O n f e r e n c e

Ghada Awada, Abir Abdallah 
American University of Beirut and Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon 
[e-mail], [e-mail] 
English for Lawyers Weblog: Using Weblogs to Promote Legal 
English in the Classroom 
 
 
Bio data 
Ghada Awada
:
 
I hold Ph.D. in International Relations with the highest distinction from
HEP 
–CEDS ,Paris. I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and German 
Studies in Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain. I taught and gave many workshops and 
different courses at many universities. I acted as AUB Consultant in 2012 and 2013. I 
have an extensive experience in teaching and coordination at Public Secondary Schools. I 
have authored 10 law and English books so far. I was awarded many appreciation 
certificates by the Ministry of Education (2004 ), Lebanese university (2005)and 
Teaching Excellence trophy by LAU (2013).
 
Abir Abdallah
:I’m currently a PHD student in the Department of English and German 
Studies in Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain. I have been teaching English as a first 
foreign language for thirteen years. I’m presently a teacher and a coordinator in a 
secondary public school in Beirut. Moreover, I’m an instructor in the language center of 
the faculty of Sciences in the Lebanese University. I also teach ESP to MA students there. 
I have a teaching diploma in intermediate classes, a teaching diploma in secondary 
classes and a master’s degree in English language and literature.
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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-41- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
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