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//This text is a way of getting to know the program. My initial idea was to use it with young learners of English who are pupils of a friend of mine. My current purpose is to use it for for BaW07//

Blogging for Openwebpublishing
Let's have a date this time: Sunday, February 4th. 2007.

I think the couple of lines at the top are useful to reflect the fact that I, at least, start blogs - probably because I have just read a recommendation from someone and click on a link in the message - write a sentence, and never go back. My first sentence, I think, is one if not two years old. I still recall the idea, but it was never implemented.

The second sentence is only two or three weeks old, at the beginning of BaW07.

I have been reading all the correspondence so far - I have read from Message 1 to Message 150, over 150 to go. Let's hope you are all busy this weekend so I can catch up.. I am most impressed at the range of experience and know-how people have, but also, frankly, a little depressed - this is my nature. When, as an 11-year-old learning to play the violin, my music teacher took my violin to show me how I should be playing it, when I got it back I wanted to stamp on it and turn it into fireword. She meant to encourage me but only succeeded in demonstrating I was aiming at the impossible. Reading the messages, I ask myself questions like: "What is the point?" and think thoughts like: "You will never catch up with them." I only mention that as part of a blogging memo. I believe I can find satisfactory answers for that question and comment. What strikes me most, reading through the correspondence, is that most (but by no means all) of members of the workshop are still actively employed.(Many of them are actively over-employed.) I have the luxury of no longer having to work for my bread and musli. The state monthly gives me back a fraction of the money I paid into various taxes and insurances over the years. I do not notice a lack of motivation, but I do experience a lack of focus. I need plugging into someone else's projects.

Bee very sweetly mentioned that I was her pupils' first: Mystery Guest in a blog that was fired by charcoal. Later I became a Mystery Guest (in colour) of Carla's sutdents at CTJ. If you have time, visit it, and make sure to go to the archives. I managed to upload quite a few photos, a Bubbleshare show and my first film, a mocked-up interview with Carla's students, made with Movie Maker and actually resident at UTube.

[|CTJ online]

For completeness, let me mention **English from Zero**. This was, in the event, a hilarious account and discussion (stricly text only) of how I was going to teach a Russian young man English from Zero. I discussed this project at length, with Scott Thornbury amongst lothers, and after two lessons, the Russian young man decided he did not want to (could not) continue!

[|English from Zero]

Oh. There is one more blog. I set it up to discuss the novel: **Brick Lane**, with a friend of mine, and contnued to discuss other novels and books I have just read - with myself.

[|Brick Lane]

For this blogography to be complete, I should mention the blog I have set up (much helped by Bee) for Andrew Wright on the use of stories in teaching EFL.

[|http://www.andrewarticlesandstories.wordpress.com]

Dennis aka Denos