I would like to contribute to this site by offering help to IELTS students who are finding it hard to study Writing Task 1 and 2 (Academic and General). I have been teaching IELTS for over 8 years and am a native speaker.
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5Welcome to ELL! I think this probably belongs on Meta, where we can discuss how your offer might be accommodated within StackExchange's format. I'm going to flag it for migration and Moderator attention.– StoneyB on hiatusJul 18, 2016 at 1:49
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Hi, Josh, and welcome! I second Stoney's happiness to have you with us :) I personally don't know much about these tests; are there specific areas of study that are often germane to their content? If so, you might consider watching tags related to those concepts--there you would be more likely to find users with questions you would like to answer! And we would appreciate your insight in answering any questions--such a teaching background would make you an invaluable resource to ELL :)– WendiKiddJul 19, 2016 at 2:39
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I think that would be absulotely fantastic. However, I think you'd need to do a bit of help by answering some questions (or any other helpful stuff) on the site to be really visible so that peple approach you. Also you might want to add some information to your profile so that people know that you are available for that kind of help. We can then direct users to your profile page when they need some help. ...– Araucaria - Not here any more.Jul 21, 2016 at 20:25
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... Also, after you've got 20 rep points (if you give a good answer to any question that should take about ten minutes :), then you could also join the chat community here, and that would be a very easy and fast way for you to find and help students and for us to direct them to you. Welcome and enjoy!– Araucaria - Not here any more.Jul 21, 2016 at 20:28
2 Answers
I'm happy to see this generous offer. We have far too few actual teachers involved here—people with actual coalface experience of the difficulties learners face and the institutional hurdles they want to clear.
It will be of particular value to have someone around who can speak fairly authoritatively about what answers and forms of expression examiners actually do want, as opposed to what many of us feel they ought to want!
Max is quite right in pointing you toward the standard Q&A channel on the main ELL site; this is where our visitors first arrive, and most of them never explore any farther. But you should also make yourself familiar with Chat, where you can enter into dialogue with questioners. You will be eligible to participate there as soon as you have 20 rep, which will come with two upvotes on an answer; the 'room' you'll want to invite learners to is ELL's Cabin. When you've accumulated 100 rep you'll be able to open a room of your own.
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that said, if OP only wants to help in proofreading and evaluate the essays written by IELTS learners, I think this site is not a place for them– OokerJul 30, 2016 at 6:58
It is not necessary for you to advertise yourself. Inquirers don't come to you, they come to ELL. All you have to do is check our site regularly and answer questions using the answer box.
There are distinctions that I should make. You should visit the tour pages for more info. Specifically,
- English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts.
- English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English.
Number 1 is usually abbreviated ELU, while the other is ELL. So if you want to help English learners, you'll want to visit ELL. English learners often mistakenly ask (learning level questions) on ELU, but their questions get migrated to ELL.
We have different tabs to check.
"Newest" will sort the questions from newest to oldest. "Active" will sort them by which ones recently had activity on them. These are the ones you might want to check regularly.
It does not seem that we regularly get questions regarding "Writing Task 1 and 2", but you are more than welcome to answer any other questions that interest you. If you really want to answer "Writing Task 1 and 2" questions, then you can help generate those kinds of questions by referring people with those kinds of questions to ELL.
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2Isn't the open a little harsh? I don't see any advertising here, but perhaps my cynicism is flagging. Jul 21, 2016 at 19:36
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This is no doubt well-meaning bu not helpful. Students are not allowed to ask for proof-reading on the site and need to have specific quiries in their qestions. What Josh has offered to do, would require students to give him bits of ork they've done and to feed back on it - students aren't allowed to do this in questions here. Jul 24, 2016 at 13:26