Notes on blogging for IELTS

What I read

I read all of your blog posts from the past week. In fact, I read everything you post on our class blog, both the posts and comments on them. 

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What it says

The body of written work is great, and as I read it, a couple of things came several times to mind, which is what prompted me to write this blog post. These things vary from minor formatting details to more important points that are highly relevant to an IELTS test. 

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My response

1. Keeping up with the discussions 

New blog posts

At the top of the right-hand column, there is a box to "Follow the IELTS class blog by email". I suggest you enter your aualc.net email there and submit it. You have to pass a capcha test and confirm your email address, but it means you will get an update on new blog posts by classmates.

Discussion on a post

When you first comment on a post that interests you, you want to follow the subsequent discussion, so it's a good idea to check the "Notify me" box. When  your classmates subsequently add to the discussion, you will get an email advice, which allows to check whether you want reply to the new comment.

• Short slide show on turning on "Notify me"
   

2. Formatting 

First, a couple of notes on format, that is, on what things look like. 

It is easier for readers if each post has the same appearance, if the fonts are the same type, size and colour, and if the same headings divide each post, which also reminds writers of our purposes. The most important suggestion following from this is that you: 

• write in the blog. Don't write in MS Word or some other program and then copy and paste your work into the blog. Do your blogging in your new blog post. 
• You can close and reopen as many times as like until you are happy with your work and ready to click the orange "Publish" button. 
• This avoids the problem of strange fonts and other things that distract readers. 

Another minor formatting point relates to paragraph formatting. 

• In academic and other formal writing, it is usual indent the first line of each paragraph. Whilst this is easy to do in sophisticated word processing programs such as MS Word and Google Docs, it is not easy to do in blogs. Consequently, blogs and similar writing do not normally indent the first lines of paragraphs. And we don't want to. 
• It is enough to press the "Enter" key twice to leave a space between paragraphs. 
• It is not a good idea to get into the bad habit of using space-space-space to move text around. Don't do this.
   
• Academic and similar work is normally left aligned. That is, the lines of a paragraph are even on the left side only, as you can see in this blog post. 

There are a couple of times when you will want to copy and paste from your chosen source, which bring me to the next, and more important, point.
 

3. Rules for copy and paste 

When we write, we do sometimes want to copy and paste something. I  suggest, for example, that you copy and paste in the title of the reading or  listening you have chosen to blog on. And it would be dangerous to try to write in a link rather than to copy and paste it. This sort of copying and pasting is not a problem, although it is good style to write the title of an article in "quotation marks," and as I suggest, also make it a bold link to your chosen source. 

However,  the purpose of writing the summary part of your blog post is to check your own understanding of the ideas by writing them in your own words, so you are unlikely to want to copy and paste the exact words from your source. Further, since your response is what you think, not what someone else thinks, there is normally no need to do more research than the reading or listening you are responding to. 

The danger with copying and pasting is plagiarism. This means "taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own" (Oxford Dictionaries). In other words, plagiarism is stealing, and thieves are punished. One reason for a zero band being given in an IELTS writing test, for example, is when the test taker "writes a totally memorized response" to either writing task 1 or 2 (Writing Task 1 & Writing Task 2). This is because the totally memorized response is not the test taker's own ideas and words answering the question but those of someone else, which is a form of plagiarism. Every good university in the world strictly follows the same policy: the best result of plagiarism is a zero grade. 

But we do want to copy and paste sometimes, and there is a correct way to do this in our writing. The non-negotiable rules are: 

• always put copied and pasted words in "quotation marks." You must tell readers when you quote someone else's words from a source. Every single time. 
• always tell readers where you copied from. Every single time. If you copy someone else's words, honesty requires that you tell your readers where those words came from. 
• To sum up, it is perfectly alright to copy and paste from a source, but you must always put copied and pasted words in quotation marks and your readers must always know from where those copied and pasted words came.
   
• For us, it is generally better not to copy and paste, but to express ideas in your own words. This shows that you have understood the words you read, and can use the idea in a summary or analysis. However, if you really like the way someone else said something, you can copy a short group of words - that is often done in academic work, and is acceptable provided it follows the above rules. 
• A useful strategy here is to write your summary looking only at short notes, not at your original reading or listening. 

4. Time, fluency, playing around 

Our blogging is to practice fluency. It's an opportunity to try out new language, both vocabulary and grammar, in a relaxed way. Fluency is important in the IELTS test, where you have limited time to turn your ideas into smooth, well-organized sentences and paragraphs. I suggest you limit the summary part, which is probably the most challenging part to write well in 100 words or less, to a maximum of 20 minutes. The response part of your blog post is very flexible. I suggest you start writing and keep writing for about 20 minutes, or a little longer if you like. 

And try out the blog tools. If you make an awful mess, you can always delete and start again.