Villagers (Guest Authors)
Esra Girgin Akiskali (Turkey)
Tara Benwell (Canada)
Janet Bianchini (Italy)
Arjana Blazic (Croatia)
Işıl Boy (Turkey)
Marco Brazil (Philippines/Japan)
Eva Büyüksimkesyan (Turkey)
Catherine Cabiness (USA)
Baldric Commons/Graham Stanley (Spain/Second Life)
Kevin Cozma (Japan)
David Deubelbeiss (Canada/Korea)
David Dodgson (Turkey)
Hamdi Erestreams (Tunisia)
Hadley Ferguson (USA)
Deb Frazier (USA)
Naomi Ganin-Epstein (Israel)
Anna Greenwood (India/Nepal)
Mike Harrison (UK)
Mark Helgesen (Japan)
Steven Herder (Japan)
Emma Herrod (UK)
Anne Hodgson (USA/Germany)
Whitney Hunter (USA)
Lesley Ito (Japan)
Patrick Jackson (Ireland)
Nick Jaworski (Turkey/China)
Eric Kane (Japan)
Özge Karaoğlu (Turkey)
Dan Kirk (Japan)
Mark Kulek (Japan)
Anita Kwiatkowska (Poland/Turkey/Spain)
Cecilia Lemos (Brazil)
Márcia Lima (Brazil)
Vicky Loras (Canada/Greece/Switzerland)
Tamas Lorincz (Hungary/UAE)
Dayle Major (South Korea)
Christina Markoulaki (Greece)
Conchi Martínez de Tejada (Spain)
Vladimira Michalkova (Slovakia)
Bob Middleton (Japan)
Sandy Millin (UK)
Naomi Moir (UK)
Sandie Mourão (Portugal)
Theron Muller (Japan)
Ric Murry (USA)
Troy Nahumko (Spain)
Mari Nakamura (Japan)
Rob Newberry (Thailand)
Henrick Oprea (Brazil)
Melania Paduraru (Romania)
Chiew Pang (Spain)
Brad Patterson (France)
Marisa Pavan (Argentina)
Randy Poehlman (Japan)
Matt Richelson (Japan)
Yitzha Sarwono (Indonesia)
Joanne Sato (Japan)
Vicky Saumell (Argentina)
Tatiana Sobral (Brazil)
Matthew Spira (South Korea)
Leahn Stanhope (Spain)
Hobie Swan (USA)
Shelly Sanchez Terrell (Germany)
Torn Halves (Greece)
Jennifer Verschoor (Argentina)
Kathleen Kampa & Charles Vilina (Japan)
Tomo Wakui (Japan)
Berni Wall (UK)
Michelle Worgan (Spain)
Zahra (Iran)
About the Villagers and Their Posts
Esra Girgin Akiskali has been teaching English to very young learners in Turkey for 7 years. She loves teaching children as they are always enthusiastic and fun to teach!
Website: Teaching English
Blog: Esra’s Englishous Blog
twitter: @ekamin
Esra’s guest post: Children are Always Cute
Tara Benwell is an ELT materials writer and the administrator of My English Club (MyEC), the social network of EnglishClub.com.
English Club: English Club
Website and blog: www.tarabenwell.com
Twitter: @tarabenwell
Tara’s guest post: Teaching Pronunciation Online
Janet Bianchini has been a teacher of EFL for over 30 years. Her passion for teaching and learning remain unabated.
Blog: Janet’s Abruzzo Edublog
Twitter: @janetbianchini
Janet’s guest post: Do It Your Way
Arjana Blazic is an English and German teacher from Zagreb, Croatia. She’s committed to lifelong learning and is an avid user of new technologies. One of her major goals is to teach her students how to take advantage of all the possibilities that technology-enhanced learning can offer.
Wiki: Greetings from the World
English Blog: Traveloteacher
Croatian Blog: Twitterova družina
Twitter: @abromz
Arjana’s guest post: Teaching High School in Croatia
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Işıl Boy
Işıl Boy works as an ICT Coordinator and EFL Instructor at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey. Having taken her BA in TEFL from Istanbul University, she is studying for an MA in Educational Technology and TESOL with the University of Manchester. She is also the IATET representative for Turkey.
Blog: Işıl Boy’s Blog
Ning: www.yildizprepschool.ning.com
Twitter: @isilboy
Işıl’s guest post: How to use E-Portfolioss
Marco Brazil has been training teachers and teaching children English for over fifteen years. He maintains strong a strong commitment to making English fun and easy for both teachers and learners. He occasionally writes articles and gives teaching presentations (You can see handouts from his workshops here and here). Marco is the director/owner of SmartKids Circle.
