I am a teacher educator from Athens, Greece. My job is to train English teachers and help them become better teachers in the classroom.
One year ago, I started blogging. My blogs are written for teachers of English and you can see them here:
- Marisa Constantinides - TEFL Matters (in English)
- Teaching & Learning Foreign Languages (in English)
- Foreign Language Education (in Greek)
So here I am writing this post to share my enthusiasm about blogging with you and to make you start blogging too!
Why do I blog?
Richard St. John shares his eight secrets of success in a fantastic video and I want to talk about blogging and how I think it is connected to these eight great secrets.
Here are the eight secrets in a word cloud
Richard St.John’s Eight Secrets of Success – Made with http://www.wordle.net/
I blog for all the reasons in the word cloud:
- I blog because I want to be an excellent educator (Excellence)
- I blog because I want to share my ideas (Serve Others)
- I persist even when I am tired; good results need hard work! (Work!)
- I blog to focus more on my interest and learn more about it (Focus)
- I blog because this makes me think and learn new things (Push Yourself)
- I get more ideas by trying to explain my ideas to other people. (Ideas)
- I blog because I love my job and I am passionate about teaching (Passion)
- I persist because I believe communicating your ideas is important for learning (Persist)
What should you blog about?
Blog about something you love, something you are passionate about. It may be your stamp collection, it may be travel, it may even be your love of the English language!
If you love your subject, you will find more things to write and you will also find the time, no matter how busy you are.
It takes time but it’s worth it!
Writing helps you become a better writer and the better you get, the more your English will improve!
May be you will find it hard at the the beginning. I found it hard too!
But with time, it gets easier. Remember! You won’t get better by waiting! You will get better by trying!”
Go beyond your comfort zone
Challenge yourself and you will surely be amazed by how much you will learn by communicating with the world!
And if you would like to listen to this great talk which inspired this post, here it is below, one of the great TED talks.
I look forward to reading some great posts.
Comments
Dear Marissa
thank you for this great post , we really do need this for the learner and the native speaker alike
Dear Tara,
Thanks ever so much for your lovely comment! I really enjoyed writing this post and I have used it myself to encourage and inspire new bloggers, whether they are teachers or learners!
You are doing such a fantastic job mainting the spirit of this great learner community, someone ought to give you a medal !!!!
Marisa
Hi Marisa,
So sorry I missed this. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this for our bloggers to read. This is perfect! I'm going to add it to my favourites list and will be able to share it with new members often. I've learned so much from you in 2010. I hope to meet you in real life soon.
I hope you had a fantastic Christmas holiday. Keep in touch. Happy New Year!
Tara
Thank you very much Nadira and Grace!
I am very happy if this post inspired you to start your own blog, Grace!
Happy blogging!
Many thanks for sharing the outstanding post. The words and video inspire me much. I would try blogging as many as I can to give myself a better chance to practice more.
Great reading, I will never get tired learning from this, thankyou so much Teacher Marisa.
Thank you all for your wonderful comments!
I am so excited that some of you have already started blogging!!!
This makes this teacher very happy :-)
Keep it up and I shall visit your blogs and write comments
Marisa Constantinides
CELT Athens
Hello Marisa!
I like writing blogs,but rather I prefer reading blogs,here in MyEC(&on the net too)and drop a comment on them.
It's an exciting thing to read and learn how other people concieve of a question and what are their oppinion and reaction to it.
I really appreciate some peolple's great work and educating (&interesting,funny and food for thought )blogs here,you are one of them,surely!
Thank you for sharing your nice ideas:)
-Monika-
Nice job!
Actually, MyEC wouldn't be the same without the blog part. I like blogging, too. Yes, it's quite true 'you won't get better by waiting'. Let's start to write!