Blogs of the Week

Dear dear girls, I have just finished going through another round of your blogs – however I've noticed that there are new ones coming in every minute while I'm writing this. Therefore, what I'm saying now is about the blogs that were posted up till yesterday, Saturday, 15th October. As always, I enjoy reading your blogs. Marking students work can be boring but going through your blogs is completely different because they are all so full of variety and creativity. Some of you told me about Andy Lau's new movie, some of you gave me some news and shared "gossips" with me, and Sherry even told me a joke! I've told her one in return *smiles*. I really think that you should read your classmates' blogs as I'm sure that you'll enjoy them as much as I do. If you don't know whose work to start with, let me give you some recommendations.

Esther has written quite an interesting composition about colours. I have not expected that there can be so much to say on such a topic and she has done a good job. If you like seeing your classmates' photos, I suggest you visit Gloria's work. She's got a very cute photo in her blog this time and I love it best that she explains the photo to me. This makes the photo even more fun to see. She's also included some tidbits about what went on in our school last week. If you regret that you didn't attend Ms. Yeung's wedding, you should visit Dion's blog. She was there as one of the choir members and she has an exclusive photo of Ms. Yeung and her husband while they were walking down the aisle in their wedding. Ms. Yeung looks so beautiful in the photo that she reminds me of an angel. Apart from that photo, you can also see a photo of Ms. Lo's baby girl. She looks so cute. See how much fun I had reading your work? You really must visit your classmates' blogs. Don't miss the fun.

Pleasantly Surprised and Delightfully Enlightened

I'm very surprised and delighted by the number of responses I got from you girls for my "Good Student List" - There are 26 responses! Apart from feeling flattered by all the nice things you say about me *blushes*, I must say that I find the comments more and more interesting as I read on. Not only did many of you begin your comments with the newly acquired phrase "I completely and utterly agree with you", the comments take an interesting turn and there is this whole new discussion of a "Good Teacher List"! *chuckles* It is really a pleasure to see so many of you willing to share your thoughts with me. Thank you so much.

I must thank Candy Chung for explaining to me why you always whisper among yourself when you have questions instead of asking me. Now I feel much better knowing that it is not because I am so scary that you do not want to talk to me but because you do not want to break the class rule of speaking only in English in class (even though whispering among yourself, no matter how softly you do it, is still breaking the rule, in case you didn't notice *winks*.) Why don't we make a pact here and now? Let's promise that, from now on, you won't ask for my permission to speak in Cantonese unless you ABSOLUTELY NEED TO, that there is really no way you can express whatever you want to say in English. And instead of saying no, I'll let you speak in Cantonese. Understanding the lessons is as important as practising your spoken English. Let's see how this work out.

Esther points out that Mr. Leung always suggests that, as good students, you should try to find the answers yourself. I "completely and utterly agree" with him. Good students should be curious and interested in whatever they are learning enough to spend time thinking about it and this is how they can come up with questions to ask. However, having a question doesn't mean that they should rely on other people for the answers. Just like the story of the discovery of gravity, Newton started to wonder why things fell down instead of going up to the sky after his head was hit by an apple. At the end, because of this question, he made one of the greatest discovery in the history of science - the gravity. Of course, it is doubtful how true this story is, but it's a nice example to show you that asking questions is good for your learning and it's not necessary for you to rely on your elders to give you the answer– actually, we all know how often we "elders" don't always have the answers. If you rely on others in your learning, the best you can get is just to be as good as those "others" you rely on. You can never surpass them. We teachers have been told to teach our students "how to catch fish themselves" rather than just "catching all the fish" for them. If not, after we're gone, you'll "starve to death". (Have you heard this metaphor before?)

Janice mentions that we shouldn't label students as being good or bad as good students can become bad easily and bad students can become good if only they are given a chance. I think this is a very good point. Janice, I don't think your stance "strange" at all. This is a very good insight. To come to think about it, my question is too naïve. What is a "good" person and what is a "bad" one anyway? A person can be "bad" to some people but very "good" to the others. A criminal is of course bad to their victims but they can be very good parents. A person can be good now but then becomes bad a month or so later. We can't tell for sure until we return to our Maker, can we? No wonder the Bible keeps telling us not to judge the others.

Tiffany mentions that not only students should learn to admit their mistakes but teachers, too. However, she also understands that it is very difficult for teachers to do so and it takes additional courage for them to be able to do it. Thank you, Tiffany, for being so understanding. Actually, the process of learning is never-ending, is it? Children learn, teenagers learn and so do adults. Aren't we all learning a bit of something new every day? I certainly have learnt something interesting from what you girls' wrote. Actually, the way I see it, adults are not much different from teenagers at heart - just that are older and seasoned with experiences. *winks*

As I said, your comments are all very interesting and many are enlightening. I've learnt a lot from you. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with me. Let's do that more often, shall we?

