Week 1 [Jan 12-18, 2008]
Introductions:
Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nnest_evo2009/ and post your introductions. Please tell us where you are located, where you teach, what you expect from this session, and other info that you want to share with us.
Check out our World Map and see the people who have joined our discussion group. You can add your photo, too!
Moderators Introductions.
My name is Ana Wu, and I will be one of the moderators. I was born and raised in Brazil, and in 2008, I celebrated my 10th year in the USA. Currently, I teach ESL at City College of San Francisco, and have been an enthusiastic member at TESOL.
It is still Sunday, January 11th in California, but I am very excited infacilitating the NNEST EVO workshop because it is the first ever to be offered. Also, as you may know, the Non-native English Speakers in TESOl Caucus became an Interest Section in July 2008. So this is a good start to understand more about being perceived as a non-native speaker, understand the history, what kind of research has been done, and what tools/strategies to apply in order to attain equal opportunities, be competitive, employable, and marketable.
I am also very thrilled to work with our guest speakers. We are very honored to have gathered a group of experts here, and I have not doubt that at the end, we will be very inspired! Welcome again and thank you for your participation!
Dear NNEST-EVO 2009 Session Participants,
Welcome to NNEST-EVO's Networking Solutions for Professional Development Session. Like Ana, I'm also excited and I'm looking forward to sharing and learning with all of you. My name is Aiden Yeh and I am currently based in
Taiwan. I say 'currently' because I don't know where I'll be in the next 5-10 years.( I go wherever my family goes)
I teach at Wenzao Ursuline College in Taiwan, and I'm also pursuing my PhD studies at the University of Birmingham.
My diss. topic focuses on Taiwanese teachers in supplementary schools and their attitudes and practices toward professional development (see
http://nnest-evo2009.pbwiki.com/Moderators)
I've been a TESOL member for about 10 years now, and i've always been interested in NNEST issues, and of course, CALL issues as well. Professional development for teachers, regardless of ethnicity, highly depends on one's motivation and determination to learn. For many teachers, professional development doesn't come cheap. The price for paid courses sometimes exceeds the amount of salary received; hence, it becomes a detrimental factor in pursuing professional growth. This is why I believe that the TESOL's CALL-IS's project, Electronic village Online or EVO, provides teachers from all over the globe access to professional development courses that are totally FREE of charge. All of us in the EVO coordination team work as volunteers and offer our time and efforts also at no cost.
If you will look at our weekly syllabus, http://nnest-evo2009.pbwiki.com/, you will see that the activities are outlined in a way that would introduce what the NNEST in TESOL as an Interest Section (IS) is about and how it can help EFL/ESL teachers in understanding the issues that concern us, from personal perspectives to academic achievements and goals.
It's true, that some of the issues are personal, and therefore, sensitive in nature.
However, we should look beyond our ethnic backgrounds and comfort zones, and start becoming aware of the realities that exist in the industry that we are all involved in.
Ana has already mentioned that we have an impeccable list of guest speakers, who are also sharing with us their knowledge, skills, and their invaluable time. So, brace yourselves and enjoy 6-weeks of fruitful learning :-)
We have about 55 participants (and still growing), and if you're going to look at the Participants' page,
http://nnest evo2009.pbwiki.com/Participants, you'll see that we practically cover the globe (well, sort of )
Introductions are archived in the Yahoogroup,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nnest_evo2009/ and the thread can also be found here, http://nnest-evo-network.pbwiki.com/Week1-Introductions
If you still have not done your introductions, please do so; this is a good way to become part of this diverse community of professionals.
Don't forget to add your photo to our session world map at
http://nnest-evo2009.pbwiki.com/map or you can upload it to the Yahoo! Group Photos area.
I will stop here for the moment ;-) and we'll wait until most of you have done your intros, and then we will proceed with our discussions with Katya Nemchinova (first half of Week 1) and second half of the discussions will be with Brock Brady.
