Students Are Writing Blogs!

Back to school, I assign students to create blogs for my courses. I got some nice blogs. They are still improving. I am very proud of them. This is one of my joys of being a teacher. Here is the link: http://teachchinese.blogspot.com/ Check student blogs section on right side.

It is really a good tool allowing students to write freely in their blogs, so that they can train themselves to have a habit of writing, most importantly to enjoy writing. This free writing practice can be lead to instructional or structured writing later on in different subject classes. This transition is quite crucial for our students considering the fact that they are lack of reading and writing in many areas during their previous schooling. The challenge is how we can get students with very limited writing skills to write. I would suggest that let them read their classmates blogs first. By reading other classmate blogs, it may interest them to express themselve in some ways. Hopefully this interest can push them to write. In my assignments, I provide both free writing practice and instructional writing practice. Let's see how much they can improve.