Blogging in Language Classes

Internet and technology have become such inseparable parts of our lives that we would not know how to survive without them. They have obviously transformed the way we live and do things. They have also changed teaching practices in many ways.

We can easily use blogs in our reading classes. In my experience, students read and work on at least three-four texts in a reading class a week. They typically read a text, answer questions based on the text, have a discussion on it, work on new vocabulary items (depends on how you prefer teaching vocabulary-implicitly vs. explicitly), and do various exercises based on the text. After we complete all the reading texts that week, we can come up with a few controversial questions on each text (say 3 questions per text), and have students respond to/reflect on at least two of them. These questions should be prepared in such a way that students will be able to comment on them, reflect on them, relate to them, talk about their experiences/opinions, etc. We should ask students to respond to at least two other friends’ post so that they will be interacting with each other. As a warm up for this big blogging project, we can start with simply asking students which reading text they liked most that week and their reasons, things they learnt that they didn’t know before, their favorite quote from the text and why, if they would recommend it to a friend and why, etc. Some students are too shy to speak in front of others in a classroom. Blogging will give them a chance to express themselves. As also mentioned in Blogging in Language Learning, it will be empowering, and we will get a chance to learn about our students. Students will also be curious about how their friends will be commenting on their posts, so it will be a nice platform for interaction. We should keep this platform a welcoming and friendly one for everyone, and not let it be hostile in any way. Performance indicator that best fits this situation is ESL.C.9-12.4.1.5: Students explain actions, choices, and decisions in social and academic situations. Here you can see more details about learning standards.

We can also have our students create a blog that they will use as a diary. We can have them write once a week on how that week has been going, how their assignments are going, their social life and school life. They can post a picture that they have taken that week and talk about it, etc. In my experience, all students have one thing in common: they love complaining. They love complaining about school, teachers, classes, assignments, etc., so this activity can go out of hand and demoralize other students, but we can take all the necessary precautions to make it a friendly atmosphere where students are keeping an online diary of their life in a happy and encouraging way. We can have them ask questions to each other under their posts. They will be interested in reading each other’s post. Performance indicator that best fits this situation is ESL.C.9-12.4.1.1: Students use a variety of oral, print, and electronic forms for social communication and for writing to or for self, applying the conventions of social writing. You can also see the learning standards here.

Teachers can use blogs for professional development. I like talking about my classroom struggles and usually ask my colleagues how they would handle it. By writing about it on my blog, I can have a bigger network of teachers. There will be teachers having similar struggles, and there will be others who can recommend way(s) to deal with that problem. It will give us a chance to create a big network where we can help each other. It will also feel good to see that we are not the only ones having those problems.