As soon as any student starts their journey towards becoming a speaker of English, a couple of pre-made sentences, a learner’s ‘toolkit’, is handed them. Statements such as “I am (name)” or “my name is (name)” are the tip of the iceberg. Soon after students are presented with the predictable and unskippable “he is”, “sheContinue reading “The social impact of ‘Where are you from?’”
Category Archives: ESL teachers
Raise Up: diversity in the classroom
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to chat with Ila Coimbra. She’s an ESL teacher and teacher trainer, IATEFL speaker, founder of the BRAZ-TESOL Voices SIG, and co-author of Raise Up, a textbook developed with inclusivity in its core. vspoke – How did the idea of creating an inclusive textbook come up? What motivated you?Continue reading “Raise Up: diversity in the classroom”
Should ESL teachers (only) be native speakers?
A NNEST is a non-native English-speaking teacher as opposed to a NEST, native English-speaking teacher. Currently, about 1.5 billion people in the world speak English and of those, less than 400 million use it as their first language (L1) according to the World Economic Forum. Chances are most teachers of English as a Second LanguageContinue reading “Should ESL teachers (only) be native speakers?”
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