Thanks again for joining us, and I wish you all an exciting NNEST-EVO Session!
Aiden Yeh
Participants' Self-Introductions
My name is Rabia El Antaki.
I am an English teacher from Morocco.
I am glad to join this training and I am looking forward to learn and interact with nnest from all over the world learnandinteract
Posted on Sun Jan 4, 2009
Hello everyone,
My name is Tommy. I'm an NNEST in Aotearoa New Zealand. I'm studying Korean
NNESTs for my doctoral research. I'm *very* excited about this experience!
Peace,
Tommy
----
Puto me securem in capite habere.
Hi dear friends.
My name is Horacio Idarraga Gil.
I am in Venezuela.
I got retired in 1990. People say teachers never finish been teachers.
So, even I am not in a classroom with a group of students,
I am always interested in themes related to education.
I join this group because there is always something new to learn
and there are always people willing to share what they have already
learnt. Looking forward to making a lot of new friends and
seeing you in the sessions, warm regards,
Horacio
Posted on Mon Jan 5, 2009
Posted on Tue Jan 6, 2009
Hello, everybody!
I am Ela, originally from Romania. Romania is also an ex-communist country like Bulgaria and now part of EU.
Indeed, English was not an important part of the curriculum before 1989 in any of the ex-communist countries.
But now, everybody is crazy about learning English in Romania.
Besides the curriculum, students of all age, are taking private classes to learn English.
That's big change, right?
I have learnt English since I was 6 and I teach ESL in the US
Talking about accent, unless you learn English before the age of 5, you will
learn it as a non-native speaker. The irony is that my mom sent me to tutoring at the age of 6..
Best regards,
Ela
Talk to you soon.
Good day fellow teachers! Im Theresa from the Philippines. I am a
secondary school teaher in Manila. I've been teaching for 10 years
now and still wanting to grow in teaching English.
Posted on Tue Jan 6, 2009
Hello Everyone!
My name is Maribel Barrera -Boender. I am a Mexican woman living in the
Netherlands. I teach English and Spanish. I am also a TEFL teacher
trainer. I work online for an international TEFL school. I'm looking
forward to getting to know you better as we complete our weekly
sessions. I am very interested in learning and sharing.
Best regards,
Maribel
Posted on Wed Jan 7, 2009
Hello everyone !
My name is Elena. (You may call me Helen or Helena)
I come from Bulgaria. Bulgaria. I've taught English for 14 years at a High
School in the town of Ruse, Bulgaria. Since 2005 I've been living in the town of
Kehl in Germany. I started working for Interparla Sprachzentrum in
Kehl in April 2008, teaching Business English to company employees. I
am very happy because my dream has come true - to live and work in a
multicultural environment. I enjoy teaching English because I love
working with people.I hope that EVO2009 will give us a lot of
information and will enable us to exchange ideas and experience of
mutual benefit. I would also like to wish success to the moderators
and all the people who organised this event.
Posted on Thu Jan 8, 2009
Hi!I'm Alfia Mironova an ESL teacher from Russia.
I teach in a lingistic gymnasia. I'm looking forward to our work here, expecting to meet
enthusiastic collegues as usual at EVO courses. Wishing success to
everybody!
Alfia
posted on Thu Jan 8, 2009
Hello Everyone, My name is Yohimar Sivira.
I am an English teacher at the Francisco de Miranda University,
Falcon-Venezuela..I am just so?excited to participate in this session. This is
a great opportunity to share and exchange ideas as well as our teaching
experiences...:)
Warm regards...
Yohi
posted on Fri Jan 9, 2
Hi everybody
I am a DELTA-qualified English teacher and have taught in various context inBrazil,Germany and the UK. Now, I live in Turkey and have recently started teaching
online andin Second Life.I do find it annoying when I read "only native speakers can apply" in job ads or when sometimes being a native speakers is qualification enough but at least an MA is
required from non-native speakers. Although, On the other hand, I understand that
students who go to an English-speaking country to study English expect native speakers as
teachers.
