As part of my teaching job in China I used my blog as a platform for distributing materials, assisting my students, publishing student work and getting feedback. This was successful at least in part due to much increased traffic while running my elective course “An Insight Into Britain” in which I linked to the listening exercise, materials that the students needed to print and assorted links that provided background on the topics and people involved in the listening material.
Publishing materials that I’d used in my other lessons by way of national exam preparations and internal exam information and my own personal advice meant that students could access the written text of dictation exercises preformed in class and discussion topics which due to cost issues in the department meant that it couldn’t get printed up. Being forced to publish every week was good discipline and drew repeat traffic because there was need and a niche was fulfilled. So my elective course “An insight…” worked particularly well, while also serving a static resource for the second case.
Publishing articles from the various books that I was using, many of which I discerned were unavailable on the net or a matter of public record, brought visitors to my website from various search engines when searching exact phrases from these books. This would and has led people to see the other materials provided on my blog and again it serves a niche market of people studying / teaching the same text books I was teaching, and provides extra practises and services them with answers and useful information. While not quite as effective as the above, it drives traffic for which I’m thankful.
Now, the final and most fraught issue. Publishing student compositions was my way of letting people (my friends, family and other teachers who are considering coming to China) know the sort of mistakes and topics which local Chinese people tend to do/write about in their English learning. I have failed and am still failing to introduce those entries on my blog in a way that is sensible and distinct from my own writing, and have failed to give students their proper credit or anonymity as they desire. I agree that this is an on going issue to which I am gradually repairing, but I believe that having the content web accessible is useful and a sensible thing to publish. In the future I promise to be using a different blogging platform, or a seriously modified version of this one, to make the differences more distinct.
This is quite distinct from the feedback about myself and my lessons, I asked of many of my students, to which I have posted a few entries. This I believe is fundamentally about me and improving my teaching style, and very indicative of the differences between the East and the West, and therefore remain the way they are, as I think you might agree have been introduced properly and are not quite so frequent as the student compositions.
Anyway this has been food for thought. Good day!
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