Student Blogging: Appearance, Character, Relationships

Naturally, the blogging task my students considered to be one of the most compelling was the one related to the topic "Appearance. Character. Relationships". It didn't come as a surprise to me as young people are always eager to talk about their friends, roommates and dates. 

To help them make their stories full of great collocations, phrasal verbs and idioms, I offered them some online resources apart from the basic wordlist:

A lesson on PHRASAL VERBS related to relationships:
http://www.espressoenglish.net/phrasal-verbs-for-romantic-relationships/

Interactive vocabulary exercises:
http://www.expandyourvocabulary.com/personality/exercise5.swf
http://www.expandyourvocabulary.com/personality/exercise1.swf
http://www.expandyourvocabulary.com/friend/exercise2.swf
http://learningapps.org/269316

In order to practise active vocabulary in speaking, I offered them some role play situations:

1.  A married couple is talking to a therapist about their relationship.

2.  Two young people are discussing their dating experiences.

3.  Two friends are deciding who they want and do not want to invite for a party they throw.

4.  Old friends are recalling their college years, friendships and people who were special for them.

5.  Two young people are gossiping about their new roommate.

6.  A young person is trying to convince his/her friend who fell in love with a wrong person to let it go.

Finally, the very blogging task included creating a comic strip. That's where the most of the students had lots of fun!

THE TASK: 

You  have to write a story that meets the following requirements:
- description of characters
- some details of their relationship (friendship, romance, parent-child etc; date, falling out, argument etc)
- dialogs and conversations between characters

Conversations and dialogs will be presented in a form of comic strips created in http://www.wittycomics.com/ orhttp://bitstrips.com/create/comic. If you wish to present the whole story as a comic strip, you certainly can do this. Otherwise, include at least 3 comic strips in your story.

A rough example, as usual:

OR

Good Luck!

As always, here are some works by my students:
Rita
Yulia
Ruslana

A Comic Strip to Practice Vocabulary

My students and I are discussing sports and related issues at the moment. The unit is almost over and I'd like to give them some creative space to practise active vocabulary. For this reason, I created a comic strip with the help of Bitstrips called "A Day in the Gym". The bubbles are all empty, so the students will have to speculate on what the characters might say. One of the requirements is to use active vocabulary.

I look forward to having lots of fun!