Bite Sized English, I think, had a good year, too.  I’ve started a handful of websites over the years, and none have met with as enthusiastic a response as this one.  It went from the first post (about New Year’s resolutions, does anyone but me remember that?) up through bank fraud.  I’m proud of that.

I think that, through 2009, the quality of the job I did here really improved.  And, even more, I think that I started learning to do the right job here.

Given unlimited time and resources (you know where this is going, right?), I would continue to do more of the same here.  But, well, my time and resources aren’t unlimited.

I’ve always promised myself that I’d be a person who worked to live, not a person who lived to work (I could do a whole lesson on those two phrases, you know?).  Now, with a wife and child, offline hobbies, and a full-time job, I really can’t keep this up.

You know that, you’ve noticed how long it took me to get around to just saying this.  Christmas, vacation and family just left no time for blog posting.

That doesn’t mean that 2010 will be a year without Bite Sized English. If for no other reason than that I’ve paid for the hosting here through the year, you can expect to see the blog stay.

But, again. . . the format of the blog will change.

How will it change?  Well, it was hard for me to make the decisions to ’stop’ blogging here, so I haven’t been able to really make myself think about what’s possible with the time and energy I’m willing to spend.  Hopefully, you’ll hear more about it this year, yet.

For the meantime, here’s what I’m thinking:

• I can’t blog every week.
• I can’t try to make every lesson a week long.
• I like the idea of a lesson being spread out over several days.
• I want to continue hunting for good native-English recordings.
• I loved using Bite Sized English as a bit of a ‘laboratory’ for ideas I hadn’t introduced in my classroom.
• You might not know this, but a lot of what I created for Bite Sized English was, in the end, meant for specific students I had in the classroom.  The blog was a great platform to refine things.
• I sincerely hope I’ll be able to continue having a dialogue with different English-learners through or because of the blog.  After all, you guys have given me great insights that I would have needed years to find myself.
• There really are things I want to experiment with in an online format.

The long and the short of it?  Well, the blog is changing, slowing down. . . but not dead.  Not yet, anyway.

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So, why am I writing this now? The reason is simple: I’ve done a lot of thinking about how Bite Sized English will look in the future, and I want to share my thoughts with you. If you have any suggestions or changes to make, let me know!

Bite Sized English will be:

• Fun and Interesting. I think this will be my biggest challenge. . . because learning English can be a pretty boring thing to do. And it’s easy for teachers to teach boring English. I’ll try not to.

• A Part of Me. Up until now, I’ve been writing ‘lessons’ for Bite Sized English like. . . well, like I was writing a textbook meant for everybody. The problem is that, when you write for everybody, you have to make things dry and, well. . . boring. My plan will to be make the website more like being in a classroom with me. There will be more of my personality, and if that means that some people don’t like it, then that’s too bad.

• Fast. Everyone I’ve talked to about Bite Sized English has told me that they like the short lessons, because that makes finding time for the lessons easier.

• A Good Place to Practice. There is a lot of listening practice here. I’m proud of that. And, because I don’t have many comments, I’ll still promise to correct the English you use to make comments. . . that means that Bite Sized English will still be a good place to practice writing. But we won’t be practicing speaking here. I don’t like the system that I’d been using to include voice comments. If you find a better one, let me know.

• Varied. You’ll hear a lot of different voices—I’ve been asking other native speakers of English to make recordings, so you’ll be exposed to more accents—and there will be a lot of different topics. In fact, if there’s a topic you’d like to talk more about, just send me an email and I’ll prepare it!

Bite Sized English will not be:

• For Everyone. Because I want to have more me in the blog, I guess there will be some people who don’t like the website. . . the same way that there are a few crazy people who don’t like me.

• Everyday. I won’t be able to keep up my every day posting, not even using a lot of You Tube videos (they’re easier to post then something that I actually make). Instead, my goal is to have one ‘native English’ recording every Friday. (These are the recordings that are tagged with ‘English Three’ in my tag system.) Sometimes they will be recordings of me. As often as possible, they’ll be recordings of other people. In addition to the recording every Friday, I’ll be making some recordings on the vocabulary and idioms in the recording on on the same topic. These will be a bit slower English, and they’ll come earlier in the week. My idea is that you can listen to the recordings as they come, and they’ll prepare you for the ‘difficult’ recording.

• A Lot of Grammar. Because I want to keep the lessons manageably short, I won’t be making any more ‘lessons’ or recordings about grammar. Instead, when I have time, I’ll be making more eWorksheets. Like everything else, if there’s a grammar point you’d like me to cover, you only have to say so.

Okay! That was a lot to say. Sorry that this became so long.

I can tell you that the changes won’t all be noticeable in the new lessons. Old habits die hard, and I will need a little bit of time to get comfortable with what I want the blog to be in the future. But the only way to do that is to get started!

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I’m taking a break.

There was the baby, who is more than a little bit of work. In fact, I worked so hard between keeping house—that’s a phrase that means, basically, keeping the apartment running with clearing and cooking and such—and my actual teaching job that I got sick. Twice. I had a fever at the end of last week, and a pretty serious upset stomach at the end of this week.

But I’m not stopping. It’s important to say that: I’m not stopping.

The fact of the matter is this: running this blog has been great for me. I’ve learned a lot, I’ve met some great people, and I like to think that I’ve helped some of them learn English. And that’s what it’s about. So be sure about this: I’ll be back in a few weeks. (I’m thinking three or four, right now.)

But Bite Sized English will look a little different when I come back. How, exactly, it will be different I don’t know. But, I have a lot of time to think while I’m keeping house and rocking baby Leon to sleep, and I’d like to use that time to think of ways to improve the site.

So, if you have any suggestions, please let me know. Is there something I could do better? Is there something I’m not doing enough of? Is there something I do too much of? What parts of the site do you like most? Which do you always skip? Let me know!

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I have some good news. . . if you’re the kind of person who gets excited about online popularity contests. Bite Sized English has been nominated as a top blog in the Language Category of the Bab.la Top 100 Language Blogs 2009 contest.

Now, while you and I both know that this is a great place to practice your English, it wouldn’t hurt to let a few other people know, too. Vote for me!

Also, this is a great list of other language blogs—many of them for English—that are worth visiting.

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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.