I have carried the experience of the Blogs for four consecutive years and I'm fully convinced that those students who get involved improve their writing skills. This is why I insisted so much. From your letters I see that those who got especially involved feel the same. Thanks for joining in and sharing! Thanks for caring!
Allow me to share with you quite a few comments from your letters that I feel summarize what you all say:
About the BLOG:s-If I had to give a prize to one of the class bloggers it would go to "Sand in my Shoes", not only because of her delicate and sensitive writings but because she was the most active commentator and this stimulated me to write.
Thanks "Sand".
-I have to say Jack the Ripper’s blog is a really good one, his English is perfect and in my opinion it’s the perfect blog in that way, but there have been others which have appealed to me more such as Sand in my shoes, because it was so artistic, or Rip Van Winkle who writes very nice pieces too.
-My preferred one had been ‘Jack the Ripper’. I think I know who the author was because we were classmates last year; he has a very good English and he wrote about very interesting topics, about history or what happens nowadays. But about art, the best has been ‘Sand in my shoes’.
-I’ve specially enjoyed the blogs by "Rip Van Winkle" and "Jack the Ripper". They are two really prolific authors and I’ve learned many things reading their posts. I would have liked to post more comments on their blogs but I haven’t found the time to do it. I’ve also enjoyed some concrete posts on the other blogs. Finally, your blog, together with Nicenet, has become a powerful tool to complement your classes because we could watch videos or read articles before and after coming to the school.
-The blog that interested me most was: “Sand in my shoes”...I used to post comments on her blog and she also used to comment some of my posts. It was interesting and strange because I think there was a connection and complicity with “Sand”. When you post something on your blog and someone makes you comments it makes you feel really good and special.
-I have a soft spot for "Sand in my Shoes" and I enjoyed reading "Carpe Diem", "Leire", "Someschetch", “Gentleman” but I have to tell you that I was really curious with "Rip Van Winkle"...
-I loved your link on your Blog "Do schools kill creativity?"
-I have to confess I was so happy when I received comments. I think that they are like a drug; you need them because they make you think that your blog helps other people to find their own voice, at the same time you are looking for the same.
-With a nickname you can hide your identity, you can play different roles. That is funny and it gives you more freedom of expression, but you know that your identity will be discovered at the end of the course.
-I think having a nickname is a good way to have people reading you without any prejudice. If people don’t know who you are, their opinion about you won’t affect their reading. On the other hand, having a nickname might become a way to write without assuming your responsibility. Some people might hide behind their nickname to write things without being totally sure of what they write and I think this puts the truth at risk. Anyway, it isn’t dangerous if people contrast information with other sources.
About Nicenet:-Good tool to check what we had been doing in class if we could not attend...
-Nicenet is a better database than the blog. This is because Nicenet makes it possible to post a lot of information organized in different categories. Therefore, you can easily find what you’re looking for because everything is in its place. You have posted nearly two hundred links on Nicenet and it would be unthinkable on the blog: we would go crazy looking for one of them. So, in this way, I think Nicenet is more useful than the blog.
-There were some links I enjoyed like the one about Steven Jobs' speech where he explains three stories about his life that I think there are lessons for all.
-I liked the Inaugural speech by the President of the United States , Barack Obama. I think it wasn't too difficult to understand his speech because the transcription of his words beside the video was very helpful too.
-I’ve enjoyed most of the videos, specially the Dead Poets Society, The Hire or that interesting documentary: The Elegant Universe.
-I think the videos are a great stuff to learn. I've really enjoyed some of them, like the video "Who killed the electric car?"... I also read Newspapers in English, watched BBC videos. The last I watched was about the man who was going to get the best paid job in Australia.
-The Newspapers, an article "After the Fiesta", Walt Whitman’s poem “Oh Captain, my Captain”, and the video of Shakespeare’s poem “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day”, trailers and films like “The Constant Gardener” or “The Reader” which was very useful to make a decision about which book I could read at the end of the course...
And some other repeatedly favourites were:
-Grey's Anatomy's Chapters.
-The Power Point about Organic Food.
-The links about September 11th to complement the teacher’s talk.
-Our Power Points on the book presentations.
-Text to Speech
-The Wordle
-The Video of “The Vagina Monologues” author.
-The Fora TV videos.
-Dafur in 10 minutes.
- The “Know Thyself!” links.
About the classes:From your letters I gather that very few enjoyed the grammar lessons. Maybe I feel responsible for these, because I did not know how to make enjoyable classes with this topic. However, some of you think I haven't done enough and others think I've given too much (Grammar)... Always too fast, you complain! Fortunately there are many things you have enjoyed. See your comments:
I know I have to learn grammar but I find it a bit stupid, I think if I want to learn this grammar I have to watch films and this kind of things...
-I felt a bit stressed because you are not that kind of teacher who just forgets about their students out of school and who only cares about what they do in class preparing everything and giving them everything chewed, I’ve learnt English but, what is even more important, I’ve learnt many other things: in English but not only about English, about life. And “other things” may seem two empty words, without meaning, but just for you to believe me I’ll give you some examples: since September, I had never listened to anyone who had been in New York on September 11th; since September, I almost didn’t know Barceló, and two days ago I was watching an interview with him on the television and I had images and comments in my mind that allowed me to have an opinion about what he was saying; since September, I had never met an English teacher with the ability of fitting students with poetry until they were living in the words in only one class; since September, only one teacher had given me a book, ...since September, I had never been in any teacher’s home. You make your point now but, don’t you think that’s somehow related to being a good teacher? The lessons in here have been different; if they hadn’t been, I would probably now be fed up with chairs, tables, pencil cases and pens because they would be the same as what they are in a conventional school: a book, a teacher, and if you are not interested, then it’s not interesting. And as the chairs, tables, pencil cases and pens here have had a different meaning, I don’t hate them now. Can you see the result...?
