My Blogging Philosophy
One day, hopefully not too far in the future, Bite-Size-English.com will be the best website available for English learners to refine and polish the English they have already learned. That’s my goal, and I’m working hard towards it.
I’m confident that I’ll reach my goal, but not only because of my hard work. I’m confident that I’ll reach this goal because of the philosophy I have behind the website. I think that every blog, every website, every company and every person needs to have a philosophy—or philosophies—behind it.
What’s A Philosophy?
I can give you a dictionary definition of philosophy, but it’s a word that even native English speakers use in different ways. When I use it, I mean more than a way of thinking. I use the word to mean a test or a measure of what is right for me.
I’m not talking about right and wrong in the classic “will I go to heaven or hell” sense. I’m talking about right in the sense of ‘does it fit who I am? Does it fit what I want this site to be?’ For websites—for life in general—there are more choices than any of us have time and energy. And while many of the choices we can make aren’t wrong, most of them aren’t right. They aren’t right for me, and they aren’t right for Bite-Sized-English.com
What’s My Philosophy?
The philosophy I have for this website is at once simple, and a little bit complicated. It’s in two parts, really. The first part is my belief that the solution to any problem is a win-win scenario. A win-win scenario is a situation in which everyone involved thinks that they have ‘a good deal.’ It’s a situation with ‘no loser.’
I hope that Bite-Sized-English.com is a win-win situation. I hope that the people who come here hoping to practice and improve their English ‘win’ by getting good English practice, and good tips to improve their English. And I know that the website has been a win for me, because it’s helped me refine my teaching. It’s exposed me to people I wouldn’t normally have met. And it’s been more work for me, but it’s been work I’ve enjoyed doing.
My philosophy isn’t what I’m doing with Bite-Sized-English.com My philosphy is what I’ll be doing a year from now, or in three years. My philosophy is the test I use when I think about how I could improve the website. It’s what I’m thinking about when I look at what other bloggers have done and wonder if I’d like to do something similar. And, I hope it’s what I’m thinking about when I add a new feature, new option, new page here on the blog.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t see evidence of my philosphy here.
I hope that you can read—or listen to—what I’ve written here, take a look at the website, and say to yourself “yes, I can see Toby’s philosophy here.” It’s in the polls that I run, now, to see if I’m helping my readers as much as I want to be. It’s in the changes I introduce. It’s in the classes I’ve decided to offer.
But, a big part of my philosophy is in my readers. It’s in how they give back. It’s in what Bite-Sized-English.com readers ask for. Or, what they don’t ask for.
