Job Discussion Forums

[denise]

I've read a few posts recently on a couple of different threads that have pointed out (lamented?) that there is a lack of content here at dear ol' Dave's. What, exactly, does "content" mean? Would anyone like to start a thread on, perhaps, Chomsky, whose name has come up in some recent posts? Bachman? My faves are Adrian Underhill, Kohls (Herbert?), and good ol' Pennycook.

Personally, I enjoy hearing people's own experiences and anecdotes--though I love academia, I noticed during grad school a bit of a gap between research and practice. Given my current role as a teacher, I find "practice" far more immediately relevant.

Shall we start discussing more weighty theoretical issues? Or is it OK to stick to "light" stuff (which to me is not light at all--many of these threads I find immensely helpful)? Note that I'm not volunteering to start a "weightier" thread--having just finished school, I am perfectly content to give it a rest for a while!

d

[shmooj]

Personally, anything that Michael Lewis comes up with is a must read for me. His books The English Verb and The Lexical Approach have had a profound impact on my teaching, the former in particular.

I found his summary of the English verb system reasonable and remarkably easy to teach. I thought he was spot on with his assessment of the future system in English i.e. that there is no future tense in English. THis was news to me but I found his arguments very liberating - as do my students.

Anyone else read him or care to comment using big long words about future syntax in English so that we can rescue the content on this forum

[Steiner]

I think the General Forum is good, a bastion of interest. The China forums have dwindled away a bit.

Classroom stories are great. Shmooj's future syntax is great. Stupid fun threads are great. Maybe the forums need a good balance of all three to remain interesting for those of us who use them for entertainment as well as for posting and and answering teaching queries.

[Wolf]

There are other forums on this site. I've been awfully lazy, but I ought to sign up for the Applied Linguistics forum et al.

I have included a lot of technobabble in a few posts recently. The China forums have been hit pretty hard in recent bombardments. As my life in China is boring and (possibly) half over, don't look to me to fix it.

If we started a thread like, "Teaching methods for large classes," or "sucessful communictation activities for low level students," etc we might get a little more into the "meat and bones" of EFL teaching.

Well, I'll start one and see how it goes.

[dduck]

[dreadnought]

My thought is: keep it light.

There are many discussion forums where there are loads of in-depth discussions about the 'meat' of teaching: the dogme forum, the IATEFL SIGs. I come to the 'cafe' to hear about all the crazy stuff - the mad students, the bizarre classroom incidents, the culture clashes. When you've had a bad day teaching, it's nice to remember why I do this job, and this forum is a constant reminder of that. So, let the graybeards be sniffy about this forum, but don't let it turn into a laugh-free zone.

[denise]

Dreadnought--

I agree with you. I was surprised to read those posts that said the discussion was weak here. What is weak about sharing classroom experiences? I enjoy the banter and the tangents, too--they give a more personal feeling to the discussions.

d

[gerard]

Hi Denise!!! When I am not on this forum (which is not often ) I read znet for left wing commentary in general and Chomsky. Type in znet on msn search and it comes up. I love reading but books are so hard to come by in Asia I am sure this is true in Japan also so I watch a lot of DVD's and try to find a girlfriend.