29 dez 2017

by | in Career, ELT Management, Reflections about Education

My whole formal educational background is academic, from my B.A. in Journalism, to my master's in Teaching English as a Second Language and my doctorate in Education. Everything I have published so far is academic, about learning and teaching. Most of my presentations in conferences are about academic topics, ranging from second language writing, assessment, and teacher development. Only recently have I started presenting on topics related to leadership and management. Thus, I can safely say that I am an academic in a leadership role. It's not that I...

28 dez 2017

by | in Career

Technology is definitely changing our lives for the better. That's my opinion. I am not the nostalgic type of person who thinks the good old analogic times were much better. But, with the advancements of technology, especially with the improvement of voice recognition and simultaneous translation softwares and algorithms, one question is obvious for me: are language teachers going to become obsolete in the future? My answer is: it depends. Maybe amongst all teachers, the language teacher will be the one to suffer the side-effects of technology first. If...

20 dez 2017

by | in Career, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

Published on November 20th, the first part of this post tries to briefly describe the trends of ELT in Brazil from the early 90’s to the late 2000’s. In it, I also included the themes and topics of some of the plenary sessions in international conferences and the names of the speakers who delivered them.  In the second and last part of this article, I try to describe how the 2nd decade of the 2000’s addresses new trends and issues brought about by the demands of a society...

14 dez 2017

by | in Career, Teacher Development

As the end of the year draws nearer, people all over the world feel that there's a new beginning ahead. We've gotten used to the 365-day cycle in life and celebrate the end of the year remembering all the good moments of the year that's just passed, and plan a bright future ahead of us. Or do we? If you're a teacher, you do know the importance of planning. You are well aware of the fact that planning is the preparation stage for all that is to happen in...

05 dez 2017

by | in Career

End of year, spring cleaning, and I ended up finding many old pictures and documents which were a trip down memory lane. I wondered what I would say to that young Natalia, who was about to start her career as an English teacher, or to anyone who is starting in the career for that matter. Stepping out of the classroom and back in again: my last day of secondary school, 6 months before my first day as a teacher. Keep an organized record of everything you do career-wise. This first...

30 nov 2017

by | in Career, Teacher Development

In the English language teaching field, many professionals join the area after becoming sufficiently fluent and confident to face learners. Some of us start a career believing the knowledge we have of the language will guarantee our success in teaching and we may resent feedback given about our use of the language. Although the language proficiency needed to teach depends on the context lessons will be happening (Rossner, 2017), learning more about the language we teach may improve our performance in the classroom. Considering that the learning goals as...

30 nov 2017

by | in Career, Teacher Development

In Part 1, I mentioned I don’t see myself as someone who is constantly striving towards perfection, but I can’t deny the results I got after taking the more advanced exam left a bitter taste in my mouth. Frustration boiled over at first and its effects lingered for some time, so much so that it took me about six years to gain enough confidence to sit CPE, an exam dreaded by students and teachers alike. I used to tell myself life was getting in the way – novice...

26 nov 2017

by | in Career, ELT Management, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

A few days ago, the Rio de Janeiro Secretary of Education criticized the actress Tais Araujo for her TED Talk in which she shares some of the challenges she will soon encounter as a mother of black children. The Secretary described it as ‘racial stupidity’. Needless to say, I was shocked to hear that. It made me think a lot about my privileges and the industry we work at. I’ve been working in ELT for 15 years, the last 4 working independently. For 11 years, I was part of...

20 nov 2017

by | in Career, Classroom Experiences, Reflections about Education, Resources, Teacher Development

PART 1: from the early 90’s to the early 2010’s What you are about to read is by no means to be regarded as an accurate description of ELT practices in Brazil throughout the last 3 decades. Rather, what I attempt to describe below is simply my very own perception of how ELT has throughout the all these years positively added on, rethought, deconstructed and reconstructed itself to stay in tune with global changes and, more importantly, with the local societal changes that more than ever have been the...