Blogs are a wonderful addition to the range of personal development resources at our disposal, exposing us to the reflections of new writers, the latest ideas of established authors and – crucially – giving us the chance to get involved
But it can be hard to manage our blog use, even with apps like Instapaper to help us do it offline. For a start, there’s the sheer range of worthwhile blogs out there, all of which compete for our attention in real time alongside news and entertainment sites, social networking platforms and – what’s that word again? – oh yes, work
Even when we subscribe to a favourite blog, a week can flash by without us reading the latest post. If we do try and catch up, there can be so much comment to read through that we feel left behind
Is there another way to experience a great blog – less hurried, more contemplative? One of the first ideas behind the round was to create a bridge between blogs and conventional publishing, and we’re delighted to be doing just this with a new e-book based on Scott Thornbury’s ‘An A-Z of ELT’
It isn’t just an e-book version of the blog – the original blog will remain online, hyperlinked to the book. Instead, Scott has reshaped a selection of key posts as Big Questions In ELT
Each selected post has been framed as a critical issue for teachers, such as ‘What makes an activity communicative?‘, or ‘How do you achieve ‘flow’ in your teaching
The rewritten text is followed by a series of new Questions for Discussion, so each chapter can be used for personal reflection or teacher training
As Scott says in his introduction: ‘in my teaching and in my training, I favour dialogue over transmission, and dialogue – almost by definition – entails asking questions.’ This resonates not only with Scott’s work in Dogme ELT, but also with the online format that gave birth to this e-book: he sees the questions as ‘a means of re-activating, and continuing, the online conversations that the original blog posts triggered
There’s an additional feature that exploits the visual potential of e-pub formats: a series of specially commissioned, colour illustrations by Piet Luthi
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