Reading Prompt #2

Egbert talked about seven conditions for classroom language learning. For achieving most of the conditions, blogs can be a really good tool. First, blogs can bring authentic audiences and tasks to the language learners. Their learning activities are not limited in the classroom anymore thanks to the blogs. Teachers can create projects like the one Egbert said in Example 1 “ The students were asked to build Web pages for organizations in the community” or Example 2 “The students used the software to create word puzzles they could use to practice the focus vocabulary”. Although the students in these two groups have different language proficiency, they both have the opportunity to interact with teammates and people outside the classroom and have activities in the real world. Those are authentic audiences and tasks which cannot be achieved through traditional education methods.

Second, teachers should know that teaching is supposed to in accordance of the students’ educational and cultural backgrounds or aptitude, and that is possible through blogs. Students can get enough time to produce varied and creative language on blogs, receiving appropriate administering feedback from the teacher. Great feedbacks may motivate the students and get their attentions back.

Finally, blog has a work atmosphere with an ideal stress/anxiety level, which makes students feel comfortable to use the target language freely online, getting rid of the worrying of not being good enough to talk in front of others. Teacher can also make the students learn autonomously through blogs, like ask the learners to choose their own book to read and write short essays of the topics from those books. As Egbert said “Allowing learners to control some facets of their learning can help the teacher to provide for different language levels, interests, and learning styles.”

When I was creating my blog, I felt that everything is good except the title and the template of my blog. I picked a very poetic name for my blog in Chinese, so I tried to translate the words into English. Then I realized that it might not a proper way, because the culture between east and west are so different, there’s a chance that the translation might be misunderstood. About the template, I hope we can learn how to make our own template in the future; I want my blog to be attractive.

I’m not quite sure about what I am going to blog, but I do have some questions about learning a dialect and learning a language. I started to learn Chinese at the age of 8, before that, I spoke my dialect. But now, I speak Chinese even more proficiently than my dialect. What’s opposite, my English is far way worse than my Chinese, although I started to learn English just 6 years after I started to learn Chinese. So I think maybe I will post this on my blog.