Teaching and Writing

Hello there,

I am starting this blog as part of my reflexion concerning the teaching of English as a foreign language and creative writing. I teach English to undergraduates and graduates who are specialists of disciplines other than English (ie who are not reading English) at the University of Paul-Valéry in Montpellier. In the French system these students are known as LANSAD (LANgues pour Spécialistes d’Autres Disciplines) students. In the context of the arts and humanities university in which I teach, this means that the students are reading a dazzling array of subjects including sociology, psychology, modern literature, languages, archaeology, cinema studies…to name but a few.

Having developed a course based on creative fiction writing I am currently looking more closely at creative writing in non-fictional forms. In the context of our on-line learning platform, Moodle, I wish to explore the learning possibilities of blogging. Does blogging enable students to improve their writing skills in English as a Foreign Language? Do students enjoy it? Is it relevant to the subjects they are specialising in? Do they have the impression that their English skills are improved by blogging? These are just some of the questions that I wish to explore in the context of a distance compulsory on-line course for second-year undergraduates (of mixed ability regarding English) in which there is no face-to-face contact between teacher and students.

I must admit that I have no experience in blogging and so this blog is also to help me get an idea of the issues involved in writing a blog and what it feels like to put yourself out there.

So, if anyone has any advice, suggestions and/or ideas I would be delighted to exchange on this subject.

I hope to hear from you soon,

Alison

ps. here are the refences of a couple of papers that I’ve started with:

De Lavergne, Catherine and Pauline Lieb-Storebjerg. 2009. L’utilisation d’un blog en formation universitaire. Quelle pédagogie « embarquer » ?
https://www.cairn.info/revue-distances-et-savoirs-2009-3-page-399.html. Accessed 9 May 2018.

Ertzscheid, Olivier. 2011. Créer, trouver et exploiter les blogs. https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00586027/fr/. Accessed 9 May 2018.

Rivens Mompean, Annick. The Development of Meaningful Interactions on a Blog used for the Learning of English as a Foreign Language. ReCALL, Volume 22, Issue 3, September 2010 pp. 376-395
Doi.org/10.1017/S0958344010000200. Accessed 11 May 2018.