, students still require further listening training to develop a critical attitude while listening to dictation (dictogloss) in the form of text/reading or when conversing about business topics. Students frequently make errors in picking the predicate throughout the writing process, and it is a catastrophic error if the subject and predicate are incorrect, as well as the tense, as the outcome becomes distinct meanings. Signage is widely used, although only in part. While pronouns and transitions between sentences have been successfully employed to create cohesiveness within paragraphs, some manuscripts have improperly applied tenses as a cohesion metric. Students are unaware of which tenses are most appropriate for their constructions' text.
This study replicated prior findings (Collins, 2007;Jacobs & Farrell, 2001), demonstrating that the dictogloss approach can boost collaborative learning activities in groups that demonstrate knowledge of tenses. Additionally, the research indicates that listening training employing the dictogloss technique produces superior results compared to no training. The listening results demonstrate that the treatment group outperformed the control group. Similar findings from research by Vasiljevic (2010) indicate that the dictogloss technique is multitasking activities and skills. The post-test findings revealed that the writing score was heavily weighted toward content, as there were two students classified as 'very good' since ideas, topics or themes, focus, facts, and writing illustrations can be flawless, demonstrating mastery of substantial knowledge. Four students were classified as "excellent" because they 'possess some adequate knowledge of the subject.' Three individuals are classified as 'enough' due to insufficient mastery of a topic or content. Meanwhile, only one person was classified as 'extremely poor' or inadequate in mastering subject and substantive knowledge.

CONCLUSION
Using blogs to support collaborative learning and a student-centred focus on learning to create and reconstruct knowledge is appropriate. A few students said they initially encountered difficulty but agreed that the course was challenging and motivating. While using dictogloss and creative thinking strategies, post-test outcomes significantly improved compared to students who did not receive the training. This study highlights a considerable achievement difference between the experimental and control classesprecisely, only five out of 60 students obtained scores lower than 50 in the experimental group. Contrastively, 30 per cent of the whole papers scored lower than or equal to 50 in control lass. Further, 16.6 per cent of the students achieved a level of excellence, while only 1.6 per cent obtained the same level in the control class. Overall, 36 per cent of the students in the experimental class achieved scores more than 70.
On the other hand, 27.2 per cent of the students in the control class achieved the same; most were (20 per cent) at an excellent level. From this statistical data, it can be concluded that students in the experimental class achieved higher scores than those in the control class. This study has the following implications about the use of dictogloss and blogging in the classroom: Before using dictogloss, students should have a variety of vocabulary to use and be able to deal with the topics of listening and writing; students need to learn about sentence coherence and grammatical use by constructing a scaffolding from the first semester of studying English, given that English is learned as a foreign language or specific purposes in Indonesia and assuming that they know English in several semesters from general English to specific one.