blogging

Wow! It's hard to find blogging time. I feel so convinced that the more you write, the better you get at doing it. But it's hard to actually discipline myself to sit down and get my thoughts in order.

When I did my Master's degree, I had to do a lot of journalling. Usually, it was in hard copy but I like blogging better - less for the teacher to have to carry around! In any case, I was required to talk about my reactions to what I was reading and I often found that this caused me to tell personal stories relating to the topic at hand. In fact, this helped me to see how the topics were relevant to me personally. It was also reassuring to know that even though the material in our textbooks seemed so new to me (new vocabulary etc) that I really already had some experience with these things.

I think that blogging for EAP students can be potentially very helpful. I don't thing it's just "busy work". Students are busy enough. There is not need to assign extra work for no reason. If blogging is done every week, a student will become a more fluent writer and become more confident in his or her ability to express themselves. I find that EAP students often write very slowly because they doubt their abilities. Now, I know that these students will make a lot of mistakes. That's why we don't mark blogs. We just read them and make comments on the content. We're interested in the communication of ideas. I'd like to see our students continue to keep a blog for the rest of their lives.