Blogs in the Language Classroom

An idea I’ve been toying on implementing in the language classroom is blogging. I don’t mean this in a traditional sense where students will create a blog entry as a journal or to post their short essays in the target language. Well actually, yes this would be part of the idea, but in addition I would want to work with other teachers say at other schools through out the country as well as with colleagues from overseas where the specific language being taught is spoken. What I would want would be to setup a blogging for a class here as well as a few classes from outside the country where the international students who were perhaps learning English would comment on the students learning their language here (in the target language of course) but also have our students comment on the international student’s blog in English. I think this exchange would show both groups of students that while it may be difficult and require work to learn a new language, they are not alone and they would be able to see the other group of students working on learning concepts that they take for granted or both groups might even see the other group working to learn and struggling with the same topics/grammatical concepts but in a different language.

I think this would be an ideal (international) community building activity through which friendships might form and further the interest in learning the language to make communicating with their new friends easier as well as encourage the students to visit the newly form friends and promote studying abroad.