Skip to main content

Blog Template

Posted by on
Unlike an essay or an analysis of a text a blog response encourages you as the reader to personally engage and connect with what you have read and respond directly to the text itself and the wider ideas and issues the text raises. Therefore these entries give you the opportunity to write in a semi-informal manner using first person statements to really show that you have thought about what you have just read.

While you may give you honest opinion about a text you must be critical and explain yourself in detail. There is nothing wrong about disagreeing with what you read but you need to support this with evidence and discussion that is well thoughtout. Thus your blog should be convincing regardless of whether your reader agrees with your response or not.

Remember that rather than analysing the text you are critically responding to what you have read, voicing your personal opinion that is supported and developed by discussion.

Below are some sentence starters you could use to help with your blogs. You are by no means limited to these but they may help with structuring your blog responses.

This (book, film, poem, song) was about... (give a short summary)

I really enjoyed/ did not enjoy this (book, film, poem, song) because...

After (reading, watching, listening) this I began to think about...

I struggled to relate to the ideas in this text because...

I think the message of the text was...

The (author, director) wanted us to think about...

I would (not) recommned this because...

In my opinion...

Honestly I thought...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Image

A LITERARY CRITIQUE OF THE WHALE RIDER, BY WITI IHIMAERA

Witi Ihimaera,  The Whale Rider —International Edition  (Reed Publishing, 2003), pp. 154. Ihimaera is arguably the most influential Maori author in existence, publishing the first collection of short stories by a Maori writer called  Pounamu Pounamu  in 1972. The following year, he followed suit by being the first Maori to author a novel— Tangi.  However, his  magnum opus  is indubitably his 1987  The Whale Rider.  Fifteen years later the film adaption was released, with the eminent Niki Caro as the supervising director and Keisha Castle-Hughe's entrancing performance as the protagonist. As one commentator accurately observed, "A film so specific to one area, and grounded so firmly in New Zealand and Maori culture, has enthralled audiences from different countries partly because of the universal theme of heroic triumph over adversity, but mainly because of Castle-Hughes' and [Rawiri] Paratene's stunningly natural and utterly convincin...
Image

Short Stories: WHERE IS DANIEL?

The time was an early morning in the winter of 1941. Falling snow packed onto the hard  labourers  of Gulag  10 WLA as they begin setting off into the mines and factories somewhere in the far east. Malnourished, mistreated and muddy, the inhabitors of this typical Gulag were kept under strict control of General Victor, who gave harsh punishments to any prisoner who dared riot or worse, insult the government.   It was a normal evening. The prisoners were escorted back to the Gulag through the freezing taiga by cattle carriages. They waited in line for their daily rations: Rubbery potatoes, dried bread and lime water. If one behaved well and boasted high production, he/she would sometimes be rewarded with a small knob of fresh corn, a snack the guards would gladly feast on. General Victor was feasting on a large chicken when Archie, or formally, Guard Number One burst into his room reporting misbehaviour between two prisoners. Ben (Guard Number Two) and Mile...

The Book of Heroic Failures

The Book of Heroic Failures By Stephen Pile The Book of Heroic Failures, was written by Stephen Pile and first published in 1979. This book is essentially a collection of hilarious, ironic and unusual people and events. This sole theme is that of ironic failure, each story being anywhere from a few sentences to several paragraphs. The book itself is split into eleven different sections so that the reader may dip in and out of the book at will, which is a very helpful format considering the layout of the stories. My favourite sections include  the glory of the stage ,  stories we failed to pin down  and  the art of being wrong.  From the poet whose footnotes were longer than his poems, to a bill ruling that the value of pi was four, there is no shortage of entertaining stories within this books pages. To those who wish to read only the best of these stories I would advise that you read some of the longer ones as more tends to go wrong, causing a domino...