College and University Educators Sharing Slices of Life: Weekly Blogging Assignment for First-year University Students more

Sat, Jul 9, 16:00-16:40 Asia/Tokyo

This session will introduce a weblog assignment for students in a university-level academic English class. It is a semester-long, on-going assignment that exists alongside their academic writing projects. The blog assignment is titled “Slice of Life,” and it requires students to publish one blog entry every week that gives readers insight into their everyday life. In addition, every week, each blogger will read the entries published by their peers, and leave relevant comments on at least two of their classmates’ blog entries. The “slice of life” entry for this assignment can be a short narrative about a segment of their day, a poem depicting a small moment in time, or a collection of photos, videos and/or words describing the everyday experience. The students are encouraged to use the language creatively for communication purposes, with the aim to improve their comfort confidence level in using the language, as well as providing opportunities for using L2 for real communication. In this poster session, the presenter will explain the details of this assignment, present examples of published student blog entries and comments, share excerpts of student reflections on this semester-long assignment, and answer any questions.