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Learning Language And Vocabulary In Dialogue With The Real Audience: Exploring Young Writers’ Authentic Writing And Language Learning Experiences, Ewa Mcgrail, J. Patrick Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger

Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications

Purpose: To explore the potential of conversations with an authentic audience through blogging for enriching in the young writers the understanding of the communicative function of writing, specifically language and vocabulary use.

Design: We situate our work in a language acquisition model of language learning where learners develop linguistic competence in the process of speaking and using the language (Krashen, 1988; Tomasello, 2005). We also believe that language learning benefits from formal instruction (Krashen, 1988). As such, in our work, we likened engaging in blogging to learning a language (here, more broadly conceived as learning to write) through both natural …