Abstract:

The article is aimed at sharing experience, observations and conclusions on Professional Development online course for ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers and considers the experience of pedagogical interaction with world educational community by means of the forum as a contemporary form of communication. Such media is a unique tool for the best practices sharing and analysing the key themes of ESL teaching in foreign colleagues’ opinion. The forum teachers’ posts were used as the material for the research. 25000 posts written by 1600 participants of the online course were reviewed and 5700 posts of the forum of foreign language teachers for adults and teenagers were carefully analysed. The authors’ experience resulted in finding out important issues in language teaching, similarities and differences in approaches of Russian and foreign educators in considering the 5 top prioritised themes according to the forum’s rating. The results of statistical analysis of the forum posts and threads are reflected and some of them are studied in detail.

Keywords:

Pedagogical interaction, educational network, forum, media, ESL teaching (English as a Second Language teaching).