Ricardo's blog !!

Looking in the blog of Ricardo, what called my attention the most was the Fact that he has not many mistakes. Actually, one of his most frequent errors is the word choice such as environment instead of air or like instead of life. The misused of articles (a-an) and the lack of some words (the) are minimum details, that he has to be aware of. However, his writing is quite good and understandable.

Let's look at hector's blog !!

Looking in Hector’s blog I could realized that the most frequent errors that he does is to translate word by words from Spanish to English, thus, loosing the coherence and the main idea of what he want to say because the sentences are a little bit choppy. Another frequent mistake is the lack of auxiliaries. Probably it is not the lack of aux. but the misused of them. Finally, the use of the Spanish form in the building of the paragraph, it is an obstacle to understand his post.

"ERROR CORRECTION KEY FOR RICARDO"

Hello Ricardo, as you know we will work with you this semester. I have read your last 2 posts to make an error correction key. Probably you do not know what I am talking about, ok! Let’s explain you a little bit of this

Error correction key: they are some symbols that help you to recognize the kind of error that you have made. For example:

You wrote: Teacher English (w.o.)
The correct sentence should be: English teacher

However, I could realize that you have very good English, your English friend did really help you a lot!! And do not worry for grammar because until now you have done a very good job with it, you can manage it almost correctly. As everybody you have some problems but they are not many.

This is the list that we will use:

M.W: missing word
SPG: Spanglish
S. I: same idea (repeating)
C. I: confusing idea
W.O: word order
W.E: wrong expression

I hope these Symbols can help you!!

"ERROR CORRECTION KEY FOR HECTOR"

Hello Hector!!
As you know we will work with you this semester. Our main task is to help you to write better and for me it is to gain experience correcting different works. I have read your last 2 posts to make an error correction key and make this job fastener. Probably you do not know what I am talking about, ok! Let’s explain you a little bit of this.

Error correction key: they are some symbols that help you to recognize the kind of error that you have made. For example:

You wrote: Teacher English (w.o.)
The correct sentence should be: English teacher

I hope you have understood this! Now, I send to you the complete list of error correction key.

W.O: word order
W.E: wrong expression
S.O: sentences order
I. S: incomplete sentence
SPG: Spanglish
C.I: confusing
L.S: long sentence
W. T: wrong tense
C: capitalization
P: punctuation

OK! These are the symbols that we can use to recognize your mistakes.

"Coming back to blogs"

Going back to blogs, I think that this semester it is going to be more demanding because we have the responsability to help people we do not know. This time we have to put much effort than before because they really need to improve their writing and we have to gain experience. I hope this new way of work can be useful for both sides and by the time they improve their English, we can feel more what teachers do. I hope we will have good performances on this task.

....the last words in this blog....

Working with blogs can be a very good tool that helps you to see the progress that your students are having in your subject. Nowadays, blogs have increased their popularity because teachers and students are using them to accomplish tasks for schools. This is a good way to engage your students to your subject, through something that they are use to, technology. However, its use has to be always guarded by you because internet has a lot of information, that sometimes is not good for your students.

The main advantages of using blogs, is the way how you can share your interests with others with the same ones. You write about whatever you want and your friends get into your blogs and leave a message to you, adding more information or just saying something funny about what you have written, for example: the time, when we should talk about a painting that has called our attention the most, I did it based on the one called “The Scream” and Nathalia left me a message adding more information and agreeing in almost all the info that I gave (her comments seemed very clever). I didn’t understand why she knew too much about my post. But, when I reacted and went to her blog, I realized that she had done the same as me!! That was so fun because I thought she was very interesting in my post.

Another advantage for using blogs in the classroom is that you can increase the writing in your students, and they will not realize of this (they will think that this is just another assignments to get a new grade for the course). You can check all the blogs and see the strengths and weaknesses that they have in the are that you are measuring, as Simon did with us in this course.

On the other hand, what has been threatening me the most, it’s that internet spreads a lot info that sometimes it is not appropriated for students. So, it is necessary, that the teachers teach the students to discriminate the websites (where they have to go and look for information) beferore the task starts, in order to avoid they can find bad influence from it.

Finally, work with blogs in classrooms can be useful, to increase to your students the love for writing, through a way that they are used to. Thus, they will feel more engaged with this task and like this more willing to accomplish all the goals that this activities present along the process. However, the teachers have to be aware of the websites that their students are going to be using, in order they can find erroneous information

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

sorry!!