First of all, welcome back everybody! The holidays are over and I imagine we will see each other quite soon. I hope your summer holidays were fantastic! Mine were okay so I can't complain...
And as a promise is a promise, here it is the blog I told you about! I personally think it is a perfect place to write down your thoughts and comments about different topics I will suggest during the school year. But remember that you can also choose a topic that is of your personal interest to discuss with other members of the class using this blog. The important thing is that you find at least 5 minutes a week to write something here.
There will have to be some rules and guidelines for all of us to accept previous to starting with this new writing experience. First of all, and quite obvious anyway, what you write in here - either originally or as a reply to a comment from another student - has to be polite, that is, we have to avoid offending others. After all, each of us might have a different opinion regarding different current issues or other topics that will appear in the following months.
Second, don't be afraid of putting English words to your thoughts. I will not correct you using this blog, i.e. I won't say "Marc or Maria you have made this or that mistake". Instead, it is quite possible that you can find in my reply a similar sentence to the one in which you have made a mistake, but... well-written. Thus, it is your task to also read my comments and find the corrections to your mistakes. Will this make every single person in class feel comfortable? I hope so and this is my intention.
However, and if all of you are interested in it, we can devote just 5 minutes every now and then to EITHER comment mistakes in general in class (in this case I will personally choose those mistakes that are particularly important or interesting to avoid) OR you can try to spot mistakes in your writing and in that of the others (including me - as I am sure you will succeed in finding some spelling mistake as I write almost as fast as I speak, ha ha) and we can comment your choice in class. What do you think? Which of the two options would make you feel more comfortable? And which of the two options do you consider to be more useful? Think about it and make up your minds for the week after the lessons start, ok?
Third, and going back to the basic rules and guidelines everybody has to follow while using this blog, you are absolutely free to use dictionaries and other resource books to write your comments and opinions. Writing here is NEITHER an exam NOR homework. In fact, it is just a nice excuse to write from time to time in English something that is real, and not the typical compositions which you will surely find in your coursebook throughout the year.
I recommend you to make use of connectors and expressions, as they will make your writing sound much more natural. Examples of nice connectors could be: and, but, so, besides, moreover, however, nevertheless, because, due to the fact that, on the one hand, on the other hand, first of all, second, then, after that, accordingly, thus, to begin with, to sum up, in conclusion, for example, for instance, in other words, etc.
I also think it is highly advisable to make use of different verbal tenses to avoid being monotonous: present simple, present continuous, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, past perfect, future with will, present continuous for future, conditional would, modal verbs (can, may, might, must, mustn't, could, should, shouldn't, used to and didn't use to among others).
It might sound a bit difficult right now but, little by little, you will see that you become more fluent when writing in English. So I encourage all of you to write something at least twice a month.
Well, and I think that's all I have to tell you for the moment. Perhaps I should already suggest a topic for you to start writing. So what about that?
Follow the link below these lines and watch the video. After that, read the text that accompanies it and write your impressions about this issue. You can use some of the questions here to get ideas for your writing.
Sample questions:
* Do you think that things have changed a lot since this article was written and the video recorded? Or the situation is still the same?
* Are you worried now that schools in your country have started?
* Have you taken any precautions since you knew of the existence of the virus?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8018865.stm
Enjoy yourselves! And hope to read you soon!
