I have been hosting free coaching sessions as part of our Academy program. The intent is to explain LingQ to newcomers.
I am now thinking that I should expand this to make it general opportunity to discuss LingQ with interested members. We have had some good discussions here on the forum about LingQ, and it might be useful to do this via Skype.
I could, for example, post two discussions a week, free of charge, to discuss any questions people have about LingQ. One session could be late morning Pacific Time, which is evening time in Europe. Another session could be early evening Pacific Time, which is the morning in Asia. People in the Americas and elsewhere in the world should be able to fit into one of these two time slots. I would propose to do this on Friday, which would be Saturday morning in Asia.
I’d be interested to join in, mostly to just listen. I have a few ideas, as well as a few questions. The European slot would work best for me, I think.
I’d also be interested in joining but it depends on the date and exact time. Next Friday (August 23) might work for me because I have the day off but have some classes scheduled already.
I’d love to join in as many Skype conversations as possible. Especially if they are more of the general discussion opportunity. We had about an hour long discussion in a Google Hang Out to discuss second language acquisition before your talk with Krashen and I felt very energized by the discussion with you. I’d love some more opportunities to discuss language in general, both as a student and teacher. So many of the classes I am currently taking for my master’s degree are heavily theoretical and largely useless in terms of practical application to a real language student.
I really enjoyed that chat you had with Steve. Got me thinking about becoming an ESL teacher. In fact, this remains the ambition. Would be definetly cool to be there to ‘listen in’ and to add in the little that I can.
Thank you for letting me know you enjoyed the chat. I didn’t think too many other people would find it as interesting as I did! If you are interested in being an ESL teacher, most schools only require a bachelor’s degree and that you be a native speaker in order to teach overseas in places like Korea, Japan, China, and the rest of Asia. If you want to work at a language school in the US, a degree in the actual subject helps if you don’t have any experience. My degrees are in math and economics, but because of my experience working in Korea, I am able to work at a language school here in San Diego no problem while I pursue my master’s.
I’m not sure your situation, but if it is something you are interested in doing, then I fully recommend you give it a try. It’s wonderful to work with willing and motivated students every day and to learn new things about the language we use and take for granite as a native English speaker. I’m just hoping I can be effective in helping to guide my students in the direction of the “how to”, as imposed to simply just lecturing away on grammar all day. My goal is always to make them not need me so they can go off on their own and feel confident that they can learn a language.
Of course, coming to places like this forum provides me with lots of inspiration and new ideas.