The Vision
As I’ve written elsewhere, I really hope that EFL Teacher Training becomes a
place where we can get together to promote excellence in language teaching.
Somewhere you can ask a question and get an informative, non-sniping reply.
Where you can access resources put together by folks who know their stuff.
Where you can contribute your own unique experiences, knowledge and skills.
In short, a community of like-minded professionals.
If this sounds like the sort of community to which you’d like to belong, well then,
that means you need to get involved!
It will, naturally, take a little while to build momentum but I’m okay with starting
out small. I hope you are too. I know everyone wants everything yesterday. But
some things take time.
And those things are usually worth it.
Particularly if the person behind them really believes in what he or she is doing
and cares about the outcome.
What I’d really like is for people to make full use of the “Comments” feature and the “Contact Form” on the blog.
Ask questions.
Make suggestions.
Toss your ideas out there…
You never know what might come back!
If we can really turn this into a community of people willing to share their ideas and engage in a meaningful discussion about the nuts and bolts of language teaching, then I’ll keep injecting more of my time and resources into the site and expanding it more and more!
There are a number of good sites out there already for language teachers, but none that are really moving in the direction I would like to see it go; hence my creating this site! That’s not to dis those sites in any way. I frequently go to other forums and blogs and so on.
And I will continue to do so. I don’t expect this to become the ONLY place you go to on the web for info about language teaching. That would be a ridiculous starting point!
But what I do hope to attract to this site is the people who really enjoy and want to make a go of it, despite all the B.S. in the language teaching biz.
People who know that exhilirating feeling of being “in the zone” with a class.
Or who want it.
Newbies or old hands. Doesn’t matter.
But this is definitely not a place where whingers and lay-abouts and moochers are welcome. And there’s no shortage of ‘em in EFL. And no shortage of places for their–often–baseless griping.
Complaining is fine as long as you do something about it.
And being critical is not, by definition, a bad thing, necessarily.
And Lord knows I’m prone to a rant or two! Ooo-eee! I’m only just getting warmed up here, folks!
But what I really want to achieve here is people coming together to help each other out. People who want to be better. Not just those who want things to be better with no effort on their part.
I don’t profess to know everything about language teaching! Yeah, I know a heck of a lot and I think I’m of one of those people who just naturally found his place in front of a class. But there’s plenty I don’t know about plenty.
So let’s get the discussion going, spread the word–only to those who would fit this community I’m hoping to foster here–and then help each other out!
It feels really exciting! I hope you think so too and come along for the ride.
Look forward to hearing from you,