Facebook: Marco Brazil
Blog: Mabuhay Classroom.
Marcos’ guest posts: Siklot: Reinvention of a Traditional Game for EFL Classrooms, PALAYOK: Reinvention of a Traditional Game for EFL Classrooms, The Auction, Cat and Mouse: Reinvention of a Traditional Game
Eva Büyüksimkesyan is an EFL teacher and freelance teacher trainer working in the same high school where she graduated from, and it was her dream.
Blog: A Journey in TEFL
Twitter: @evab2001
Eva’s guest post: Being an EFL Teacher
Catherine Cabiness currently teaches Medieval World History at the James Irvine Intermediate School in Garden Grove, California. She has taught English Language Learners for 16 years. As the history/social science department chair, Catherine has been working with her department to integrate technology into their curriculum. Catherine has her Master’s of Science in Educational Technology.
Linked In: Catherine Cabiness.
Catherine’s guest post: Bridging the Physical and Linguistic Divide
Baldric Commons usually calls himself Graham Stanley outside of Second Life, and when he’s not working there he is a social media consultant for the British Council and also works as a teacher of young learners at the British Council in Barcelona, Spain.
He has been teaching English since 1995 and even before studying for the M.Ed in ELT & Educational technology (University of Manchester), he had developed an interest in emerging technologies for language learning and teaching. He has recently become coordinator of the IATEFL Learning Technologies Special Interest Group and frequently speaks about this field at conferences both nationally and internationally.
Twitter: @grahamstanley
blogs: blog-efl and Digital Play
Baldric’s guest post: One Week in My Second Life
Kevin Cozma has been living and teaching in Takamatsu, Kagawa, Japan since 1995. After a few years teaching at the GEOS English conversation school chain, he started up Kevin’s English House with his (much) better half in 1997. Kevin currently teaches students ranging in age from 1 to 74, and is loving every minute of it. He is also the former president and program chair for Kagawa JALT.
Blog: Takamatsu Eikaiwa Blog
YouTube: takamatsueikaiwa
Facebook:Kevin’s English House
Kevin’s guest post: The iPad in the ESL/EFL Classroom
David Deubelbeiss is an EFL teacher and teacher trainer living in North Bay, Canada. He runs a social network for teachers called EFL Classroom 2.0 and a website of teacher-submitted teaching ideas called Teaching Recipes. He is also the author of a self-published course book – We Teach | We Learn.
Blog: Teacher Talk
Twitter: @ddeubel
David’s guest posts: It’s the Small Things that Count, An Old Dog and Special Tricks, Special Tricks Part 2: Repetition, My Perfect Classroom
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David Dodgson is an English teacher currently working in Ankara, Turkey and teaching young (primary school) learners. He is also a student doing the distance MA in Ed Tech & TESOL with the University of Manchester.
Blog: Reflections of a Teacher and Learner
Twitter: @DaveDodgson
David’s guest post: Getting the Most Out of Power Point
Hamdi Erestreams has taught EFL for 12 years in Tunisia and has recently begun to explore Facebook and Twitter as places to connect with other teachers around the world. Hamdi doesn’t have a computer at home, so he accesses the Internet at cybercafes and at school.
Hamdi’s guest post: Intersection on an e-Ferry (a poem)
Hadley Ferguson is a middle school history teacher at an independent school for girls. She loves to learn and find new ways to engage her students in their learning. She is the mother of four children, all grown now, whom she home-schooled until they went into formal school in 8th grade. She is also the grandmother of a wonderful 3 year old girl and a 3 month old boy.
Blog: Middle School Matrix.
Twitter: @hadleyjf
Hadley’s guest posts: New Friends, The Wonder of Contact
Blog: Primary Perspective
Wiki: Global Classroom 2011
Twitter: @frazierde
Deb’s guest post: A Global Classroom is Born
For the past twenty-five years Naomi Ganin-Epstein has specialized in teaching English as a foreign language to deaf and hard of hearing pupils in Israel. She began her career as an elementary school teacher but has taught high-school for the last 21 years. She has a B.A. in Deaf Education, a B.E.D. in EFL and an M.A. in Curriculum Development. Naomi is the author of two textbooks for these pupils. She is both a teacher and a teacher’s counselor. She lives in Kiryat-Ono, Israel, with her husband and two sons.
