3) Giving Students the Self-confidence
This is a finding that emanated from the students’ lack of trust or lack of confidence in their classmates because they are ESL students and not proficient enough in English.
One aspect of trust and confidence pertains to how the students viewed their classmates’ ability to critique their work. The acceptance or rejection of feedback is based on the students’ trust in the reviewer and confidence in their advice, and they have the least amount of trust in their own classmates because they are nonnative speakers of English just as they are. However, blogging has provided the students with a broader audience with whom to interact, they believe that they could learn and improve their writing skills from those who are more knowledgeable than they are.
On the other side of the issue, the students’ degrees of self-confidence affect their judgment to accept or reject the comments of others. This is a factor that blogging and its ability to reach an outside audience for feedback could not overcome. For example, Rahila feels insecure in her knowledge of English, whereas, Mei-Li is very secure in her abilities to the point that she feel she is always correct. In fact, she often says she dose not make changes on her writing because she always thinks everyone is wrong and she is right. Nestor is an enigma because he dose not have confidence in his writing skills, but he is the best writer in the class. Several students feel comfortable with his suggestions because they recognize his good writing skills. However, he is insecure about the advice he is giving to his classmates.