24 jan 2018

by | in Career, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

We language educators often get asked what else we do apart from teaching English. Now, this takes the biscuits on the grounds that some people are hell-bent on this to mystify whether we take our profession seriously or not. It is generally known that an L2 teacher is supposed to be someone graduated, qualified or trained with required abilities to handle the teaching/learning process in a full variety of ways and environments. Unfortunately, many L2 teachers still face much criticism, discrimination and suffer mockery based on the fact that...

14 jan 2018

by | in Career

On my last post, I asked you what your Christmas present was going to be. What was it that you have chosen to give to your future you? What is it that you have done that will make your future self thank your present self? Regardless of what you've chosen for yourself, I believe you've done a great choice! The question that I ask you now is: have you already unboxed your present? It's surprising to see how often we're given presents and forget to open them. IT might...

04 jan 2018

by | in Career

How to win the customers It is widely known that “advertising is the core of a business”, and it could not be truer. Gladly, nowadays, the means one may use to advertise their own work are innumerable. To begin with, we have the good old word of mouth. Should you do a great job, people will talk about you and students or clients, in which case, will end up recommending your work. This type of advertising always works like a charm. I have known this to be the...

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...