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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Dear Grammar-teachers,<br>
Thanks for joining this list, which now has 121 subscribers. And
thanks to all of you who left comments on the webpage at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://teach-grammar.com/email-list">http://teach-grammar.com/email-list</a>. And thanks, of course, to the
Linguist List for hosting this list.<br>
<br>
I'll start with the house-keeping stuff:<br>
</font>
<ul>
<li><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">If you simply hit
Reply, your reply will only go to the individual who sent the
message you're replying to. If you want it to go to the whole
list, just copy the list address and paste it into the To field.
I can easily change this setting if you collectively want replies
to go by default to the whole list.</font></li>
<li><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">All past messages
will be archived, and you'll be able to view them at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/teach-grammar/">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/teach-grammar/</a>. <br>
</font></li>
<li><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I expect grammar
teachers have pretty much the same range of emotions as the
rest of the population, so do try to be nice, or at least
polite, even with people you disagree strongly with!</font></li>
<li><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I'm writing in
English, but if you don't feel comfortable in English, and
your language is a fairly widely known one, try it. The worst
that can happen is that no-one will understand it. But please
try to use English in the Subject field.</font></li>
<li><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">When you post your
first message, please introduce yourself briefly (subject,
language, </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">country</font>; e.g. 'I
teach first-language English in the UK').</font></li>
<li><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I think you can
control your own subscription via the website where you
subscribed; don't forget that one of your options is the
digest, which bundles messages into just one message per day.<br>
</font></li>
</ul>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">The first reason for
creating this list is that grammar teachers, or would-be grammar
teachers, can be found in many different places, teaching
different subjects in different languages, </font>and I have
the strong impression that communication across these boundaries
hardly exists; so please don't assume that everyone on the list
teaches grammar in the same context as you. If you're an adult EFL
teacher, your context is very different from that of a school
French teacher in the UK, and so on. But of course the second
reason for creating the list is to encourage communication across
these boundaries, in the belief that many of the issues are the
same.<br>
</p>
<p>I hope that you'll feel free to post messages to the list. Just
to set the ball rolling, here's a very brief list of topics you
may want to discuss:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>How can you help learners to enjoy grammar (either by making
it fun or by making it interesting)?</li>
<li>How can teachers of foreign-languages and first language
support each other?<br>
</li>
<li>Can diagramming play a part?</li>
<li>What terminology should you use?</li>
<li>Why do you teach grammar? </li>
<li>What research is relevant?</li>
</ul>
<p>But I'm sure there are plenty of other topics that will come up.
<br>
</p>
<p>Over to you! I hope you'll find the list helpful. <br>
</p>
<p>Best wishes, Dick<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Richard Hudson (dickhudson.com)</pre>
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