I am hoping for some opinions on Discussion topics and times. Some of the feedback I have heard “through the grapevine” is that the discussion times are not convenient, there are not enough interesting topics, and that people are afraid they may sign up with more advanced learners and feel uncomfortable during the discussion.
All suggestions and comments are welcome as we try to make LingQ a convenient and stimulating learning environment for ALL of our learners. Thanks for your help! Tutor Julie (juliroze)
Julie,
my preferred time is about 9-10PM (gmt -2, until we finish with the daylight saving time, and after that it will be gmt -3).
I think one possible topic could be discussing technology news, I guess there is a lot of people using LingQ interested in this theme.
I just want to react on members’ comments regarding their fears of attending discussions with advanced learners. I can understand their feelings because I had no confidence in myself, a few months ago, when speaking with some learners that I considered being quit advanced indeed fluent. However, isn’t it the best way to quickly and dramatically improve our skills?
If members keep on speaking with advanced learners, they will end up getting fluent.
Regarding the topics, I also think that we have to vary our choices, even if we are not really interested in the issue. Julie is used to assigning a lot of different topics and different drills, so I encourage all members to stick their necks out by signing on various topics with advanced learners.
Nobody will laugh at each other.
My prefered time is also after 10PM Central Standard Time ( 6PM UTC or GMT) but also before noon, almost any day.
My favorite kind of chat are the read aloud sessions and I have confidence in your taste for topics there.
I’m not afraid to discuss with more advanced and fluent learners but I think it would be useful to add to the event entry the average level of suscribed learners so you can choose the group you prefer to join.
I confess that in previous read aloud sessions I felt a bit uncomfortable with begginer and slow readers, but I have noticed how some of them have improved. That’s also stimulating.
Hi Julie, I enjoy your discussions every month!
I felt unconfortable during the discussion with advanced learners when I started LinQ. But some tutors gave us opportunities to speak equally when we were silent.
I prefer discussions that have topics. I hope that topics for the beginners have detailed explanations and several questions so that we can prepare for each questions. I think it will give us confidence when we join a discussion, especially for beginners. I think we feel unconfirtable when we can’t keep up with the conversation. If we have some comments about each questions, we won’t have a feeling of alienation.
I think it will be interesting if we can post some topics on the Forum. If tutors think the topic is interesting, they can create a discussion.
I hope there is also a list of topics for writing so that we can write about them. How about making a list of the interesting writing topics which other learners wrote?
I think Alejandro’s idea of separating the events by average level is interesting. I could be as simpler as separating into beginner, intermediate and advanced. It’s not a matter of discrimination, but I believe that putting together a beginner and an advanced user could be quite uncomfortable for both.
This could also be made informally, via a profile. If I could see the profile of the ones who already joined a specific discussion, including the study level, I could choose more confidently which discussions to join.
About topics, I prefer events when I don’t know the theme in advance. I don’t feel like preparing previously for events, I think it’s better to speak the more naturally you can to see what happens. I joined an “impromptu speech” event with Julie and two similar ones with Steve and liked them a lot. I also tried one about a tale, and although I liked the tale, I didn’t like that event so much as I liked the other ones.
Anyway, I’m still experimenting with the various types of events and the most important thing to me is the time, not the topic.