It’s worth keeping an eye on this blog

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vale+la+penaJanet Biancini and Mike Harrison, two excellent bloggers and paedagogical tinkerers like myself, have to my delight included me in their lists of 10 blogs “worth keeping an eye on”, an initiative originating as “Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog“. Thank you!

Now I am to continue the chain by naming 10 more such blogs that haven’t been mentioned yet. That means I can’t mention Chris Adam’s Bits n Bobs/ Show n Tell blog, though it reminds me every day how much more there is to life than lesson plans and deadlines. Or Karenne Sylvester’s Kalinago English blog, by one of the most authentic, articulate and unabashed pullers of strings. Or Darren Elliott’s The Lives of Teachers, one of my very favorite blogs. Or Jamie Keddie, whose infectious love of teaching jumps off his blog. Or Nicky Whitley, whose lesson plans and approach are fresh. Or Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto’s Teaching Village, Lindsay Clandfield’s Six Things, Sue Lyons Jones’s PLN Staff Lounge, the great PLN collecting around Shelley Terrell and co., or Eva Simkesyan. None of those. Others in the close-knit blogging teachers’ circuit have listed them. Sheeeesh.

Well, ok, can it be that the following marvellous, wonderful blogs have yet to be mentioned?

For learners:

  • Jeffrey Hill: The English Blog – My first recommendation to learners, he finds excellent cartoons and topical videos
  • Markus Brendel: Der Englisch Blog – Providing videos with language pointers, games and a forum to German learners of English
  • Stew Tunnicliff (“theLingoGuy”): goodopenenglish – Doing community TEFL at the grassroots level, including creative writing

Two of Spotlight’s “corporate” blogs, written for learners of English:

  • Dagmar Taylor at Spotlight – Telling very funny, original stories about her children’s bilingual language acquisition
  • Ian McMaster at Business Spotlight – I’m starting to understand economics better thanks to his Economics for Amateurs series

And here are some delightful blogs I read for inspiration of various kinds:

  • Scot W. Stevenson: USA Erklärt – My favorite blog about US culture in review, explained to Germans in German. Scot lives in Berlin
  • S. Abbas Raza et al.: 3 Quarks Daily – My daily dose of global enlightenment, a digest of science, art and literature
  • Ze Frank: Ze’s page – My eye-opener. A web mover and shaker whose blog was introduced to me by Lucy Mellersh

Dear bloggers, you can carry on the flame and copy the badge and recommend ten more blogs – perhaps ones not all that well known to your readers.

And dear reader, have you got a favorite blog you can recommend? Also have a look at my blogroll and tell me which ones you like.

Comments

10 Responses

  1. Yes, I always like to look in on The Island Weekly.
    Vicki Hollett’s blog cannot be missed – she, who opened up the world of teaching business English to so many of us and now gives so much insight into intercultural topics.
    I like Dagmar’s very much, too, she has such a nice writing style.
    and just yesterday I discovered Evan Frendo’s blog.

  2. Unfair, unfair!
    Not only have you listed 20, but you have included one of my ten to be published tomorrow!!
    Not fair, not fair!
    Now i have to sweat anew!

  3. @Joan, I actually got to meet Evan Frendo, a real treat, nice guy, and I should have listed his blog, which I really like, too. So, ex post:
    English for the workplace, Sharing thoughts with teachers and trainers of business English and ESP
    http://englishfortheworkplace.blogspot.com/

    BTW, I keep thinking ESP is extra sensory perception.

    @Chris, oh, I do think the rules can be bent 🙂 After all, you might be writing for very different readers.

  4. Dear Anne

    I am delighted you include me as a fellow “tinkerer”- what an honour. I don’t know some of the blogs you have linked to and so I look forward to browsing through them as soon as I can.

    Janet

  5. I’m honoured, Anne. Thank you! 3 Quarks Daily is one of my favourite subscriptions too: it never fails to surprise me somehow. I’ve been enjoying visits to the other blogs here that I’m not familiar with.

    Re: “can it be that the following […] have yet to be mentioned?”
    As it happens, Sentence first was included in a list elsewhere, but one with a linguistics focus rather than a teaching one. It’s at A Walk in the WoRds, whose blog and other links your readers might like to explore.

  6. Thanks very much, Janet and Stan and Darren, for stopping by! That’s an excellent list of ten at A Walk in the WoRds. Hours, no: days of good reading.

  7. Wow! Thank you so much Anne! How wonderful! It’s a badge I shall wear with honour.

    And I get to confer it on others too – that’s a gift in itself. Well, I want to give this some time and some thought, but please understand my slow response is because I want to do this right!

  8. Dear Vicki, oh, I’m not sure there is a way to really do these recommendations just right. In my experience surfing starts with some interesting comment, taking me to far-off blog shores, and sometimes I wish I could remember where I found that lovely thought I read, somewhere, or picture that sticks in my mind. But it’s gone until another unexpected link takes me back. Surfing is an adventure completely at odds with top ten lists!

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