The Blogging Cookbook for College ESL Teachers

Download your copy of The Blogging Cookbook for College ESL Teachers by Nicholas Walker and Helen Hefter.

Learn HTML while Blogging

The Blogging Cookbook for College ESL Teachers is intended to be self-explanatory. By following the directions, you will be able to create a web-log website (blog) that could prove useful and profitable to you. The examples are all relevant to ESL/EFL and will generate traffic, which will attract readers, advertisers and revenue to your blog. The principle goal of this cookbook, however, is to provide you with the confidence and momentum you’ll need to continue blogging and learning HTML, a basic web-programming language used extensively on the internet.

In this book, you will find the steps to follow to produce a 13-post blog of your own. The first three sections will simply introduce you to a free blogging platform called Blogger.com. Blogger is a Google property. It is free and easy to use. After a year of blogging, Blogger will offer to integrate AdSense advertisements into your blog, which will allow you to start making money from ads. (Remember that ads pay for content, so if you see an ad that interests you on someone else’s blog, click it. It will send the blog writer a small commission.) College students are usually chronically hard-up, so the fact that blogs can generate income is something worth mentioning to students. The next section is merely an illustration of the common HTML tags. The remaining sections will provide you with a number of adaptable mini-projects to include in your blog. Finally, the last section lists some resources that will help you learn more about HTML and blogging with students. 

All of the mini-projects in this cookbook use HTML rather than the what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) compose-mode of Blogger. The reason for this choice is to provide you with HTML resources that you can use elsewhere, like Wordpress, Moodle, email, or any website that allows you to use HTML code. Also, I have found that simply by looking at HTML code you can learn a fair bit of HTML programming without having to take a course or rely on programmers. Basic HTML is pretty obvious: <b> means bold, <i> means italics, <strike> means strikethrough, <br> means break, etc. Take the time to look at the tags. You will get the hang of it very quickly.

Yours to Share and Adapt in Accordance with Sharealike 2.5

Remember that you are free to share the code, text, and images in this Blogging Cookbook for College ESL Teachers with your students and colleagues. You are also free to reuse and adapt any part of this document provided that you credit us, the original authors, Nicholas Walker and Helen Hefter. We also ask (but cannot insist) that you retain the links in the various mini-projects to our websites: VirtualWritingTutor.com, FieldRelated.com, BokomaruPublications.com, and Actively-Engaged-Online.blogspot.com. These links send a weak signal to Google and Bing to rank our websites a little higher in their search results. That helps us get our message out about our projects.

You can add your name as co-author to your adapted or expanded version of this document and even charge money for it, but you must retain the Sharealike 2.5 license on derivations. For example, you may want to add instructions for creating an account on Wordpress.com or Tumblr.com. Please do. Just add your name under our names on the first page. Remember that you can change the cookbook and pass it on, but you cannot prevent others from further adapting and expanding this document, too. Sound fair?

In any case, we hope you find The Blogging Cookbook for College ESL Teachers useful to you and your students.

Nicholas Walker and Helen Hefter
August 15, 2016

Vocabulary Checker for English for Professional Purposes

Find field-related texts here.

FieldRelated.com is an online vocabulary checker for English for Professional Purposes learners.

How to Create a Blog on Blogger: Getting Started

How to Create a Blog on Blogger

Step 1

The first step to creating your own blog for language learning is to go to Blogger.com. You will need to create an account if you don't have a Gmail account already. It is easy and takes seconds. 

Step 2

The next step is a little more complicated. You will need to create a title and address for your blog. The title should be related to your field of study or the thing that you expect to be writing about most. If you are not sure what topic you want to blog about, consider creating a title and address related to your name. If your name is "Helen," name your blog Helen's Blog (title) at helens-blog.blogspot.com (address). You will also have to choose a template. Choose something simple because this part is easy to change later. 

Step 3

Once you have created your blog title and address, click "New post" under the word "My blogs" on the left. If your blog is in another language you can change the language setting here by clicking the "cog" icon in the top right.

Step 4

When you click "New post" you will see a blank page. Give your blog post a title, like "About Me" and write something about who you are and what you do.  Click "Save" and "Publish" on the right and click "View blog" on the left. Now, you are a blogger. 

Step 5

You can leave your first blog post as it is, but serious writers look for feedback on their writing. Copy your first blog post and paste it into the VirtualWritingTutor.com and click "Check grammar" to see if it can detect any errors. If there are errors in your text, the VirtualWritingTutor will show you how to correct them.   

Step 6

Simply edit your post, make the necessary corrections, and click "Update." Now, you are ready to promote your blog. Why not join us a https://www.facebook.com/groups/learn.English.by.blogging and share your first blog post. The other members of this group would love to meet you and help you improve your writing. 

