ESL Blogs

Have you heard of Seth Godin? He is a blogger with a huge fan base. People enjoy his style of writing and his mission to motivate. He wants people to be doers.

Seth Godin has great advice for business people, marketers, and anyone who has a creative idea. Why is Seth Godin a good model for bloggers? He carefully chooses every word. 

For this month's writing challenge, we are going to work on a writing skill called paraphrasing. We are going to borrow some of Seth's blog posts to practise this skill. When you paraphrase, you put someone else's writing into your own words. You explain or clarify the text that you read by rewriting it. It is best to use a different format than the original. Paraphrasing helps you avoid plagiarizing. 

Your Task

1) Go to Seth's Blog

2) Choose a post that interests you. Look through the archives to find one at your reading level. Some are short and simple and others are longer and more detailed.

3) Read the post you chose a number of times. Then close the post. (Try not to look at it as you write.)

4) Create a new blog post called "Writing Challenge #32: Paraphrasing Seth"

5) Write some important points from Seth's blog in your own words. Don't use the same format as Seth. You can paraphrase Seth by writing a list, a letter, an essay, a paragraph, etc. (In other words, if Seth wrote a list, don't paraphrase as a list.) 

6) Include your source. (See my example.)

7) After you post your challenge, come back here and leave a link to your post.

*If you borrow any exact wording from Seth, use "quotation marks".

Paraphrasing checklist. Did you......?

• put the ideas into your own words
• change the form of the original text
• give details (more than a summary)
• credit your source 

My Example: Paraphrasing Seth

Which came first the library or the librarian? 

In a recent blog post, book lover Seth Godin took an in depth look at the past and future of libraries. To paraphrase, there was a time, long ago, when only wealthy people could afford books. Over the years, libraries made it possible for the average person to have access to reading materials. Today, the library is undergoing a huge change. Publishing is moving to digital platforms. What this means is, some of the books on library shelves are beginning to gather dust. This is especially true for educational materials. Information changes so quickly, and eBooks are the latest rage. Will libraries and librarians become obsolete in the digital age? Seth hopes not. 

According to Seth, the library of the future will be a place where ...

• children learn how to find their way through the labyrinth of resources available on the Internet
• people learn how to get things done more efficiently (of course the librarians will have to know all of the tools and tricks that the Internet offers; they will do more teaching and less shelving and shushing)
• all patrons have access to web terminals and there is never a wait
• online resources are the main event (there will still be books, but resources such as outdated encyclopedias will not be used for assignments)

Look at it this way. We'll still have libraries, they'll just be more connected to real information, and the people who run them will be some of the most tech savvy people you know. (Let's hope.)

"When kids go to the mall instead of the library, it's not that the mall won, it's that the library lost." Seth Godin

Source: 

Godin, Seth Seth's Blog [Internet]. New York. May 16, 2011 - [cited June 10, 2011] Available from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the-future-of-the-library.html

(Above is an example of a formal citation. Use this for academic purposes. The source below is fine for MyEC purposes.)

 Seth's Blog: The future of the library (May 16, 2011) 

4 Suggested Seth Posts (If you can't choose your own.)

Marketing to Nobody

What's the Point of Popular?

The $20,000 Phone Call

Buying an Education or Buying a Brand

Useful phrases when paraphrasing

Basically

In other words

As (author name) mentioned/said/put it/wrote

To sum up

As I see it

What he/she means is

In short

Think of it/look at it this way

Note: This month's writing challenge was inspired by a teacher friend named Tyson Seburn. He practises paraphrasing with his advanced students. I enjoyed his presentation at a recent online conference.