For me the main problem is the concept of a native speaker. What does that say
about somebody? I was born in Turkey, both my parents are Turkish. But I lived in
Germany most of my life So, I'm a native speaker of Turkish but don't speak it as well
as my best/first language German or even English. Does that qualify me as a better
Turkish teacher than someone who has studied Turkish, is proficient in it and maybe even
has a teaching qualification for Turkish?
Having said that, I have often been preferred to native speaking teacher by
students in Germany because they were less shy with me, I was a good model for them, and
because I could help them in German when necessary or help them compare English to German.
Looking forward to hearing about your experiences and the discussions.
Nergiz Kern
posted on Fri Jan 9, 2009
My name is Hyman and I am from Hong Kong. I taught English in a
Secondary school for the past 10 years. Students are Chinese and they
learn English as a subject. Now I move to education administration in
the daytime but I still do a lot part-time teaching for interest. I
also teach univeristy students and provide training for teachers. Nice
to see you all. In Hong Kong, most of English teachers are Chinese but
we have Native English teachers in schools. I also work with these
teacher before. What about in your situation?
I'm Doron, a teacher trainer from Israel. For my students, Arabs and Jews,
English teachers-to- be - English is their 3rd or 4th language, and I'm here
to learn how to enable them to use all their linguistic resourses in the
english-teaching situation.
Hello everyone!
My name is Maya and I'm a Georgian teacher of English from Tbilisi,
Georgia in the Caucasus. I'm a professor of linguistics, IH (London)
certified teacher of EFL, and LCCI certified teacher of Business
English.
My friends and I run a private English language school in Tbilisi, The
English Language Centre, where I am responsible for Business English,
Legal English, IELTS preparation branch. Apart from this I am an
associated professor at Georgian Technical University.
I have been in this profession for more than 20 years, initially as a
teacher of General English. About 10 years ago I started teaching
Business English. Since then I hsve been working with those who are
already in business or students at universities. Last year I started
teaching English for Law and discovered an incredibly challenging and
fascinating area of ELT.
My students are mostly Georgians whose first language is Georgian. I
occasionally have French, Romanian, Chinese, Russian and Indian
students who work or study in Tbilisi and need to improve their
Business or Legal English language skills.
Another aspect of my work is teacher training and materials writing in
Business English.
Sorry for this long message.
I hope that EVO2009 will enable us to exchange ideas and experience of
mutual benefit. I would also like to wish success to organisers of
this event.
Maya Rogava
posted on Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:27 am, Message #32
Hello fellow NNESTs,
I'm a phd student (just finished data collection) at Penn State
University, in State College, Pennsylvania. I was born and raised in
Brazil 'till I was 22, but have been living in the US now for 10
years. I've been teaching EFL/ESL for 12 years in both the private and
public sectors. My dissertation project is an attempt to support pre-
and in-service NNESTs as they work to establish their professional
legitimacy in the classroom and reconstruct their self-concept and
identity (if they so choose).
I'm thrilled to be a part of this EVO (my very first)!
"See" you all tomorrow during the kick-off,
Davi
posted on Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:13 am , Message #34
My name is Dora, and I'm an EFL teacher from Quilmes, Argentina.
I've been learning English since I was 6 years old, and after I finished
school, I joined the English teaching course of Studies while tutoring
some private students. Since 2003, I've been working at different
institutions.
I love to learn more about the English Language because I think that
to be a good language teacher you have to live the language. I hope we
all enjoy this sessions while learning a lot!
posted on Mon Jan 12, 2009 , Message #37
Hi everyone!
