I am a Blogger at IATEFL, Birmingham 2016

April 14
Day 3

The ‘native factor’, the haves and the have-nots

The talk can be watched here:
Plenary by Silvana Richardson

I am happy that I listened to this talk because this is an issue that I faced myself a couple of times when your professionalism as a foreign language teacher is diminished to your place of origin.
I am proud that my motherland is Russia and that Russian is my native tongue.
As a professional I feel like called upon to represent my country the very best way I can, because I know that the way I am makes other people say "Oh, well, then Russian people are like this!!"

Here I post some slides from the Presentation which was used in the talk, I think these slides say for themselves so no extra comments are necessary.

Just just a remark. I know it from my own experience that it is the best way when an ESL teacher is a bilingual who teaches English students from his country because only he can teach them the very best way as he knows cultural peculiarities of his students - he shares with them things making up their backgrounds, he knows peculiarities of their mentality, he knows what difficulties may arouse in learning English and can help them avoid or understand mistakes. He can foreshadow all this.
Whereas an English native speaker as a teacher can be very valuable at later stages of language acquisitin when these are communicative skills that are already mostly to be developed.

That's my view!

So, I would call this talk like "SPREAD THE WORD!"
Spread the word that a professional is not a matter of nationality or anything. It is a matter of professionalism!!

Many thanks to Silvana for her Talk!!!