Find out more about blogging and digital literacy in ESL.

Facebook Group to Learn English by Blogging

Nicholas Walker

So, you want to learn English.  That's great! Maybe, you want to improve ability to communicate in your field, or maybe you want to improve your chances of finding a job. I want to help you.

My name is Nicholas Walker. I teach college English as a Second Language in Montreal, Canada, and I develop websites related to ESL in my spare time. Not only do I have many years of experience teaching English in South Korea and Canada, I also have an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and a B.A. in English Literature. I know English, and I know how to teach it.

I want to help you improve your English, but you have to help me.

Here's how:

1. Be active. 

I want to work with people who are serious about improving their English. You can demonstrate that you are serious about learning English in the following ways.

• Join my Facebook group: Learn English by Blogging. This is where we exchange links and advice to help each other. Promote your blog to other group members here.
• Visit the group page every week, liking and responding to the activity there.
• Arrange for video and audio chat conversations with other group members. 
• Do the exercises and blog writing assignments. Don't stop.  
• Create a blog on Blogger.com related to your field of study or passion. Make sure that your blog address and title contain words related to your field of study or interest. 

2. Help the other group members. 

There are a number of ways that you can be helpful to the other members of the  Learn English by Blogging Facebook group. Some ways are easy. Some take an extra effort. 

• Easy: start by being supportive. Everyone likes to hear encouraging remarks about their efforts to learn and express themselves. Click the like button when someone shares a link to a blog post they have written. 
• More difficult: write helpful comments. If you see a problem with someone's blog post, write a three part comment. 1) Thank that person for sharing. Say, "Thanks for sharing your blog post." 2) Tell the group member how to improve his or her blogpost with specific advice. For example, you could say, "You should write shorter paragraphs." 3) End with a specific positive comment, "I really like your title. Very catchy." Comments like these help writers feel good about the help they receive from others. 

3. Help the teacher.

You want to learn English. I want to promote my websites. In return for the opportunity to improve your English, I would like your help. Copy and paste the following links into your blog posts:

References

• Check your grammar with the best ESL grammar checker VirtualWritingTutor.com
• Check your vocabulary with FieldRelated.com
• Learn CEGEP ESL with BokomaruPublications.com
• Correct more, better, and faster with CorrectiveFeedback.com, an ESL power tool for teachers

4. Write blog posts

Create a blog on Blogger, and start writing blog posts with titles, images, text, and links. Here are some blog post writing assignments I recommend:

1. Introduction: write a paragraph about yourself and a paragraph about your professional goals for your blog. Explain why you are writing a blog and how you think it will help you.
2. Listicle: write a numbered list of items related to a theme. Click here to see an example of a listicle. Make sure to include an introductory paragraph (no heading) and 3 or more paragraphs with numbered headings.
3. Walkthrough: record yourself on YouTube giving a guided tour of a website related to your field of study or passion. Show your listener how to achieve a specific goal.  Embed your video on your blog with a short introductory paragraph. 
4. Summary: write a summary of an article related to your field of study or passion. Do not copy and paste. Say why you chose the article and how it relates to your field. Add a link to the original article. 
5. Glossary: Make a list of some technical or semi-technical terms related to your field of study or passion. Go to FieldRelated.com for examples. Do not copy paste a glossary entries. Make your own. Use Google and do a search using the the search term define + the word you wish to define. 

Once you have written each of these blog posts, share your link on the  Learn English by Blogging Facebook group. We will give you the encouragement and support you need to keep learning. 

Field of Study Glossaries as an Authentic Blog Post Type

People often need to look up unfamiliar words, and so one common type of blog post that people search for is the field-related glossary. For college students, compiling a list of field-specific words can be a useful way to become more familiar with technical and semi-technical words in their fields of study. The field-specific glossary is therefore both an authentic and pedagogically useful writing model for college ESL students to learn. Each field of study comes with its own specialized vocabulary or with common vocabulary used in a specialized way. Consider how a "jab" in boxing a semi-technical name for "a short, straight punch," but in nursing a "jab" refers to "an injection with a needle."

Glossaries usually come with a short explanatory paragraph and then employ <dl></dl> tags to contain the definition list, <dt></dt> tags to contain the term being defined, and <dd></dd> tags to contain the definition.  Below is the form a glossary blog post usually takes without any content. Make your own glossary with a title, short introduction, a heading and a list of words.

Glossary Heading

term 1

definition 1

term 2

definition 2

term 3

definition 3

term 4

definition 4

term 5

definition 5

term 6

definition 6

term 7

definition 7

term 8

definition 8

term 9

definition 9

term 10

definition 10

For more words related to this field or study, or to analyze any text for program-related or field-related vocabulary go to FieldRelated.com.

Analyze your text for field-related vocabulary with FieldRelated.com