This is to let you know that I’ve opened a Forum on my website. You can use this forum to talk about all kinds of subjects related to English learning. You can also chat on the forum. Of course, teachers are welcome too.

Underneath are some tips for using the Forum.

The Forum’s address is: http://forum.englishwithasmile.net/

Now you really can’t have an excuse anymore not to learn English!

I will be entering the forum at least once a day to see what’s going on.

The first 10 people who post something on the Forum will be sent a surprise that can help you with your English.

(This must be a real message. Not just saying hi.)

Some Tips for Using the English Forum + Chat

Here are some tips to get the most out of the forum on English with a Smile.

Main points:

• You can post a new subject.
• You can answer a question.
• You can ask a question.
• You can chat.

A forum can be used just to say hello, but you can do lots more with it. I don’t think I’ll be telling you anything new here. If you ask the right question, you can get an answer that can help you further. If you ask bad questions, nothing is going to happen. Later on in this article, I’ll show you how you can ask the right questions.

Peter Krefting

The First Forum

Did you know the word forum comes from Latin? Forum was the word for market, an open space. And the Romans were apparently the first to use their market as a place to discuss all kinds of important subjects that concerned everybody. If you visit Rome today (in Italy), you can still visit the ruins of the Forum Romanum, where the ancient Romans used to talk about politics, economics, government, the price and quality of vegetables and all kinds of stuff that bothered them. It’s important to note that the forum was not a place to gossip about your neighbours, although people may have done that too.

Forum Today

Today a forum means a panel where people discuss some matter of interest. Or it can be like an internet board where discussions are held. The forum can be among equals or friends, and very often there is a moderator. A moderator moderates the discussion, like what you see in TV shows where there is an interviewer or an anchor who leads the discussion and also decides who gets a turn to speak. On an internet forum everybody gets a turn to speak, but inappropriate comments (such as insults, mean questions, sexually explicit content or commercial spam ads) are removed. Luckily, so far almost all of the users of English with a Smile that I have spoken to are very nice people. Should it happen that someone has written something that I think is unsuitable, their comment will be removed. If they keep doing it, this person will be removed from the forum altogether.

Okay, now for the tips:

Here are some things that you could use the Forum for:

• Find friends. I know that some of you desperately want to find friends to talk English with. If you haven’t found anyone on Facebook yet, here is your chance.

Please let other readers know who you are. Where are you from? How old are you? Are you a student or do you have a job? What are your interests and hobbies?

• You can place an announcement.

Want to announce something you saw on internet, for instance you saw a free book for downloading, an interesting video or a website that could be useful for English learning? Let everybody know.

Or you might want to announce that you’ve passed an English exam or give exam tips.

• You can ask a question about an English problem. Please be as clear as you can and give an example of what you’d like to check/know. Ask about something specific, not about a big subject such as “grammar.”
• You can ask for corrections on some English sentence, email or letter you’ve written.
• In the Blog menu, you can post articles that you’ve written and that you think are worthwhile for other users to read.

If you have any other ideas to use the Forum, just open a new subject.

Log in required

And now for the bad news. I’m really sorry, but you’ll need to log in to use the Forum and chat. Once you’ve done that, you can stay logged in. The Forum has a separate log in, because it’s safer to do it that way. That way we can make changes in the website without having to change the forum as well, and vice versa.

Have fun on the Forum!

The first 10 people who post something on the Forum will be sent a surprise that can help you with your English.

(This must be a real message. Not just saying hi.)