Welcome!

Welcome back!

I hope you had a good summer.

I am John Herbert and this is my blog for this Reading and Writing (4) course.

Our second semester course is a little different from the first semester. We will be using blogs. Blogs have been pretty popular for quite a while now. People create blogs for many different reasons. Some do it because they want to show very important information to the world; some do it to keep in contact with family and friends; others just do it for themselves. We are going to do it for our reading & writing course this semester.

In this class, you are going to create your own blog and you are going to write a variety of assignments (blog posts). Some of the assignments will be obligatory (4 blog posts), some will be optional. You will also spend time reading other students' blogs and making comments on them (also obligatory). You will find a list of other students' blogs on this teacher's blog in the near future.

Writing Assignments

The obligatory assignments will be:

1. A links post

2. A review post

3. A list post

4. A comparison post

The optional posts can be anything that you want to share with your classmates, and can be informal, but should still show good writing skill.

Writing Process

As you know, for any writing you need to (a) plan, (b) write, (c) check and edit, before (d) submitting (publishing on your blog). This is the same for this class. Please write first using Microsoft Word and save your work. Then you can move it to the blogger website and publish it (with links, pictures etc).

Each blog post should have an introduction, a body, and of course a conclusion.

Writing Quality

For each of your blog posts, the quality of the content is important. You need to:

1. think about your audience (me and other students in this class)

2. write about your ideas and opinions

3. explain with reasons why you have those opinions

4. write something interesting! (for your audience)

So, to sum up, each of the obligatory posts should be well planned with an introduction, body and conclusion. It should be clear, well edited, and interesting! And it should be a minimum of about 200 words.

Grades are based on: 1. your written work/your blogs (including comments on others' blogs); and 2. attendance/participation in class.

Please bring to class: pens, paper, USB memory stick (to save your writing)