I’ve been continuously writing about my frustrations with the state of English language scholarship here in our country. I’ve already raised the lack of profitability of English Studies as a field of study. At times, I’ve also touched on the lack of collaboration amongst scholars.

I was talking to my mentor about the difficulties I was having with my research. Apparently, fellow graduate students were also struggling with their theses. Quite ironic, since when it comes to our own students, we’re quite sharp in critiquing their studies.

There are a number of local English language teaching and research groups. However, these groups do foster a sense of exclusivity that students are oftentimes left uninterested with the prospect of joining these groups. In fact, I only became aware of the existence of such groups years after graduating.

Hence, I created this website that would cater to all English language and literature scholars here in the Philippines – The English Studies Forum.

So far, the forum features categories on Language and Literature with boards that cover the main areas of study. For language the boards range from general linguistic theories to language teaching. For literature, the boards are based on geographic origins (British lit, American lit, Philippine literature in English). I’ve also added a Creative Writing category. For kicks, I also threw in a “Lounge” area for off-topic discussions. There’s also an e-Library section where people can contribute files and sources for study.

The next step is publicizing the forum

A bit on the technical side. Yes, it may be a Web 1.0 solution in a 2.0 world. I initially toyed with the use of Elgg and build the site as a social network, but it appeared that the focus of discussions and interactions might be watered down with. I’ll see how the forum pans out first. Who knows? I might slap on a wiki one of these days.

It took a bit of an effort trying to squeeze in work for the forums during what is actually designated as my lunch and supper times. A couple of junior faculty have expressed their interest in helping me run it and one senior faculty expressed her approval of our little side project.

Check out these other posts:

1. On prescriptivism… again
2. The profitability of English Studies
3. A new blog for learning English language and literature
4. Language studies and blogging
5. English language teaching and church hymns