Teacher, leave the bloggers alone

Peter_step_up asked:
”Do you (teachers) use your’s capability to improve/correct our messages??”

Theoretically it’s possible, but in practice teachers shouldn’t correct students’ entries once they’ve been posted. It’s almost impossible to combine the restrictive rules of correction with a kind of freedom and spontaneity the blog offers. Those entries and comments are members’ own online property.
What teachers will happily do, however, is pick a bunch of common mistakes and use them in a class correction session from time to time, for instance. Also, any entry can always be checked for mistakes before posting to the blog.

Jokes and funny stories…

We were asked to write new entry, so I decided to start “informal” subject, as it is in the title “Jokes and funny stories”

I hope you would write sth ;) , such as good stories found on the Internet or hear at school, etc.

Just relax, feel free and let yourself go!! ;)

e.g. story:

…
During late spring one year, a blonde was trying out her new boat. She was unable to have her boat perform, travel through water, or do any maneuvers whatsoever no matter how hard she tried.

After trying for over three days to make it work properly, she decided to seek help. She putted the boat over to the local marina in hopes that someone there could identify her problem.

Workers determined that everything from the engine to the outdrive was working perfectly on the topside of the boat. So, a puzzled marina employee jumped into the water to check underneath the boat for problems. Because he was laughing so hard, he came up choking on water and gasping for air. Under the boat, still strapped in place securely, was the trailer…

and quick joke:

Q: How do you amuse a blonde for hours?
A: Write ‘Please turn over’ on both sides of a piece of paper…

more on mistakes

Basically, it is a collective blog and its primary purpose is to encourage students to share ideas using written informal language. Grammatical and spelling mistakes are naturally calculated into this form of exchange. To put it simply, although we think that grammar and accuracy are important, we will not be purist here. On the other hand, the more language the blog will generate (both perfect and “imperfect”), the more language will find its way back into the classroom, for positive feedback and correction.

correcting spelling mistakes

Peter from Step Up wrote:

Have you thought about enable correcting posts by authors and as well teachers?? It’s obvious that none is perfect and sometimes we misspell or write sth by mistake…

With that option, using The GV Blog could be more effective, not misleading, and so forth…

The answer to your question is – yes, and partially yes :)

Yes, teachers can edit all messages. Unfortunately (?), students can only correct their own posts (user level restrictions). That is why we encourage all bloggers to preview their posts/comments before they publish them.

feeling apprehensive

So this is the body of my first post. Body is very important. You know I think this BLOG might be a stressful experience for me, for example, I always write important with d at the end, and here I’ll have to check myself not to make such mistakes, because I might get into some serious trouble if there’s too many of them (you know this letter t next to my name implies, or at least should imply, that I know, more or less, how to spell fairly basic English words (this t stands for teacher in case you don’t know). Hmm, on the other hand, thanks to this BLOG my writing and spelling might improve substantially, so I guess it’s not so bad after all.
The title of this post is feeling apprehensive because that’s exactly how I feel. I’m writing this thinking that at least 10 000 people from all around the world will read this… which is surely not the case. If fact, I’m not even sure who can read this, and still worse, who I am writing it to :]. So I think it’d be nice if everyone who managed to read my post this far let me know about it by posting a short comment on it or just typing your name. Thanks in advance! but for now,
that’s all folks

Idioms to share (for Step Up)

Ania, Dorota, Krzysztof, Piotr, Marcin and Bartek, welcome to GV blog! :)

The idiom I’d like to share is “walk on air.” If you say that you are walking on air, you mean that you feel extremely happy about something :D

She’s going to be walking on air when she finds out she got the job.
Ever since Anna met this mysterious guy, she’s been walking on air.

Guess where I heard and loved it for the first time! …

… “Bold and Beautiful”! :D. As I previously said, it’s reach in idioms, although not in anything else :)

The very first entry for IELTS (and not the very first for others) :)

Our discussion yesterday provoked me to some serious thinking :) First of all, I realized that the only thing I spend money on – no matter the price, is music and everything that’s involved. Actually, in the evening, I caught myself buying another CD – of an artist that’s not even my favourite – as a treat to myself :) Do you ever catch yoursef on doing something similar? Or afterwards – when you’ve already paid for the stuff you don’t really need…