Can you sort out questions to teachers?

[Ahmadov]

Dear those who run this invaluable web site!
Undoubtedly, one of the best feature of this web site is teachers' answers to questions by English learners. I myself learn much from the teachers' answers given to questions posted by other users. However, I would like to ask something that I think can be a good idea. Do you think that you can sort out questions posted by various English learners? The point is that learners of different level ask you questions. When people with higher level want to look at the answers they have to read questions by lower level learners and vice versa. This can be waste of time equally for high level and lower level students or learners.
In other words, you have tests for three levels but English teachers explanation forum for all. Can you have three forums like this, or devide one forum into three parts? By the way, this can also apply to the vocabulary, idioms and word combinations forum as well.
Hope this suggestion does not sound silly.

Best regards

Zahir Ahmadov
_________________
Learning is a sacred engagement.

[Torsten]

Hi Zahir, many thanks for your positive feedback and suggestions. Our goal is to grow a community where all members can benefit from each other. Creating separate forums according to 'levels' might sound like a good idea on the surface. That's what conventional 'schools' do -- separating 'students' and putting them into 'classes' of different levels. Not a good idea for us. The facts show that traditional teaching is not very effective. If it were, our forum would be empty. So, we have to do something slightly differently. We want to see the person behind the 'student'. Let's say, a member registers here and by the conventional definition their English level is rather low. If we had separate forums, that person would not have the chance to communicate with somebody whose English is much better. This would mean, our forum is rather artificial because in real life situations you have to be able to communicate with all kinds of people. I think it's rather simple: You take a look at the headline of a topic. Let's say it says "Idiom: to make ends meet". If you are interested in this expression, you click on it and read the question and answer. If not, you proceed on to the next topic. Sometimes I read answers that a moderator gives to an 'elementary student' I still learn something new. A person whose English is very advanced is capable of skimming through a post within a fraction of second.
Also, how many forum levels do you think are appropriate? You might say 'three' but somebody else will suggest 'five' or even 'ten'. Let's all talk to each other and learn from one another. There are enough hierarchies out there, no need to create another one here.

Let me know what you think.
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Ahmadov]

Dear Torsten, you are great as always.
You apperently thought before about what I suggested, otherwise I thought I was suggesting a novelty

Actually, the idea came to my mind when I saw that the number of pages on English Teacher Explanations exceeded 70. I found myself too lazy to look through all of them. Initially, I thought it is becoming so many because you still keep comments on mistakes in the tests. Later, I checked it and I thought you have deleted them. Then, the idea of segregation came to my mind and I thought segregating people in accordance with their level of knowledge could be a good idea.

However, I have to say that you are completly right. This must be a web site of everyone being together. But do you think to somehow make pages accessible more easly?

I don't know. You obviously know much about these things if you and your team have been able to establish such a great web site.

Cheers

Zahir
_________________
Learning is a sacred engagement.

[Torsten]

Hi Zahir, there are a number of ways to use the forum pages:

- A person doesn't anything about our forum but has a specific question. They google a particular keyword phrase such as 'look forward to hearing' and land on of our fourm pages.

- A person knows our site but doesn't know our forum. They take a test and ask for an explanation of a particular phrase, idiom or expression. Once a moderator answers their question, they will find the answer on the forum.

- A user knows our forum but doesn't know our site. They browse through the forum topics and come across a discussion they find interesting.

In addition, there are two search tools on our forum as well as the site to find information on a particular questions.

Let me know what you think.
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary