Copying from Word, or from the Web

Usoa had another question about writing on a blog - is it better to write in Word and then paste it in?

I'd say it doesn't matter -- whichever you find most comfortable.

Notice that when you paste text in on Blogger, you may get formatting that you don't want (wrong text size, line breaks in the wrong place, etc).

You can remove unwanted formatting by (1) selecting the section you want to remove it from, and then (2) clicking the last button to the right in "compose" mode -- the one that looks like a rubber. If you roll-over it you'll see that it says "remove formatting from the selection".

You might then have to put a few line breaks back in, but it's the fastest way to clean things up.

Apart from that clean-up facility, note that you've also got a spellchecker (third from the right) -- and, again, don't forget that you can "Save as Draft", rather than "Publish Post".

Week 2 -- What should I do now?

What should you do now? Well, if you haven't done so yet, introduce yourself. Usoa and Joan have done so already, but we've still got three members of the blog who haven't.

Once you've introduced yourself, how about you tell us all about one of your successes with young learners? It can be something small (just an idea that worked), or something more far-reaching. It could be something from your classroom in this next week (to some extent we are using the blog to reflect on what actually happens now in our classrooms); but it doesn't have to be from this week.

To give you an example, I have to go back a long way -- to the first young learners class I ever taught. The kids (who must have been about 8 and 9) asked me to tell them a story, and showed me the storybooks they have on their classroom library shelves. They were much too difficult for them to read, but they said I could tell them the story.

I think it was Red Riding Hood, and they loved it -- especially when I made them all jump by suddenly snarling as the wolf.

Regretably, I didn't realise at the time what huge potential story-telling has for young learners and I don't remember ever reading them another one (and mightily bored -- and naughty -- they were, too, for the rest of the year, doing grammar drills).

There's a wonderful book on story-telling for YLs of English (called "Story-telling", published by OUP, by Andrew Wright), if you are interested.

Writing on the blog

There are maybe a couple of things that you should know about writing on a blog.

First of all, Usoa wanted to know why her first post introducing herself looked as if it was all one long paragraph.



To answer that, let me first draw your attention to the three possibilities in the red circle in the image above, which I took from as I was editing this actual post.

You'll almost certainly find it easier to write in "Compose" mode. Before you post, note that clicking "Preview" allows you to see what it's going to look like when you do post.

How do you get a space between each paragraph?
If you're using "compose" mode, hit your return key twice - and then you'll actually see it appear, both in "Compose" and in the preview.

Making your posts easier to read
Why would you want to have a space between paragraphs, anyway ? Well, it makes text on a computer screen easier to read if you do all of the following:

• Do put a space between paragraphs
• Keep your paragraphs under a maximum of about 5 or 6 lines
• Don't "justify" them (i.e. leave it so that they look ragged down the right-hand side)
• Make use of bold type when appropriate, to draw the eye to things, but don't over-use it
  
• Use bullet points to create lists
  

My advice would in fact be not to use some of the options that the editor gives you. I'd suggest that you don't do any of the following (all of which you can see in the image above, with a little red "x" above them):

• Don't alter font and font size
• Don't alter the colour of the text
• Don't alter the justification of the text (keep it left, which is the default)

(If you ever use blogs with kids, it's hard to persuade them not to use those things but, on webpages, the simpler you keep things visually, the easier it is for the user to read things. Have too many different styles and it looks ugly on the eye).

The other thing we might add is this: keep your posts reasonably short (I'd suggest under 350 words -- a figure I'm just about to exceed!) and to the point. The "Save as Draft" option is one I use: I write something, but don't post immediately. If you then come back to it, you can often see ways in which you can edit it for the sake of your reader.

The "Edit Html", by the way, allows you more control over what things looks like, as well as allowing you to fix things if anything goes wrong. Html is the code we use to write webpages. You need to know what you're doing there, which is why I suggest you stay with the "Compose" tab.