Introducing a mechanism to have conversations?

[Ooen]

I think this forum is well structured and well moderated, but one thing I find is that this forum has a very specific purpose, i.e., facilitate to learn English, and is structured that way. This often gives me hard time to engage in conversations. I am not suggesting to start talking about music and movies, but I think it would be great for this forum to introduce a mechanism to have conversations. For example, we can talk about ESL/EFIC education in various nations. We can talk about various learning resources on the web that are related to topics such as environment issues and information technology. We can have some kind of learning management system. All of these should be helpful to learn English as well.

What do you all think about this?

[Torsten]

Dear ooen,

Many thanks for your interesting suggestion, I will give it some more detailled thought to come up with the best solution.
In the meantime I'd like to give you and our forum members some additional information on our plans. You see, a website is all about people - the people who create contents and tools on the one hand and the people who use these tools and give feedback.

As you can see, Alan Townend, who has an outstanding expertise in EFF/ESL has created 257 unique English tests containing 10 questions each. Every day between 1000 and 2000 of those tests are taken - that's a total of 10 000 and 20 000 questions each day!

In August we are going to implement a new system allowing people to contact Alan on particular questions regarding his tests direct. At this point this not possible as someone who is taking a test has to mark, copy and paste the particular test question they are referring to into the forum which is a difficult process. Once we have completed this change more people will ask specific questions related to Alan's tests. This will be a unique online learning tool enabling students to interact with a professional tutor.

Then, our forum will have two main categories: Alan's test questions and general conversations which we can divide into sub-categories such as the ones you suggested.
Please, let me know if this makes any sense to you. Thanks
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary