Comment on wechat-group based English corner

Ivy, you’re such an optimist who would think of such a great idea. Unfortunately, the wechat-based English corner isn’t gonna work. I’ll tell you why.

At first glance, this idea perpetuates the theme of thinking in English, but the bottom line is that, without a carefully orchestrated plan, a systematic learning approach, and a competent veteran rallying people around, it won’t last long.

According to my past experience of running huge groups that are full of English learners, it has been proven that group messaging is quite inefficient and inconsistent, most of the messages are worthless and sometimes can be quite disturbing, especially for those experienced veterans.

Inefficient：By that I mean, with most of the learners still elbowing their way up, the information they’re providing is not decent enough, so it’s hard to screen out something useful, insightful or inspirational. As a result, it’s difficult to make members of the group embrace and cherish this brand of activity.

Inconsistent：For instance, while you’re tuned into a conversation,  you’re in the mood and have time to interact with someone, then out of the blue, they abruptly adjourned or pulled out from the conversation because of something more important to deal with, and then you might find it quite a frustration that you’re being disengaged from an itching excitement, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

We tend to ignore the elephant in the room: “how to draw on more experienced and advanced learners and scholars to take part in the discussion and consistently contribute their profound thoughts and valuable insights?”

Believe it or not, the higher capabilities one possesses, the less likely they gonna contribute their knowledge for free in the long run. Without talented people contributing their ideas in fine-tuned English, the wechat-group based English corner won’t last long, you simply don’t have a benchmark to follow up. Trust me, it will die down of its own accord.

I’m sorry for being such a pessimist, but it’s just the circle of life, and if don’t have the vision to see that, you’ll end up an amateur. Anyway, optimists do contribute to society, we’re all unsung heroes until one day we are capable enough to dominate the trend.