Employing an explanatory sequential design, this study investigated the effects of a blog-mediated writing course on the students’ writing motivation, self-efficacy, and self-regulation. A number of 46 Iranian English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners from two intact university classes were recruited as the participants and were randomly assigned to the Control Group (N = 21) and the Experimental Group (N = 25). Over a 16-week university semester, the Control Group was taught using traditional writing instruction while the Experimental Group was taught using a blog-mediated writing course. The data were collected through administration of the three scales measuring second language writing motivation, self-efficacy, and self-regulation. In addition, to reveal a more comprehensive understanding of the blog-mediated writing instruction, a set of semi-structured interviews were conducted with a number of participants in the experimental group. ANCOVA analyses and thematic data coding were conducted for the quantitative and qualitative data analyses respectively. The findings revealed that integrating blogs into EFL writing instruction helped students to have more writing motivation and writing self-regulation than the control group students who only received regular in-class instruction. However, the blog-mediated writing course decreased the writing self-efficacy of the EFL students. The findings offer theoretical and pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction.