My name is Karen Rauser (my yahoo id is karenrauser)and I am a
graduate student at Trinity Western University in Canada. I work as
an online curriculum designer and ESOL consultant right now, while
juggling the degree with being mom to our 6 year old daughter! I have
been teaching ESL and more recently doing teacher training (of NESTs
and NNESTs) in ESOL. My studies have led me to discover more about
NNEST issues and I am thrilled and honoured to be a part of this 6-
week journey with everyone. I am hoping to do a lot of listening to
hear about your experiences and the ways that colleagues (whether
native or not) can all work together to enrich each other.
My bachelor's degree was in linguistics, and so I have a strong love
for different languages and cultures (specifically, I have spent some
time learning -- in order of --limited!-- proficiency -- French,
Spanish, Tagalog, and -- more recently -- Mandarin). So while I
cannot claim to be multilingual, I am at least trying to break out of
the prison of monolingualism.
Looking forward to interacting with you
Karen Rauser
Hi! My name is Ana T. Solano-Campos. You can call me Ana.
My yahoo ID is anatris. I am an EFL teacher from Costa Rica.
I currently work as a university professor at Universidad Nacional in CR, but for 3 years I
worked as an ESOL teacher in a title 1 school in the United States. As
an English teacher and English learner, I became concerned with
improving my English language skills. However, a colleague pointed out
once that although accuracy in the language is important, my Spanish
accent was something beautiful that I should embrace. After that, I
became really interested in knowing more about how NNESTs perceive
themselves and how we are perceived by NESTs. I cannot wait to learn
and here from everybody in our sessions.
Hi!
My name is Elisenda Bargalló, and my yahoo ID is e17elisenda@...
Although m y personal account is e17elisenda@...
I work in the state school in Catalonia, Spain. I'm a supply English
teacher and this year I'm working part-time.
I joined this group because I found the course very helpful as I'm a
NNES teacher and because it is for free -great!-!! That's a good chance
to meet other teachers and interesting people... I think this course is
going to be fantastic! I want to learn the most and to meet new people
from whom I can learn a lot. :-) Moreover, if I can be of any help to
you... here I am.
I'm going now to add my photo. :-) Keep in touch to everybody! Just to
know, is there someone from Catalonia too?
Hello Everybody,
My name is Sevtap Karaoglu. As most of you, I am also a non-native
English speaker. I am originally from Turkey and have been living in
U.S. since 2005. I completed my graduate studies in TESOL in 2008. I am
willing to pursue my studies with a PhD in education and focus my
concentration area in teacher education.
I am very happy to be a part of this discussion group and I know that
the collaboration and motivation we will provide each other within
this group will strengthen our professional and personal thoughts .
Sevtap Karaoglu
Hi There!
My name is Meng Ying Li. You can call me Athena. I will complete my
Master's degree in Language Learning and Education at the University
of York (UK) in February.
I taught Grammar and Writing in an ELS school in Taiwan for 2 years.
The students were 8 to 12 year olds. After that, I taught 13 to 15
year olds for 3 months, and had to focus on testing skills for GEPT
(General English Proficiency Test), a popular test system in Taiwan.
It's my pleasure to join this group. I would love to learn more about
what other NNESTs think about English language teaching and learning,
especially problems they have had or have solved. Nice meeting you
all. Looking forward to upcoming events!
Athena
I am (Mr.) Tetsuya Fukuda. Please call me Tetsuya.
b. My Yahoo ID is tftoko2009. And my e-mail address is
tetsuyafukudajapan@...
I live in Tokyo, Japan and I work at Dokkyo University as a part-time
lecturer of ESL.
d. I teach English.
e. I would like to make friends with nnes people in the world who teach English.
Hi everybody,
My name is Imane Belakhdim.I am Moroccan and I am 27 years old.I am a
high school english teacher in Annasr High School. I've been working
there for three years.
Even if I have been a teacher for three years, I still feel that I need
more training and more advice on how to teach non-native english
speaking students effectively ; and that's why I joined this particular
group.
I hope this will be a good and beneficial experience that would help me
achieve my goal.
