Personally, I’m a rather stubborn type sometimes. And just a tiny bit rebellious. Like to go a bit against the current. Or maybe driven. It depends how you look at it sometimes. To give you one example, this whole website is the result of this stubborn rebellious drive to promote professional equality for ‘native’ and …
Why rebellious stubbornness (sometimes) pays off Read More »
In February this year I had the pleasure to attend FECEI’s (The National Federation of Private Language Schools in Spain) annual conference in Madrid. For a while I’ve been really amazed with all the great work FECEI has been doing to promote equal opportunities in ELT, especially as far as ‘native’ and ‘non-native speakers’ are …
FECEI issues a statement against native speakerism Read More »
You are probably familiar with the widespread preference for ‘native speakers’ in ELT job ads, especially as far as the private sector is concerned. However, this is just one manifestation of the ideology of native speakerism visible in our profession. And if we are serious about tackling it, we also need to look beyond the …
Recently, you might have seen me post quite a lot about English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) on this blog. So perhaps, you might be wondering: what’s the big deal about ELF? why does Marek want me to start teaching ELF? how the heck is it related to TEFL Equity’s fight against native speakerism? That’s …
Three reasons why you need to start teaching English as a Lingua Franca Read More »
A lot of the times course books feature a rather narrow range of recordings of standard ‘native speaker’ voices. Just to give you a few examples: Syrbe and Rose (2016) note that most characters presented in books are ‘native speakers’ (mostly either US or British) ‘Non-native speakers’ also tend to contribute much less in dialogues, …
How to motivate students using recordings of successful E(LF)nglish users Read More »
It is no secret that English has become the global lingua franca. Research shows that ‘non-native speaker’ users of the language outnumber the ‘native’ ones by at least 4:1. And this number is only going to grow in the coming years. So how can we best help students become successful users of English in this …
I’m really excited that a book I’ve cowritten with Robert Lowe Teaching English as a Lingua Franca: A Journey from EFL to ELF has now officially been sent to press for printing and should be published in February 2019 🙂 EDIT: The book is now available here on the publisher’s website and here on Amazon.com). It’s been a …
Teaching English as a Lingua Franca: A Journey from EFL to ELF Read More »
Our usual first contact with native speakerism might be seeing countless ads for ‘native speakers’ only or for ‘native level’ teachers. As ‘non-native speakers’ we might also experience native speakerism when we get turned down for a job, because of our mother tongue (despite having all the right qualifications) Or when we hear that we …
Understand and Untangle Native Speakerism to Get Hired as a Non-Native Speaker Teacher Read More »
Last weekend I had the pleasure to present at IATEFL Poland annual conference. The program was full of interesting workshops and talks, and I was particularly interested in seeing Jasmina Sazdovska‘s and Zsuzsanna Soproni‘s presentation What Makes an Effective English Language Teacher? There is so much discussion about ‘native’ and ‘non-native speakers’ that we actually often …
What makes an effective English teacher? A research project Read More »
“Finally, it needs to be stressed that if ELT wants to develop into a profession rather than remaining a largely unlegislated industry, then it should aim to eradicate all forms of discrimination. To evolve into a profession, the ELT community needs to challenge and remove from its belief system the notion that ‘some speakers are …
My ELT Voyage as a Non-White Native Speaker by Sulaiman Jenkins Read More »
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