Technically Speaking: How to Do Better in your Blogs

Once upon a time, there was this very eager good student who had a brilliant idea which she would like to share with her dear classmates and her wonderful English teacher. She typed away on her keyboard very happily and went through the completed piece several times before she finally decided that it was good enough. Then, she blissfully clicked on the "Publish Post" key at the bottom of the screen and was waiting enthusiastically to see her blog appears online. Just when she thought that everything was settled, the screen suddenly blinked and instead of seeing the words "Publish Completed", she saw AN ERROR MESSAGE!!!!! Oh no! That was 30 minutes of work went down the drain! The poor girl could only stare at the screen and there was absolutely nothing she could do to recover the entry! Luckily, the urge of sharing her brilliant idea with her beloved classmates and teachers was so strong that this girl wrote her entry again. And finally, after perfecting it, she successfully uploaded it to her blog and her teacher loved her entry very much, especially her story about the rainbow.

Well, this is a story with a happy ending. Does what happened to our heroine sound familiar to you? Actually, the whole unfortunate event could have been avoided very easily! All you need to do is to DRAFT THE BLOG IN A WORD DOCUMENT FIRST! There are two advantages in doing this.

First, you can have a backup copy of your entry. A backup file is important because if you don't have one, everything will be lost if your computer crashes suddenly. There will be nothing left and all you can do is to rewrite the whole thing. However, if you have a backup document, you will still be able to recover your entry after you reboot the computer. The software will automatically save your work as a temporary file in case the computer shuts down suddenly and it will reappear on the screen when it is switched on again.

Secondly, you can avoid making silly careless mistakes, and even improve your spelling and grammar if you draft your work with Microsoft Word. Of course, Word cannot correct all your mistakes, but it can help you spot the simple ones. Very often, we keep making some mistakes without knowing it. Take for example, many of you spell the word "holiday" as "hoilday", or "birthday" as "brithday". If you work with Word, it will draw your attention to these mistakes. Even better, its Spelling and Grammar Check can give suggestions for correction. This way, you can learn to write and spell better! Therefore, please always draft your entries with a Word document instead of typing directly in Blogger.

Including a Title
Also, to make your entries more attractive, make sure that you give your entries a title which gives us a clear idea of what we can expect to read about. What do you think about the titles of my entries? They are good, aren't they? *winks* In this busy world, we can't afford the time to read everything we can lay our hands on. Therefore, what we do is to scan the titles or headlines first. If they look interesting, we'll continue to read the whole thing. If not, we will just skip it. An article or a piece of writing without a title is usually dismissed by the readers. If you want your blogs to be read, ALWAYS GIVE IT A TITLE!

In order to encourage you all to give a good title to your blogs, from now on any blogs with no heading WILL NOT GET ANY COMMENTS FROM ME. *nods*

By the way, you may be curious about the main character in my story because I tell you that it is true. Well, it is true and I highly recommend that you read Jenny's blog. It's really interesting. Don't miss it!

It's MY turn: the "Good Student" List

I'm very happy to see that many of you would like to write about the topic we discussed in the listening class. It's interesting to learn that being able to meet assignment deadlines, having good-manners and being attentiveness in class are among the top of the "Good Student List". As I've mentioned in class, the one that I found most interesting is Helen's entry. Instead of making a list, she explains what she thinks a good student should be like with a story. That's creative!

Many of you have really a loooooooong list in your blogs. No wonder many of you think that it’s hard to be a good student. Since this is such a popular subject in your blogs, I would like to say a few words about MY idea of the qualities of a good student.

Unlike many of you, I have only two "criteria" to define a good student. The first one is that the person needs to have the incentive of learning. She needs to be a person who always tries her best to improve herself not only in her academic studies but also in her inter-personal relationships and even her personality. A good student makes mistakes, too. She may be late in submitting her assignments but she'll learn from her mistakes and will not be late in handing in her assignments because of the same reason. She may not be able to pass her test but she will do better in her coming test and even better in the one after it. She may make a teacher angry because of saying something the teacher considers rude but she will not do the same again. I consider learning how to become a better person IS the first and foremost reason why we send children and teenagers to schools. The other "criterion" that I have for a good student is that she must be a curious person. She should be curious about the world and people around her enough to want to get to know them better and to ask questions. This is why you can see how exciting I become whenever someone asks me a question in class. This is also why I think that the biggest compliment as a teacher I can get is to be asked a question on whatever I said in the lesson. To me, this means that what I say is interesting enough to you that you are curious to know more about it.

Do you think this much shorter list easier for you to achieve or more difficult? Why don't you tell me what you think by commenting on it here or talking about it in your own blog? I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Keep Writing! Don't Let It Stop!

Are you tired of writing about things the teachers ask you to write about? Isn't it just nice to be able to write about whatever is on your mind and have real readers appreciating your thoughts and ideas? Why don't you make use of your blogs to do so? It is just like a diary with YOU as the MISTRESS of your own blogs. Therefore, YOU are the one who decides what you would like to talk about and how you would like to talk about it. You can even include pictures and your voice in your blog! The more often you write in English, the better and faster you'll be in doing it. I suggest that you make at least one entry each week. And in order to make it a more effective practice to improve your writing, you should aim at writing 200 words in each entry on the same topic -- however, of course, this is an ideal. The most important of it all for this practice is that you enjoy writing. Also, most poems and rhymes aren't this long.

Don't know where to start? Well, here are some ideas for you. You can write about something unusual that happened to you that day and things and people you like/dislike/feel strongly about. You can also talk about what you think about a book, a movie or the news, places you enjoy going to, etc. You can even write poems, rhymes or stories in your blogs. I hope you'll enjoy working on your blogs.

Have fun writing!

Ada Lam

Your English Teacher