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Not sure if this is a Meta question; definitely isn't appropriate for the main site. More like a chatroom thing I guess, but there's no one there.

ELL is a Q&A site for English language learners. I'd like to describe [to a friend] what kind of questions we answer here. What are the key topics we provide advice on?

Looking at all the tags and combining them, I could only come up with the following:

Provide learners with advice on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing.

Is there something I am missing? I just want to mention some of these bigger "groups/modules" [?]. For example, tags like word-request or phrase-request are covered by vocabulary. I think sentence-construction and that sort of tags are covered by writing. Meaning and its variants are covered by reading comprehension. What am I missing?

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    Why wouldn't you use the topics listed in the help center at ell.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic ? Tags are notoriously inconsistent and not a good measure of the topics we actually address.
    – ColleenV
    Oct 27, 2021 at 15:32
  • @ColleenV Those are not very clear. For example, it doesn't specifically mention reading comprehension and writing, but does say Other practical problems you encounter or face while learning English. I just need to group then. The help center gives me two useful things - Word choice, usage, and meaning (which I can just say is vocabulary) and grammar which I've already mentioned.
    – AIQ
    Oct 27, 2021 at 18:20
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    That's probably because reading comprehension and writing aren't really within our scope even though some users are happy to answer those sorts of questions. What exactly is your goal in summarizing the information?
    – ColleenV
    Oct 27, 2021 at 18:22
  • @ColleenV I think the tags meaning-in-context or phrase-meaning are part of reading comprehension. Writing can include so many tags, like sentence construction, sentence structure, phrase usage etc. My goal is to explain to my friend - using broader modules/groups - what kind of content we have in the site. For example, listening comprehension is not one of them.
    – AIQ
    Oct 27, 2021 at 18:30
  • For example, all questions about pronunciation can be said to be "speaking/spoken English" related questions. And punctuation would fall under "writing" because that's where we actually use in in pen and paper. Just wondering if there's anything major that "Writing, Grammar, Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Speaking" does not cover.
    – AIQ
    Oct 27, 2021 at 18:30
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    You're making a mistake by conflating tags with content. Tags can be created on a whim. Tags are applied to closed and negatively received questions. The content is well-described in the help center. I don't understand the goal of arbitrarily categorizing it into broad groups different from the defined scope of the site.
    – ColleenV
    Oct 27, 2021 at 18:37
  • What is missing is listening, one of the four basic components of learning any language.
    – Lambie
    Nov 10, 2021 at 16:34
  • @Lambie But we do not provide any kind of help with listening here in ELL.
    – AIQ
    Nov 11, 2021 at 0:13
  • Sometimes we do. We direct people to websites with recorded usages.
    – Lambie
    Nov 11, 2021 at 14:29

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Where I live, EL students are tested in four categories every year until they exit the program: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. These categories are pretty thorough; most to all aspects of learning a language can be put into one or more of these categories. Most questions on ELL are about reading (e.g. what is the meaning of this?), writing (e.g. what punctuation is best here?) or writing/speaking (e.g. what tense is best here?). As a text-based site, it's really hard to ask questions exclusively about listening or speaking. But they exist:

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  • The actions of reading, writing, listening and speaking are common to learning any language at all. +1 for an answer that makes an important point for those who have not taught a language.
    – Lambie
    Nov 10, 2021 at 16:33

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