Primarily, insights into my learning on a Masters distance course with the University of Nottingham.
For the SLA module, we are keeping a Teaching Diary, where we note down what has and has not been working in our lessons. From this we will focus on one particular issue that we would like to resolve, or one thing that is going well, but would like to improve further, to create a…
Step 1 Choose a character, write a list of curiosities and chose the most intruiging and interesting Think about the character’s appearance, profession and personality Step 2 Place the character in a specific situation Step 3 Answer the following questions: – where is your character? – what can they see under their feet? – what…
How to Write Beginnings After watching my tutor’s video lecture, I understand that the main objective of a beginning is to surprise the reader. Thinking about the first draft of my own short story, I believe I achieved that objective, with an attractive title (Provocations of Light) and a fantastical account, to draw readers’ attention….
Academia.Edu To Vodcast or Not To Vodcast: Potential and Limitations in the Foreign Language Classroom is an essay written for the module Introduction to Digital Technologies for Language Teaching, taken as part of the MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching, University of Nottingham. If you are interested, please feel free to read this work…
I have just started to add teaching and learning resources to my Social Bookmarking tool, Symbaloo. In doing so I came across Teach Thought, which reports on the intersection of teaching, learning and technology. I was immediately attracted by a short post proposing a wild, hypothetical question – what would the world be like if…
What is TECW? As part of the Technology-Enhanced Creative Writing module, my fellow classmates and I are temporarily throwing away our teacher identities and becoming fully-fledged writers! It’s terribly exciting and terrifying at the same time. Exciting to be doing something new, fun and creative. Terrifying because I am suddenly not quite sure if I…
Having carried out a number of different writing exercises last week, I’ve taken one flash fiction story (Sticks by George Saunders) and created a simple lesson plan that focuses on the use of adjectives, details and ‘showing’ instead of ‘telling’, while incorporating technology. It needs a bit of work, but here are the bare bones:…
Reflecting on Details for Creative Writing Other than my school text books and the readings for this course, I have very little time to read for pleasure. However, I did just pick up and glance at a book I would like to read, The Emigrants, Book 1, which was gifted to me by a Swedish…
This Week’s Creative Writing Exercise 2 Use this exercise to add a character to the previous scene. Choose only one of the following emotions and create a character who is feeling this emotion right now: He was afraid She was tired She was overjoyed /He was disheartened/ He was in love She was furious …
This Week’s Creative Writing Exercise 1 Focus on the senses: touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing A hotel room: You have arrived in a very luxurious hotel room. Describe your room. Bring it to life. Include colours, textures, smells, sounds and flavours. The Hotel Room by Karina The door creaks open, slowed down by a…