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An English Practice Forum for students...bad idea?

 
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Incognito



Joined: 20 Dec 2004
Location: Teacher centered hell!!!

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 3:51 am    Post subject: An English Practice Forum for students...bad idea? Reply with quote

Hello everyone,

I was doing lesson plans the other night and decided to make an "English Practice" forum for my students. (An online, levels based, site that my students could access to practice their English skills.) To make a long story short, I convinced myself that this idea is something I could possibly implement on a larger scale. My vision at this point is to open the forum up to all Korean students and if successful, branch out to other countries. Just for grins, I put together a very simple, trial version of the forum. Feel free to logon and give it a "test drive." It can be found at...

www.davidteacher.com/smf

Username: test
Password: eslcafe

I would really appreciate ANY feedback you are willing to offer...especially feedback regarding usefulness. In other words, is this something that you think will fly?

Thanks in advance!

David
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stalinsdad



Joined: 25 Jan 2003
Location: Jeonju

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 4:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I presume Shakespeare doesn't get out much?
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Incognito



Joined: 20 Dec 2004
Location: Teacher centered hell!!!

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not as much as he would like. Wink
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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The site looks good. Anything where the kids get an opportunity to use English is worth a try. Good luck with it.

I would suggest something a 'little' more challenging for the Beginner level. Something along the lines of: What did you do yesterday? That allows people to respond to what other people said.
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chiaa



Joined: 23 Aug 2003

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 7:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Damn fine idea for your students. Not only make the students aware of this (obviously) make sure the parents know about it and ask them to make sure so and so spends this amount of time a week there.

When I was learning German, chat rooms were great for practice.
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mount real



Joined: 07 Apr 2005

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 7:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's a great idea, anything that can get students using English outside the classroom is terrific....the only drawback (and this has nothing to do with your good idea) is that I think most students need to practice their verbal communication more than anything....but how to do that remains elusive....without getting all those overtime hours!
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spidey112233



Joined: 21 Jul 2005

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 8:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

stalinsdad wrote:
I presume Shakespeare doesn't get out much?


theres no need for him to come out! Shakespeare is useless in today's world of English, so why teach it??

He's overrated!
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ulsanchris



Joined: 19 Jun 2003
Location: take a wild guess

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 3:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

watch out you might get into trouble saying you like to go to hongdae. you defiler of korean women.
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Incognito



Joined: 20 Dec 2004
Location: Teacher centered hell!!!

PostPosted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 11:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ulsanchris wrote:
watch out you might get into trouble saying you like to go to hongdae. you defiler of korean women.


I'm a bad, bad man! Wink
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livinginkorea



Joined: 11 Jun 2004
Location: Korea, South of the border

PostPosted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 12:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks good but if you want it just for Korea the maybe a little bit of Korean will be needed for beginners? Like the sign up form or FAQ?

Just an idea.
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Incognito



Joined: 20 Dec 2004
Location: Teacher centered hell!!!

PostPosted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 7:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the input.

A friend messaged me and suggested I look into using PHPBB instead of SMF. I just installed an instance of PHPBB and must say I am very pleased. The PHPBB software is much cleaner...and is strangely familiar!

Take a look if you want and let me know what you think.

www.davidteacher.com/phpbb
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Confused Canadian



Joined: 21 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oddly enough, I'm in the process of setting up a very similar sort of thing for my university students for the upcoming fall semester. I'm also using PHPBB, but I'm going the free route ( http://www.phpbbforfree.com/ ) .

I hope it'll be a good way for them to pracitce their English, but it'll also allow me to post homework there, and get around the "hanmail" communication problem when trying to communicate with students. It'll be an interesting experiement, anyways!

Confused Canadian
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tfunk



Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Location: Dublin, Ireland

PostPosted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

www.davidteacher.com/phpbb

I hope your students aren't still visiting the site. If they are then they've got dirty minds. Embarassed
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Smee



Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do

PostPosted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, if you're going to start a forum at least have the good sense to moderate it.

But, it does look like his students have really improve their English (and German) skills. Plus their peckers are 30% harder.
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Jizzo T. Clown



Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Location: at my wit's end

PostPosted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

tfunk wrote:
www.davidteacher.com/phpbb

I hope your students aren't still visiting the site. If they are then they've got dirty minds. Embarassed


Wow that's a lot of traffic considering how long it's been up! Laughing

You might consider having each student create a blog, then assign them topics on which to post, and assign them each to a group, wherein they have to comment on their group members' blogs. It's a bit more asynchronous, but it worked great for my uni students.
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