-I have learned in your classes that I can always choose and find out "how to learn"... and thus I have discovered through Nicenet that I like reading English curious news and documentaries but I do not like reading novels or similar books.
-I have special fond memories of your talk about September 11th in New York. It was touching! But I also loved the day we talked about healthy food or the day we memorized a poem.
-I like the motivation, the constant bombardment of information in English to force me to use English in my daily life, like a habit...
-I will always remember a Friday class with all my fellow classmates sitting in a circle and spending all the talking about personal experiences, cinema, jobs... and also about class issues. It was so different, so relaxing and so useful to improve and be confident when we have to talk in English.
-You have helped me to change my point of view about studying a foreign language carrying out different activities in class that changed my opinion. What you did shows us that there are other ways to teach, even to learn English. The only thing is to be creative and be daring to carry different activities. Nowadays there are many tools to do so. You have done it!
-Being honest, I have to say that this year I've learned more than English. You have given to me lots of ideas to improve my personal style as a teacher.
-The class I enjoyed the most was the one about Art, with everyone choosing a piece of art and explaining the reasons of the choice. And the most useful exercise in my opinion was to do an oral presentation with the support of a power point.
- I loved that debate between two teams about different laws we had to defend.
-When we debated about women and men's tasks, about conservative and liberal policies and also the debate with different film scenes.
-I enjoyed all classes related with "Carpe Diem" because I love that film. You learn a lot with it and furthermore there are a lot of memorable quotes. And I also enjoyed all the classes we talked about films. However I enjoyed least the classes about food.
-I just want to add that I’m not sure if I have a favourite class, in fact I doubt between the two ones when we watched de BMW videos, not the one for the exam but the others when we commented the hidden messages in films, and then the one about films and their soundtrack. But while writing this, another one has appeared to my mind: I don’t know when it was, or if it lasted all the class, but I remember us, talking about photos you had collected and you projected on the screen, and there appeared black and white people… I think that conversation about what those images were trying to say was one of the classes I will keep more in my mind, and although you see I can’t remember many things about it, what I’ll keep is the feeling of that class being nice and interesting.
And now the worst class… I think you’ll guess: for me the worst ones were when we did grammar, mostly from the book at the beginning of the course. Then we did more vocabulary, which I liked because, although I thought I would forget many of the expressions, I’ve discovered that I’ve kept more in my mind than I thought!
-You've always tried to make different and funny classes, and this is great. But the main problem, I think, is that you can't do whatever you want, you have to give us some contents that have to be the same as the other teachers in the school. Otherwise your students have to work double.
-...your classes have been so different from the other English classes I've been attending throughout my life. I liked a lot one exercise we did one day. You told us to think about something we liked: a picture, a monument, a song... And in just five minutes you created a Power Point with all the ideas and the images we mentioned. Then we had to explain to the other students what we said and why. It is a simple exercise but I found it different and really interesting, because we had to find the words to justify our ideas and we had to give reasons to what we thought.
-Reading The Dead Poets Society was great! I enjoyed it a lot because I found a lot of coincidences between the book and the experience we were having in our classes.
-One of the best things is the amount of idioms we have learnt. For me, idioms show a mastering of the language, as you have to use figurative language, so I like to be able to apply them in my conversations.
-I will remember some classes that had a profound impact on me. Now I’m thinking about that class where we were talking about Carpe Diem. It made me think about the importance of seizing the day, of doing always what you think you must do, what you really want to do, and not wasting your precious time doing what people want you to do.
-I guess I'll remember the presentations. Some of them were very nice, like that mock quiz by Pol and Adrian, the one about energetic issues by Marc, The Beatles, featuring Alex and Lluis and of course our presentation about "Death Penalty in Barcelona"...
-I'll also remember that class where we represented two different parties with different points of view. At first, I thought it would be difficult to defend some stupid ideas you don’t believe in. But, in the end, it was really fun.
-Nevertheless, although I assume one man’s meat is another’s poison, I got tired of the Messiah Obama’s electoral campaign. In my opinion, our society needed to pin all their hopes on somebody but I think he won’t solve anything: the prisoners of Guantánamo will be moved to other prisons with the same "rights"...
-Thanks you very much for everything! I won't ever forget your way to motivate students to learn a foreign language.
To end up, I’d like to thank Rip Van Winkle, my dear colleague and friend, Rodrigo, for sharing the Blog experience with me. Sorry for not being able to write everything you wrote. I’ve tried to select the issues that appeared several times in your letters.
I have to thanks those who understood that learning a foreign language doesn’t only mean to attend a class twice or three times a week for four or six hours. To learn a foreign language implies getting involved with it, reading and listening about the topics you are interested in, the news… being constantly curious (in English!, using the language every day.
Get ready to start fifth. You’ll meet two great professionals and wonderful colleagues and friends; Estefanía and Marc. With them you’ll explore other ways… Get ready! means that you should not forget to continue with your “English routines” outside the classroom just to prove you were the best!
Carpe Diem and Noctum!
P.S. Please, add anything you want/feel if I have missed anything important for you. It was difficult to go through your letters. I was quite moved, I must say!