PS: I am a bit lost with how to start since it's my first time here,so
please dear friends give me some help and advice.
Thanks in advance.
Imane
I thank Violeta C., she invited other ESL Chilean teachers through a
social network. I am interested in this matter. My name's
Benjamin Perez, I work as a College and High School teacher in the southern
area in my country, and also support our Local Government's Specific
Programs to support TESL in my Province.
I am 43 years old and I have always heard of TESOl and due to
different excuses ( studies, jobs, lack of time) I had never given
myself time to approach and meet this important world Institution aims
and works until now.
Our Local Government has considered TESL as a priority educational
achievement in our national syllabus since 1998 and has incorporated a
national English Program "English Opens Doors"
(http://ingles.mineduc.cl) since 2003 to support Chilean ESL teachers
up to now.
In 2005-2006 I designed a Pilot Program to our Local Government to
support a English Room Lab (http://englishlabinchiloe.blogspot.com)
the idea is to re-create a medium sized tech-lab room for English
Students in a specific commune or area, selecting a the most socially
deprived students' school to have it implemented. I also work using
LMS website platform in college and support a class seminar for giving
Teaching students with the necessary ICTs training for future
teachers' methodology.
I hope I will meet new pal teachers and wish I will learn and improve
many personal and professional difficulties in my teaching job.
The best to you!
Benjamin Perez
Hi everyone. My name is Masakazu (Kaz for short).
I've recently completed my post-MA studies at NYU majoring in TESOL and
now looking for a temporary ESL teaching/research position in New
Jersey/New York.
I'm so excited to learn from you all about NNEST issues that I've been
so interested in for a long time.
Hi. My name is Joibel Gimenez. joibelgim. joibelgim@yahoo. es.
I have worked as an English teacher for more than twelve years. I have
worked in all levels: pre-school, elementary, high-school, and
university. Right now, I work teaching technical English in a
university in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. We have a Moodle platform in
the university, so I need to be updated in computing and Internet
resources.
I want to share teaching experiences with everybody.
Hi all,
Apologies for my rather late self-introduction. My name is Tony Lam,
I am originally from Hong Kong. My yahoo ID is tonihku. I trained as a
CELTA teacher in London. Prior to that I did an MPhil in English and
Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. I currently work
as an EAL (English as an Additional Language) teacher at Harrow
International School Beijing.
My training in linguistics only reconfirmed my preconception that
there's this unbridgeable gap between native speakers and those who
aren't, no matter how advanced one might get. Until I did my CELTA
training in London. I was the only non-native speaker there and was
doing much better than all my native-speaking peers. But then I moved
to Beijing and was going through all sorts of unfair difficulties in
the recruitment process because of my non-native status and race,
despite my relevant qualification and experience.
Sorry for rambling on...
I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to believe that non-native
English teachers can also be, at the very least, as good as the native
ones. I'd like to hear what you think/have to say. And of course I'm
sure I'll learn a lot from all of you.
Tony Lam
-Hi everybody! I'm a teacher of English from Argentina. I'm glad to
join this group to be able to exchange opinions and experiences with
teachers from all over the world. I work with kids, adolescents,
adults and also at the university ( as an assistant in "History of the
English Language) Being a non-native speaker I feel "inferior" in a
wasome way when talking to a native. Besides, I haven´t had the
opportunity to travel to an English speaking country to improve my
oral skills. Here there are many teachers who have been in England or
the U.S.A for several years and have come back more fluent. However,
they think that our subjects and methodology are similar.This is good
to here because you always think that everything from abroad is the
best. I feel a little better now after reading the material. I also
think that is not a question of native or non-native. It's a question
of vocation, education, attitude , knowledge, passion, respect.
Dakotado
Hi, I'm Evelyn.
I was an English teacher for private students for 5 years.
I am enjoing to see the discussions that are being held in NNEST.
I look forward to learning more.
