My name is Liliana Nederita. I am an English teacher at "George Calinescu" Lyceum in Chisinau.
This is a blog opened for educational purposes. It is part of my experimenting with new methods in teaching foreign languages. It is designed for my English classes as a complementary way to get students thinking, writing and talking about the topics that we discuss in class.
I have started this blog as an assignment for the online course I am taking "Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web" at the University of Oregon, USA. It was the first week assignment and seeing the great potential blogs have in teaching I decided to start one.
It is designed mainly for the 8th form students for the purpose of developing their writing skills.
You will find links to exercises and additional information on the topics discussed at the lessons according to the syllabus that you can use to practice and improve your level of English.
You can also check out http://limbistrainecalinescu.blogspot.com. It is a blog of the Foreign Language Department of "George Calinescu" Lyceum. You will see pictures taken at some of the events organized by our Department as well as some of the pictures from the English lessons done by our teachers posted on it.
Why did I start this?
I have thought about the advantage of using the Internet to make learning of English and some of the home assignments enjoyable.
With starting the course mentioned above and while getting acquainted with the site and the course requirements, the prospect of using the blogs for a classroom topic purpose occurred to me. I thought what a great way to get students talking in English after classes are over. They spend so many hours in front of the computer anyways, why don't they use this time effectively and learn something and practice the written English? I have thought about the possibility of student's comments/ideas/thoughts/feedback on the blog posts as a complementary way to get them talking/writing on a specific curricular topic that we've been previously discussing in class, or that is about to be discussed in class. (I don't know about other students but my students seem to be rather reluctant to write in their copybooks while they write daily a lot of posts on the Facebook and other socializing sites with pleasure). Why not make a school assignment a pleasure then?
These are my thoughts so far and I am sure many more will appear. But I encourage you, students or random visitors to feel free to comment, suggest ideas and contribute to this blog.
Let's give it a start and see how it goes!
Kinds regards,
Liliana Nederita
