Entry 1

  Living in modern times, I for many times thanks those genius who makes our life so colorful and convenient. Thanks to airplane, we can fly even though we do not have wings; thanks to telephone, we can talk to each other from afar even though we do not have sonorous voice. And thanks to blog we can communicate with great minds even though we do not know each other. This quality seems to make blog a ideal tool of teaching, because teaching, in my point of view, is the communication of thoughts.

 Blog, in many ways, reminds me of discussion board on UBlearns. In it, bloggers can freely post whatever they think on the their blog and others can comment on it, which is of the same function of unlearns. So the first way I can apply blog for my teaching is the same way teachers here used it. Let students post an entry about a certain topic and let others comment on it. In this way, students are actually conversing with and learn from each other. This meets the one of the TESOL standards (see here): language as a system. In blog students can engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions, which is a systematic way of using English.

 Blog, based on Internet, breaks the limits of geography. Bloggers can view blogs from other countries through which they may perceive other cultures. This also helps to meet the culture standard of TESOL. As a teacher, I will let my future students view certain different English bloggers, which is carefully selected and of cultural values, and then let them discuss about their cultural findings. In this way, students can not only use English to read, to speak, but also learn the cultures of target languages. One of advantages to use blog as cultural reference is that the thoughts or description in blogs are usually authentic. Students can directly learn what the culture really is!