Wed 21, Jan 09: My name is Terry Doyle
First of all, I'm not sure that I am doing this the right way.
It seems that some people are introducing themselves first, so I will
do so. My name is Terry Doyle, and I have been an ESL teacher in San
Francisco since the 1970s. I have also taught in Japan and worked on
research and textbooks in Korea. I am a NS who doesn't think the NS
NNS dichotomy has much significance. I came to have an interest and
indeed a passion about the issues we are discussing in this EVO in
the 1980s when I saw a colleague from Taiwan discriminated against
just because of her so-called "non-native speaker" status. In the mid
1990s thanks to the guidance of some wonderful professors at the
University of San Francisco I was introduced to "political" side of
TESOL and applied lingustics research, especially the books of
Phillipson, Scutnabb-Kangas, Pennycook, and also the "participatory
research" methodology based on the philosophy of Paulo Freire. With
this introduction to new ideological perspectives in our field I went
back to just teaching again. But I was never the same. In 2002, I
had another vicarious experinece in which I felt discrimination
against a non-native teacher in my school. This time I felt even
more "angry" than after the 1980 experience because I knew there was
an already large body of literature in our field which compared such
linguicism to racism, sexism, ageism,homophobia, etc. BUT in the
context of my school, I didn't know where to turn because when I
talked to any colleagues, they didn't know what I was talking about.
FORTUNATELY, I attended a rap session of the Northern Regional
CATESOL NNLEI led by Tünde Csepelyi in Rocklin, California. It was
the most wonderful session of a CATESOL Confernece I have ever
attended, and I will be grateful to Tünde forever!!! She turned me
on to organizations like CATESOL's NNLEI and TESOL NNEST. A little
later, through a newsletter in my college, I found out that there is
one other teacher right in my college who is also passionate
about "non-native teacher" issues. I won't mentio her namem but she
is one of the organizers of this EVO. These two experiences really
changed my life, because after witnessing the discrimnation of my
colleagues, I almost felt like leaving the profession of TESOL.
BUT since this time (around 2005) I feel that I have made some
progress in my thinking, but also many mistakes, too. (For example, I
was CATESOL's NNLEI coordinator for one year, but I didn't do a very
good job because of my ineptitute for dealing with technology and
some bad luck of being sick at the time of one confernece). But let
me focus on the positive. I feel that I have moved beyond just
focusing on discrimination of NNEST teachers and prejudice of NS
teachers-- though it still is there. Now I am starting to focus on
the positive. I realize that putting being into big groups and
putting labels on them is not useful. Obviously, not all "native
teachers" or "non-native teachers" are the same even in their
speaking abilities, writing abilities, teaching abilities, etc. For
example, I have a hard time ging presentations at conferneces, even
though I have give many, so I still have to write down everything I
will say beforehand and practice it. If I don't, the result will not
be pretty. Also, as Kramsch and Lam (1999) point out nobody is
a "native speaker" in his/her writing ability; I know I certainly
struggle to write in my "first language". My point is that we have to
look at each person individually. Nobody can be labelled as a native
speaker or a non-native speaker. Also, as research by Scollon and
Scollon (2001) points out nobody is a representative of any one
culture. We all have various discourses which become important
according to the context.
I am on the personnel committee and also hiring committees in my
college. I keep suggesting that during interviews teachers should be
given points for being (1) bilingual, or multi-lingual and (2)
bicultural and multicultural. Now after reading the books and papers
of Byram and Valesco-Martin, and others, I think I will also suggest
that applicants be given points for the intercultural communicative
competence. So far I haven't convinced my colleagues, but at least
they listen to me a little, compared with three years ago when I
first was on this committee
Mon Jan 26: Hello. My name is Marla Yoshida
and I've just joined this group rather late. I teach ESL and TEFL classes at the University of
California, Irvine, Extension. I'm looking forward to hearing all your
experiences and advice!
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.