As those of you unfortunate enough to wade through my blog posts on a farily regular basis may well know, I set up a Wiki devoted to the fine profession of TEFL awhile ago. This appears to be a growing phenomenon, with none less than Jeremy Harmer, the TEFL legend, addressed the issue of Wikis in a recent edition of the ever popular HLT Magazine, when describing why publishing overlords Pearson Longman had created their TEFL Wiki. It parallels so well what I want to achieve with the ELT Wiki that I thought I’d steal his words:

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Wouldn’t it be useful, we thought, if there was a wiki devoted to ELT terminology? That way anyone, teacher, trainer or trainee could have access to a useful glossary – and (and this is the BIG THING about Wikis) they could amend or change what they find there if they don’t think the explanation they are presented with is ‘quite right’.

Our reasoning is that with a free resource like this we could end up with an incredibly useful, democratic resource which could be really helpful for anyone who has one of those jargon ‘blackouts’ that affect us all from time to time. All they would have to do is go to the wiki and check out how other people (how the profession) had defined the piece of jargon that had confused them.

Wikis, by the way, are easy to navigate. All you need to do is go to any page, any entry, and use the edit button. If you can’t find an entry there, you go to the letter, open up the list of terms for that letter and then edit it in order to add your new term. Or whatever. Like all effective software, wikis get easier the more you use them!
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Words of wisdom from the big man. Now, I’ve checked out the Pearson Longman Wiki and it hasn’t really expanded, in fact, I feel that the ELT Wiki has already gone further in creating a useful resource for us TEFLers, for which I already have to thank those who’ve contributed. Please don’t be shy in wading in and adding your contributions. Together, we really can maket he world of TEFL a better place.