Ghada Awada, Abir Abdallah
American University of Beirut and Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon
ghadawada@gmail.com, abirabdallah@gmail.com
English for Lawyers Weblog: Using Weblogs to Promote Legal
English in the Classroom
Ghada Awada
Abir Abdallah
Abstract
This study aims at investigating the efficiency of blogs in enhancing the writing skills of
lawyers and in raising the lawyers' motivation. The participants of the study are
Lebanese lawyers receiving twelve 4-hour- legal -English sessions.Lawyers, in Lebanon,
are not usually good at legal English since the majority of the law courses in Lebanon are
in Arabic. However, due to globalization, the Lebanese lawyers started to receive a lot of
cases and contracts that demand mastery of the legal English needed to negotiate in
writing using legal English. The participants of the study are 16 lawyers whose ages
range from 26 to 48 years old and are randomly assigned to a control group and an
experimental one. The participants receive legal English instruction for twelve weeks. The
instruction covers the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The only difference
is that the control group doesn't employ the blog to communicate with each other and
with the instructor, whereas the experimental group receives the feedback,
announcements and comments from the instructor via blog, and the instructor publishes
all their good written assignments on the blog ,and in turn they comment and share the
posts which are mainly their own writings with friends . The instruments employed in the
study are a pretest that inspects the participants’ written performance and the use of
legal terms and structure in both the control and experimental groups before carrying out
any instruction, and a posttest that examines any significant difference in the
participants’ written performance and acquisition of legal English in both groups after
twelve weeks of instruction. Moreover, a questionnaire that investigates the participants’
motivation is administered to the participants in both groups before the instructional
period and another questionnaire is administered at the end of the instructional period.
The SPSS is used in data analysis.
American University of Beirut and Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon
ghadawada@gmail.com, abirabdallah@gmail.com
English for Lawyers Weblog: Using Weblogs to Promote Legal
English in the Classroom
Ghada Awada
Abir Abdallah
Abstract
This study aims at investigating the efficiency of blogs in enhancing the writing skills of
lawyers and in raising the lawyers' motivation. The participants of the study are
Lebanese lawyers receiving twelve 4-hour- legal -English sessions.Lawyers, in Lebanon,
are not usually good at legal English since the majority of the law courses in Lebanon are
in Arabic. However, due to globalization, the Lebanese lawyers started to receive a lot of
cases and contracts that demand mastery of the legal English needed to negotiate in
writing using legal English. The participants of the study are 16 lawyers whose ages
range from 26 to 48 years old and are randomly assigned to a control group and an
experimental one. The participants receive legal English instruction for twelve weeks. The
instruction covers the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The only difference
is that the control group doesn't employ the blog to communicate with each other and
with the instructor, whereas the experimental group receives the feedback,
announcements and comments from the instructor via blog, and the instructor publishes
all their good written assignments on the blog ,and in turn they comment and share the
posts which are mainly their own writings with friends . The instruments employed in the
study are a pretest that inspects the participants’ written performance and the use of
legal terms and structure in both the control and experimental groups before carrying out
any instruction, and a posttest that examines any significant difference in the
participants’ written performance and acquisition of legal English in both groups after
twelve weeks of instruction. Moreover, a questionnaire that investigates the participants’
motivation is administered to the participants in both groups before the instructional
period and another questionnaire is administered at the end of the instructional period.
The SPSS is used in data analysis.
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