questions to make us think about the blog

Hi everyone,

Thanks to the students who have already expressed their opinion about the blog. Could I ask the others to share their opinions as well?

If you prefer, you can consider some of the questions below. I hope this will help you to reflect on the experience and make us all better bloggers and language learners.


1. Is this your first blog?

2. What do you think of the blogging so far?

3. Do you find it useful? Why/ Why not?

4. Do you read the blog regularly? When do you usually do that?

5. How often do you post comments a week:
rarely
sometimes
twice a week
more than twice a week?

Why do you think is that?

6. Have you commented on other students’ posts? Which topics have you found the most interesting?

7. Which language skill do you think you can improve the most with the help of the blog?

8. Is there anything that you can achieve through blogging much easily than through classroom time?

9. Do you think you have improved as a language learner with the help of the blog? In what ways?

10. Do you have any suggestions for how we should go about the blog for the remaining time of the course?


11. Is there anything else you want to comment on?

Thanks and see you in a bit in class,
ralitza

under a scrutinising eye

Hi everyone,

Further to the posts about the writing criteria and error correction, I was wondering how you'll feel about the following suggestion.

Any student who would like to have all her/his posts under the scrutinising eyes of the other students, can express so in this thread. For example, a student considers that she/he wants to improve the quality of his writing and volunteers to have all her/his posts discussed by other students. That will mean that the students will read all posts made so far by the student in question and comment on the quality of her/his posts.

The students can then discuss the good points of the writing as well as provide suggestions if there are any shortcomings. This will give feedback on the quality of the writing and generate discussions in class.

In the meantime, can I encourage you to go back to the post about the writing criteria and continue with the discussion about what accounts for a good writing. This will give us clear guidelines for the assessment.

Keep writing!

Warm regards,
ralitza

Teddy Bear

How We Got the "Teddy Bear"

The teddy bear is a child's toy ,a nice soft stuffed animal suitable for cuddling.

It is,however,a toy with an interesting history behind it.

Theodore Roosevelt, or Teddy as he was commonly called , was preesident of theUnited States from 1901 to1909 .

He was an unusally active man with varied pastimes, oneof which was hunting.

One day the president was invited to take part in a bear hunt ; an inasmuch as Teddy was president , his host wanted to ensure that he caught a bear .

A bear was captured, clanked over the head to knock it out. and tied to a tree; however,Teddy, who really wanted to actually hunt, refused to shoot the bear and in fact demanded that the bear be extricated from the ropes; that is , he demanded that the bear set free.

The incident attracted a lot of attention among journalists .First a cartoon- drawn by

Clifford K.Berryman to make fun of this situation- appeard in the Washington Post , and the

cartoon was widely distributed and reprinted throughout the country.

Thentoy manufacturers began producing a toy bear wich they called a "TeddyBear"

The teddy became the most widely recognized symbol of Roosevelt's presidency.

I find it interesting thing to read about if u like to read more about Teddy Bear you can visit these wep pages

http://members.tripod.com/~bigbee/history

http://www.teddybearandfriends.com/archive/articles/history.html

blogging

Hi everyone,

and thank you Ashraf for sharing your opinion about the blog in class.

I thought it might be a good idea to provide this thread (a series of posts related to the same topic) and ask you to share your thoughts and perceptions of the process of blogging.

You can describe your experience so far and I would encourage you to return to this thread regularly (perhaps once a week) and add any new feelings, emotions, revelations*.

So, what are you initial thoughts and how would you describe your first blogging experience?

Regards,
ralitza

revelation - the process of letting people see or know something that was previously hidden, not known

writing criteria

Hi,

As I wrote in my comment on the post about error correction, tomorrow we'll be looking at the nature of most common errors and how serious we consider them for the quality of writing.

Could you comment on what criteria should be applied when assessing writing?

See you tomorrow,
ralitza

vocabulary work before today's lesson

Hi,

tough, overdone, delicious, burnt

boil, chop, roast, bake

prawn, lamb, pork, beef

Which is the word that does not belong in each group?

If you like this kind of exercise, have a look at ex. 2 on p. 51 in the workbook.

There are more activities on the vocabulary from module 7 in the workbook: p. 51/ex.1 & p. 55/ex. 10.

Do them and then report how difficult or easy you found them. What might be the reason for that? Do you need to consider again your revision techniques?

See you later,
ralitza

2 new tasks

Hi everyone,

How is the weekend? Did you find time for blogging?

Here are two more questions to ponder (to think carefully about something before reaching a decision).

The first one is about error correction. How do you feel about it? Do you view error correction on your posts as important?

What did you think of the lesson on Wednesday when we looked at a student's post and discussed ways of improving it in terms of more appropriate vocabulary and correcting some grammar and punctuation errors? Do you think this error feedback on accuracy done in class is a good idea? What other ways can you suggest of dealing with language errors?

And the second task will require to read the comments made by other students and comment on them. I'd like you to comment on the main idea, not necessarily to look for mistakes. We can refer to some often recurring mistakes in class when we do remedial work. How do you feel about this?

Eager to read your comments,
ralitza