On Your Mark. . . Get Set. . .
Bite Sized English isn’t back from the hiatus, yet. My parents will be coming here tomorrow to visit us (and their new grandson, of course) for a week. While they are here, I know I’m not going to have time to work on the website. So, I’m not going to try. Instead, I’m going to start back up after they leave next week.
So, why am I writing this now? The reason is simple: I’ve done a lot of thinking about how Bite Sized English will look in the future, and I want to share my thoughts with you. If you have any suggestions or changes to make, let me know!
Bite Sized English will be:
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Fun and Interesting. I think this will be my biggest challenge. . . because learning English can be a pretty boring thing to do. And it’s easy for teachers to teach boring English. I’ll try not to.
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A Part of Me. Up until now, I’ve been writing ‘lessons’ for Bite Sized English like. . . well, like I was writing a textbook meant for everybody. The problem is that, when you write for everybody, you have to make things dry and, well. . . boring. My plan will to be make the website more like being in a classroom with me. There will be more of my personality, and if that means that some people don’t like it, then that’s too bad.
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Fast. Everyone I’ve talked to about Bite Sized English has told me that they like the short lessons, because that makes finding time for the lessons easier.
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A Good Place to Practice. There is a lot of listening practice here. I’m proud of that. And, because I don’t have many comments, I’ll still promise to correct the English you use to make comments. . . that means that Bite Sized English will still be a good place to practice writing. But we won’t be practicing speaking here. I don’t like the system that I’d been using to include voice comments. If you find a better one, let me know.
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Varied. You’ll hear a lot of different voices—I’ve been asking other native speakers of English to make recordings, so you’ll be exposed to more accents—and there will be a lot of different topics. In fact, if there’s a topic you’d like to talk more about, just send me an email and I’ll prepare it!
Bite Sized English will not be:
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For Everyone. Because I want to have more me in the blog, I guess there will be some people who don’t like the website. . . the same way that there are a few crazy people who don’t like me.
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Everyday. I won’t be able to keep up my every day posting, not even using a lot of You Tube videos (they’re easier to post then something that I actually make). Instead, my goal is to have one ‘native English’ recording every Friday. (These are the recordings that are tagged with ‘English Three’ in my tag system.) Sometimes they will be recordings of me. As often as possible, they’ll be recordings of other people. In addition to the recording every Friday, I’ll be making some recordings on the vocabulary and idioms in the recording on on the same topic. These will be a bit slower English, and they’ll come earlier in the week. My idea is that you can listen to the recordings as they come, and they’ll prepare you for the ‘difficult’ recording.
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A Lot of Grammar. Because I want to keep the lessons manageably short, I won’t be making any more ‘lessons’ or recordings about grammar. Instead, when I have time, I’ll be making more eWorksheets. Like everything else, if there’s a grammar point you’d like me to cover, you only have to say so.
Okay! That was a lot to say. Sorry that this became so long.
I can tell you that the changes won’t all be noticeable in the new lessons. Old habits die hard, and I will need a little bit of time to get comfortable with what I want the blog to be in the future. But the only way to do that is to get started!
