Who are the teachers

[emsr2d2]

I support everything 5jj said, but I do agree with goodstudent that having "Teacher", "Student or Learner" etc directly under the username instead of "Key Member", "Member", "Moderator" etc would be more useful.

[david11]

I support everything 5jj said, but I do agree with goodstudent that having "Teacher", "Student or Learner" etc directly under the username instead of "Key Member", "Member", "Moderator" etc would be more useful.

Sometimes I find that the replies of non native speaking teachers are not on the par with the native speaker's(not teachers) replies. Honestly speaking, as a active member of this forum, I can recollect four to five non teaching but native speaker contributors of this forum but hardly a non native speaking teachers(maybe due to my poor observances of happenings in this forum).If there has to be a category of teachers and non teachers then, in my opinion, there also has to be a category of native and non native speakers.

[david11]

Request to moderators: Please start this as a new thread(From the post where the discussion of teachers and non teachers started)

[emsr2d2]

There is a specific section of the forum for suggestions by members: http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/comments-suggestions/

[5jj]

Request to moderators: Please start this as a new thread(From the post where the discussion of teachers and non teachers started)

Good idea. I have done so.

[BobSmith]

This is a personal response. I am witing as 5jj, not as a teacher or moderator.

From time to time we get complaints from non-teachers who object to what they seem to regard as the onerous task of typing in 'Not a Teacher'.

I have to say, I have little sympathy. This is not a chat forum, it's an 'Ask a Teacher ' forum and, as I noted above, people who drop in normally assume that, in such a forum, their question will be answered by a qualified teacher. Any member is welcome to answer questions but, if they are not teachers, we ask them to state this explicitly, so that new members will not assume that the response is guaranteed to be correct.

The system is not perfect. We all know that some people who claim to be teachers are not; we know that some genuine teachers give incorrect answers sometimes; and we know that some non-teachers give very sound answers. But, as I also suggested, long-term members soon get to know those people whose responses are normally accurate, and those whose responses are someyimes dubious. The requirement for the 'Not a Teacher' disclaimer is useful for casual visitors - and we have many of them.

We have to accept, unfortunately, that many people do not actually read forum guideline policies, and do not click on 'member Info' or read our signatures. That being so, the present system seems to me to be a reasonable comprise between a completely free system, in which any Tom Dick or Harry can post what appear to be authoritative respones, and a highly regulated one which, in my opinion, would harm the fairly relaxed atmosphere of usingenglish.com.

The problem with the argument, IMO, is that a poster’s attributes (is a teacher, is a native speaker, country of origin, etc) are self-reported, and are readily available to the reader - casual or otherwise. Requiring more from an answerer is akin to taxing a donation. The person receiving the benefit should be responsible for this, albeit small, burden. If the reader can’t be obligated to the “onerous” task of clicking a link to find out the veracity of the answerer, the obvious middle ground, and painless solution, is to have the site’s software make clear the answerer's (self-reported) qualifications, if only in the case of not-a-teacher.

Not a teacher,
Bob

[5jj]

The problem with the argument, IMO, is that a poster’s attributes (is a teacher, is a native speaker, country of origin, etc) are self-reported, and are readily available to the reader - casual or otherwise. Requiring more from an answerer is akin to taxing a donation. The person receiving the benefit should be responsible for this, albeit small, burden. If the reader can’t be obligated to the “onerous” task of clicking a link to find out the veracity of the answerer, the obvious middle ground, and painless solution, is to have the site’s software make clear the answerer's (self-reported) qualifications, if only in the case of not-a-teacher.

An even simpler solution, given that the forum is 'Ask a Teacher' would be to delete all responses from non-teachers.

[konungursvia]

Excellent point. Also, many teachers are not foreign-language teachers, but literature teachers -- and they know an awful lot about the language, though they may not have come across as many relevant strategies for EFL/ESL students to try.

Is it that important to you to know whether someone is teaching English as a profession? I only ask because there are non-teachers here whose grasp of the minutae of the English language, and their way of expressing it, is phenomenal. There are teachers (mostly native speakers and some non-native) whose knowledge and advice is occasionally less impressive or useful than that of the non-teachers.

If you click the words "Member Info", two lines beneath a username you will find this information anyway. Yours says "Student or Learner", mine says "Teacher". I teach much less than I did when I worked in Madrid as a full-time English teacher but I still have students. I am more than well aware of the fact that quite frequently a non-teacher's answer is much better than mine.

[HanibalII]

Just out of interest, where would a Pre-service teacher be listed in all of this? Technically speaking a Pre-service teacher is still a teacher...

[Tdol]

Unfortunately, software upgrades don't please everybody. This one gives a leaner, cleaner look, but it does that at the expense of displaying all the information available. However, it is just one click, and there are other clues.One thing about software is that you end up being forced to upgrade- if not, you end with with an unsupported version that breaks down and stops working. I'm afraid that's the nature of the beast.