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A number of recent studies have identifiedclassroom blogging as a promising approach to teachingwriting in English as a second language (ESL) in non-Anglophone higher education settings. However, many ofthese research designs are methodologically inadequateand their results suffer from overestimated effects on stu-dents’ learning performance. In this regard, whether or notclassroom blogging can be safely recommended as aneffective approach to teaching writing in the ESL class-room, as suggested by previous researchers, needs a well-designed empirical reassessment. For this very purpose,this paper reports on a study which attempts to overcomethese limitations by conducting a 36-week, comparativeexperiment recruiting two groups of ESL undergraduates.The experimental group (EG) was taught how to write inEnglish using a blog-based approach, while the controlgroup (CG) was taught using traditional paper-basedmaterials and methods. The writing performance, learningmotivations, and self-efficacy beliefs of both groups wereassessed using two sets of pre- and post-tests in terms ofwriting tasks and a questionnaire. The data collected wereanalyzed using paired-samplettests, analysis of covari-ance, and multivariate analysis of covariance. The resultsof the study show that (1) both groups made significantimprovements in all of their performance in writing and intheir learning motivations and self-efficacy beliefs; (2) nosignificant difference was found between the two groups interms of their writing proficiency; but a closer examinationshows that (3) the CG significantly outperformed the EG interms of learning motivation