Writing On the Web

If there was only one aspect of my English curriculum that I could choose from and teach my students, it would be writing - how to write with unity, coherence, creativity, and elaboration. Writing is not only important in all classes across the curriculum, but writing also is an important skill in life. In today's technological age, we write more than ever. Text messages, emails, online forums, and blogs have become widespread. Though some of these forms of writing do not always utilize proper grammar, spelling, mechanics, and structure, they still offer useful means of written communication. Moreover, they can be utilized by teachers to supplement and enhance their writing instruction.

Blogger.com

To improve one's writing, a student must be willing to share his or her work with peers. Students can learn a lot from reading each others' compositions. They can see how their work compares with that of their classmates, they can learn from examples presented by peers, they can pick up specific styles and strategies used by classmates, and they can help each other improve. Many students, however, are not comfortable sharing their work, and asking students to trade compositions can present a stressful situation. An alternative is to have students set up personal blogs to post their work. Classmates can access each other's blogs and post comments. Have students post two comments on a classmate's compositions - one for praise and one for polish. Not only do blogs create a less stressful class environment, but blogs also save time in the classroom. It takes a lot of time to conduct peer reviews during class, and having the students do this on their own makes for an effective, interactive, engaging, and meaningful homework assignment, and it saves class time for more, better instruction. Have your students log on to www.blogger.com and have them create an original blog to use for peer reviewing!

Online Discussion Forums

Another effective way to supplement the writing curriculum is to have each student become a member of a discussion forum on a website that pertains to a personal interest. Research shows that instruction and student productivity improves when students are given material that is meaningful to the students, that the students can choose themselves, and that activates the students' background knowledge. A teacher can accomplish this by asking each student to find a website devoted to one of their interests and requiring each student to be an active participant on the websites discussion forum. Teachers could access the websites to see what the students are writing, or students could present to the class certain discussion threads in which they participated. Using discussion forums is a great way to get students to read and respond about information that interests them and to participate in discussions in a constructive manner.