The world has become a global space where information can easily be accessible with just a touch on the screen. As such, blogs have become resource sites where professionals, such as English teachers, can get access to information that would help improve their practices as well as platforms to share their insights that would help others.
However, creating such functional blog site that would attract visitors and achieve an expanded network requires careful dedication and efforts in its design, content and layouts. To start blogging as an English teacher, it is important to investigate what is considered good practice in the art and emulating it. This is achievable through careful understudying of excellent blogs and picking valuable insights from them to utilise. As such, in this section, I make a review of an ELT blog, An A-Z of ELT, that I was introduced to last week.
Apart from it being published by Scott Thornbury, a top ELT practitioner, the blog is a a form of a dictionary-encyclopedia of ELT, containing several well-discussed topical issues in English language teaching hence, worth being a model for other prospective bloggers and a good resource for English teachers.
Below are my impressions about Scott's blog:
Organisation and Layout
A scan through the blog shows a well-structured, easy-to-navigate, functional and elegantly designed blog layout. The first thing a reader sees is the list of alphabet on the left hand-side of the blog. Each of the letters of the alphabet incorporates different English topics which guides the audience to select the specific information they seek. Additionally, on the right hand-side, the blogger categorises his content through the archive, comment and label features. Therefore, readers can navigate through the blog's monthly or yearly archives, view comments on each topic published, as well as view popular topics in the blog. This functional organisation enables its simplicity and visibility hence, making it easy to access by the audience irrespective of their digital literacy level. Furthermore, the blog is designed in an elegant way that visitors would definitely find appealing to spend more time on.
Content and Features
The blog contains a collection of writings and video clips on trendy issues in English language teaching such as 'blogging', corpus, ELF etc. These topics are well discussed with appropriate references where necessary. The blogger also integrated some videos to some of his discussions for the audience to watch. An instance is an integrated video about 'blogging', which provide more information about the topic to readers who seek to learn more. There is also an RSS Feed, links to different social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp etc. which make the blog more attractive to visitors and makes it easier to share and access information.
Ease of Access
As discussed earlier, the organisation of the blog makes it easier to navigate even for first-time users. First, each navigation menu on the page, is responsive and leads visitors to the appropriate destination, as there were no dead-ends experienced while surfing through the pages. Second, the navigation menu is visible, the audience would not have challenges clicking on the appropriate one that they need and getting access to the information they seek. Lastly, the topics discussed in the blog are well indexed such that a user need only to browse through the index section to read their choice.
Target Audience
Since the blog is about topical issues in English language teaching, the comments are usually by ELT professionals who usually commend the blogger on his posts, offer more insights, and, or interrogate the blogger on the topic published. The comments are usually engaging as trends of discussions could take months, with the blogger replying to issues made as such, there is quite a traffic on the blog which makes it lively.
Summary
In summary, the key features that any blog must possess for it to be functional includes the following:
Elegant blog design and well-organised layouts
Easy navigation of menus
Functional links leading to the appropriate pages
Categorised contents
Well discussed contents
Consistent update of posts
Prompt replies to comments
Lively engagement of visitors who comment
To learn more about blogging, watch Russel's video below:
