Blogging is a powerful tool for language teaching and learning. It engages students, gives them the opportunity to share ideas, reflect, communicate and interact with each other. It fosters autonomous learning and it offers also a different and dynamic means of communication between teachers and students, both for developing activities and offering feedback.
Before developing this activity, you may want to have a look also at “Using a blog for language teaching” for some insights and information on using blogs in the language classroom.
This activity will show how to practice the target language using blogs.
Outcomes:
Upon completion of this task students will be able to:
- analyze and select relevant and interesting online texts
- produce written entries in a class blog
- interact in a polite and respectful manner
Technology required: Computer, Internet, class blog
Procedure:
The procedure for this task also varies depending on the specific language. Please, refer to the specific language materials for further details.
- Write a blog post, discussing a topic of interest to the class.
- Ask students to research an online article related to the topic. You can choose a topic that you are discussing in class, or the topic of the text they read in one of the following activities:
- Ask students to:
- comment on a post on the blog, and include a link to the article they have found (remind students that they need to attribute the source of the article).
- Ask students to comment and discuss entries made by their classmates in the blog (remind students to ensure their comments are respectful, even when highly critical).
- Remind students of the specific characteristics of writing for the web (Hypertext Literacy, what is it? and Using a blog for language teaching)
Reflection:
Ask students:
What is the style of your written posts in the blog? Formal/informal? Standard/colloquial? How do you determine this style? Can you identify critical comments and discuss their politeness?
Optional:
Create a list of key information provided in the blog entries in order of importance. You can use a Mindmap tool such as Wisemapping.
Source/attribution: Digilanguages Author: Laura McLoughlin, Valentina Rizzo
Additional Content
Other blog sites include:
To change the language in WordPress blog you need to perform these steps:
- Login into WordPress Blog Administrator Control Panel.
- Click on Settings.
- Select the desired language from the drop down menu at Language section (last option).
- Click on ‘save changes’.
Blogs to follow: http://www.fluentu.com/french/blog/french-blogs/
To change the language in WordPress blog you need to perform these steps:
- Login into WordPress Blog Administrator Control Panel.
- Click on Settings.
- Select the desired language from the drop down menu at Language section (last option).
- Click on ‘save changes’.
Blogs to follow: http://www.fluentu.com/german/blog/
To change the language in WordPress blog you need to perform these steps:
- Login into WordPress Blog Administrator Control Panel.
- Click on Settings.
- Select the desired language from the drop down menu at Language section (last option).
- Click on ‘save changes’
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In this activity students are asked to refer to specific reading material online. One example could be: http://www.scudit.net/mdmadeinit.htm and find other related articles online.
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Blogs to follow: http://www.fluentu.com/italian/blog/
Author: Valentina Rizzo
To change the language in WordPress blog you need to perform these steps:
- Login into WordPress Blog Administrator Control Panel.
- Click on Settings.
- Select the desired language from the drop down menu at Language section (last option).
- Click on ‘save changes’.
Blogs to follow: http://www.fluentu.com/spanish/blog/spanish-blogs/
