What is your impression of Scrooge so far?

     The first chapter of "A Christmas Carol"  is dedicated to establish the personality of Scrooge. The author describe this character and show some situations where he interact of all sorts of people - family, unknowns and even a old friend who reappears from the beyond - for the reader to realize who he really is. From what  I read the book I can deduce that Scrooge is a person with cold heart and little soul.
     Scrooge is a skeptical, he doesn't believe in love, neither the romantic love nor the love of neighbor. He is a doesn't show his feelings, even when he was afraid, because of the Marley's ghost, he pretend he wasn't. He would like to have all the money possible, but do not spend even the minimum necessary for the proper comfort.

Summarily, Scrooge is a old covetous morose man, exactly the opposite of Marley.

What are the benefits of reading a whole book?

     During school American students are advised to read several books, many them are almost mandatory, since they represent a significant percentage of the final grade. For learn a English as second language firstly we need the bases - and that is what we did in the lower levels in ELS - but after that is important to behavior as a regular American student. The reason why schools adopt this practice is because this is a good method for learn vocabulary and even culture, and if in our class we read a whole book, we will have the same benefits.

     The best advance that we'll have reading an entire book on this section will be expand our vocabulary. In a book the author describe the same characters, settings and situations often. To avoid repetition he will use many different words and expressions that we can learn while reading it. Moreover, this exercise will allow us to better interpret and understand abstractions, which could be more difficult if we read only part of the book. All this new knowledge will be helpful while we write our on essays.

     Although the book that we are reading takes place in London, it is a part of an American culture, and learn the culture of our audience is important for a good communication. For example, if we write a TOEFL essay our audience will be TOEFL graders who have a good literary knowledge, so we can use some characters or situations from a well known book, as an example or for make a comparison. 

     Therefore read a whole book will give us more tools - vocabulary and cultural knowledge- for improve our communication.

How can blogging help you learn English?

     

              Since I start study in ELS I developed my communication skills, however in writing I didn't enhance so much. That's because I listen my classmates presentations and I talk whit them, but I never read what they write. I believe that make the writing exercises in a blog will help me to learn English because my classmates and I will have the possibility to share our work and improve together.

      

      Firstly, I believe that have access to other students blogs will help me to learn vocabulary. If we write about the same subject, everyone will do it in a different way, with different words. So if after I finish my work I could read what the rest of the class did, I'll learn another ways to express the same idea. In the other hand if we have a broad topic on which one could write about a variety of matters, I will learn some words that neither I nor my teacher would have thought of studying.

      Furthermore, have someone who is not a teacher reading the articles on my blog will make me realize if I'm been enough clear in my assertions. Sometimes the ideas in my mind are so set out, that I skip some steps while I'm writing and the audience can get confused. The problem in this part is that the teachers who are so used to decipher the muddled ideas of students can understand the message. That's why have classmates, who don't have the same ability of the teacher, reading my work will help me.

       The technology - especially internet - can be an important tool for education, if properly exploited. Use blogs for develop the write skills is a good way to take advantage of this resource, mainly because enables information sharing.