It’s Worth Taking a Look at This Blog – Continuing the movement

I have to say that being mentioned by Jason Renshaw (English Raven) on his 10-blog list for the “It’s Worth Taking a Look at This Blog” movement (shall I call it that???) truly made me feel elated. His blog and all the ones he mentioned are part of my daily reading, which is why I was both surprised and very happy to be on his list.

But what is this all about? Well, to be honest, I couldn’t really put it any better than Jason, so I hope he doesn’t mind my borrowing of his words to explain this:

This is a new and really positive initiative sweeping the ELT blogosphere at the moment. Basically, if someone tags you in their list of 10 recommend teaching blogs, you then come up with your own list of 10 other blogs YOU’D be willing to recommend, paste the logo above into your post, link back to the person/blog that initially tagged you.

I’ve been thinking about which blogs I’d like to recommend on a post – all of the blogs on my blogroll are blogs I recommend, and also the ones on my Google Reader bundle. I guess sometimes I simply add a blog to my RSS reader and forget to add them to the blogroll list. Anyway, after spending a long time having a look at Jason’s list and some others, I thought of coming up with a list of blogs I enjoy reading which are about ELT and that hadn’t been mentioned that often. I found out that was going to be really hard to do, so I took another look at my Google Reader list and these are the blogs I chose to highlight:

1. Karenne Sylvester – kalinagoenglish – For some reason, Karenne’s blog has motivated me to start my own blog and it was through her lists and comments that I discovered many of the bloggers and tweeps I now follow and learn from.
2. Shelly Terrel – Teacher Reboot Camp – Just like Karenne, Shelly is also to blame for my starting this blog and coming back to twitter.
3. Sean Banville – Sean Banville’s blog – Sean is the place to go if you’re looking for a nice read, and definitely the place to go if you’re looking for any kind of lesson you want. All of his blogs are great. I really wonder how he finds the time to do all that.
4. Jim Burke – The English Teacher’s Companion – What can I say… I really enjoy his style and he’s alsways got something interesting to say.
5. Teacher Training Unplugged – It’s no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I’m a Dogme-ist. I thought going with Luke’s and/or Scott’s blogs would just be too obvious. 🙂
6. Vicki Hollett – Learning to speak ‘Merican – I first visited Vicki’s blog because of the her posts on the differences between American and British English. I then realised how much I was missing out for not visiting it sooner.
7. Nick Jaworski – Turkish TEFL – I started following Nick’s blog a while ago. I really like it that he speaks his mind and also soundly supports his views. Lots of interesting things there as well.
8. Susi Pucci – Making Connections – I first visited her blog after a comment she made here and never stopped reading her stuff. 🙂
9. Ms. Flecha – My Life Untranslated – Another blog I’ve only recently found out about due to Twitter. I haven’t got a lot to say but I’ve enjoyed all posts I’ve read so far.
10. Jeffrey Hill – The English Blog – Lots and lots of ideas to adapt and use in the classroom.

This has been a nice experience and I found out I’ve been following way too many good blogs to come up wit a list of only ten. It’s taken me a long while to come up with this list, but I hope you also enjoy the blogs I mentioned. This is in no way a comprehensive list.

If you’ve been nominated anywhere, keep the ball rolling. I’ve started following many interesting people on Twitter because of #teachertuesday and #followfriday, so I’m curious to see where this project is headed. I’ll ‘plagiarise’ Jason again to explain the next steps (Jason, if you ever come to Brasília I’ll buy you a beer for having done that. Deal?):

If you are tagged by somebody as part of the project, here’s what you should do next:

1) Insert the picture above into your blog with a link back to the blog that nominated you;
2) Compile a list of ten blogs you feel are worth reading and;
3) Tell the bloggers you have nominated that you have tagged them.