First posts

So far, there have been posts on the following blogs: Sai, Yuri, Tomomi, and RAGAlife.

Each post is good in its own way. There are several good things about Sai's posts. One is that she is using an English-English dictionary. In my first post on this blog I recommended The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. You can use this online free of charge. Please give it a try.

Lilo on RAGAlife wrote about something she did not understand. This is very important to do. If you ask questions your English will improve. One reason that asking questions is important is that you must think about why you do not understand something in order to ask a question. When you don't understand something, try to figure out why you don't understand (that is, what word or expression it is that you cannot understand) and ask a question about that. The more concrete the question, the better.

Tomomi wrote a short essay introducing herself. This is a good thing to do too. Since this is a reading course, I think that most of what you write will be about what you are reading. It is a very good idea to write in English about what you are reading and occasionally you may choose to write about other topics as well. Even though the main activity of the class should be reading, we can also use our blogs to improve our writing as well.

Yuri's post was good too. She was the first one to post. Doing your reading and writing early is a very good idea. On the other hand, if you postpone writing in your blogs too long, you will not be able to catch up. As I have written elsewhere on this blog, I expect each of you to post messages every week about what you are reading.

I'm looking forward to reading more posts.