Wondering of the potential scope of blogging for class use, I decided to try something a bit unusual for some of my university students in the English teaching major. Since most of my students in the BIN-04 Reading Skills I class do have access to the Internet from home, or a nearby Cyber Café, I challanged them to create a Vocabulary Log Blog. So all together christened the task Log-Blogs.
My students are currently using the book written by Dr. Neil Anderson, Active Reading Book 1 (second edition), since they are intermediate beginning students with good language skill. And due to the fact that I surveyed the class to have an idea of what skills they have in terms of Internet use, I felt ashamed that most of "my kids" are way more prepared than their professor, which I think is a great advantage.
Due to the fact that our university requires us professors to use the university's web platform and existing tools, and because not only professors but students have access to all of this freely, I divided my 20-student class into 4 groups to work on their Log-Blog.
The idea is to create vocabulary logs from the readings from the book Active Reading to help others find suitable definitions for the new lexicons they find in each book unit, either by using synonyms or antonyms or by providing their own definitions, according to their level. (No dictionary definition-like entry is accepted.)
As not to make the activity repetitive, I asked 50% of the class to create word family charts. Through this task students increase their vocabulary and help their peers increase theirs.
This is just our second week of class this term with my students, and I look forward to seeing what they have in store for me and for their partners. I am sure each one of us will benefit from the experience. Eventually I will move to blogger.com to have their works posted for other students to have a look at.
Jonathan
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