Why are we doing this?

A student asks:

How do we use our blogs?
Could you tell me about it concretely?

First of all, I wanted you to experience making a blog. Some people have never done it before, so they will see how easy it is to do it. Perhaps they can even teach others. You can make a "test blog" to try out the platform, and if you do not like it, move to another platform. It is a learning experience just to make it.

Secondly, I hope you will use it for writing English posts. Blogger automatically adjusts and changes the main page to your language, which was Japanese. However, you can re-set the language to English. I didn't tell you to do that because it could cause you to make a mistake, like accidentally deleting your blog! However, if you are comfortable, you can change the blog-management language to English. And, of course, I imagined that you would write your blog entirely in English. You can write about your everyday activities and thoughts, if you like, but especially about the experience of learning English. I hope your blog is entirely in English. It is OK to make a bilingual blog that has the same content in both languages. Or, you can make an English blog for your English writing, a Japanese blog for your Japanese writing, and another blog to write in a third language. A blog is just like a notebook, I think, but it is virtual.

One post that I asked you to write was about your goals and dreams. Please write about your short-term goals for this class and this year, your medium-term plans for the next 3-5 years, and your long-term goals and dreams of what you want to do in your life.

Another task that you can do is to write a profile. Do not write too much if you are concerned about your privacy.

Creating the blog, you will find that it has the potential to communicate with a worldwide audience (if you want it to). This will change your writing because the audience is not just the teacher. This is called a "community of practice", a group of people who are really using the English language as a community. However, if you want to write a more private journal, you can set your blog to only Blogger members, to the members of our class, to only yourself, or to only the members that you choose. Let me know if you want to do that.

Look at the settings of the blog and be sure that it is set up the way you want it to be. Practice inserting links, quotes, uploading pictures, and various possibilities.