Blog: Visualising Ideas
Twitter: @naomishema
Naomi’s guest post: The Reading Pictures Strategy
Anna Greenwood took the TEFL qualification last year in Kathmandu and has been working mostly voluntarily since in Nepal and now India. Her main experience is in Buddhist monastic schools in the two countries. She finds the work very rewarding and is encouraged when she hears the students pronouncing words in ‘BBC English’ and when she sees them enjoying writing and speaking their own dramas.
Anna’s guest posts: Teaching in a Buddhist monastery in India, Personal experiences of a new EFL teacher
Article on TravelMag: Exiled schoolchildren march for Tibet
Mike Harrison is an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher currently based in South-East London in the UK. At the moment he mostly teaches General English to adults, but also teaches a group of teens. He has previously taught adults, teens and young learners in Pamplona and A Coruña in Spain. Outside the classroom he loves Spanish cinema and tries not to fall over too much when doing capoeira.
Blog: Mike Harrison’s Blog
Twitter: @harrisonmike
Mike’s guest post: Individual Differences Count
Marc Helgesen is professor at Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University, Sendai, Japan. He’s an author of more than 150 books, textbooks and articles including the English Firsthand series. He is especially interesting in using positive psychology in the English classroom.
Websites: ELT and the Science of Happiness and various ELT articles and handouts.
Marc’s guest post: Classroom Management: stuff they didn’t mention in teacher training
Steven has an MA TEFL from Birmingham University. He believes that being a teacher means a never-ending commitment to learning. “First, we must connect with our students, then expect them to grow in some way; the rest we just work out day by day.” He is an avid collaborator and is always looking for new ways to grow.
Website: Welcome to My EFL World – Steven Herder
Blog: Japan Action Research in EFL
Steven’s guest posts: The 1.5 Million Yen Secret, I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours, Teacher Development 2.0
Emma Herrod lives in the UK, about 20 miles from London, with her little companion Thomas, aged four. She teaches English to all kinds of people: business professionals who are learning English for work, teenagers from abroad who have relocated here with their parents, students who moved to the UK for a few months, fell in love, and now need the language to live and argue with their new husband/wife. There are so many stories, no two students, or their English needs seem to be the same. That is why she loves what she does.
Website and Blog: Emma Herrod
Twitter: @EHerrod
Emma’s guest posts: More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom Part 1, More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom Part 2
Anne Hodgson grew up on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, and ‘ran away’ to Germany to study when she was 19. She’s a freelancer, delivering English and communication skills training to business people and college students, translating, recording audio for several EFL publishers, and writing language exercises for Spotlight Online. She’s actively involved in her local teachers’ association in Munich. When she’s off relaxing, you’ll find her sailing, making music, reading or just plain outdoors.
Blog: The Island Weekly
Twitter: @annehodg
Anne’s guest post: A Socializing Game: Driver’s Seat
Whitney Hunter is currently pursuing her Masters of Arts in Teaching at the University of Southern California’s education program, which prepares teachers to earn their California teaching credential online.
Whitney’s guest post: Using Technology to Simulate ESL in the EFL Classroom
Lesley Ito, originally from Florida, has been teaching English to EFL/ESL students in Nagoya, Japan for over 17 years. She is a teacher trainer, author and the owner of BIG BOW English Lab, a private language school with a unique cross-curricular focus.
School’s website (teacher training page): Big Bow English
Blog: Lesley Ito’s blog
Twitter: @lesleyito
Lesley’s guest post: Flap Books: A Simple Secret for Student Support, How to Plan an Exciting EFL Museum Trip
Patrick Jackson spent countless years in Japan teaching English to students of all ages. Unlike St. Patrick, he gave up before the job was done and in 2009 returned to Ireland where he has real shamrock in his garden. Most active in the area of ELT for young learners, he is the author of the popular series of readers, Potato Pals (OUP) and co-author of a new 7-level primary course,Everybody Up (OUP).
Blog: The Potato Diaries
Twitter: @patjack67
Facebook: Potato Pals Community
Patrick’s guest post: What Every Teacher Should Know About St. Patrick’s Day
Nick Jaworski is the Language Learning Director at Disney English in Shanghai, China, where he lives with his beautiful wife Hande.
Blog: Turklish TEFL.
Twitter: @TurklishTEFL
Nick’s guest post: Text Your Knowledge
Eric Kane has been teaching in Japan for 16 years. He has made numerous presentations at both local and regional ETJ events and will be a guest presenter in this year’s OUP All-Japan Summer Tour. Eric is very interested in educational technology and has spent the last several years developing a children’s CD (Let’s Take a Walk) and YouTube channel dedicated to young EFL/ESL learners.
Website: ELF Learning
Facebook: ELF Learning
Twitter: @ELFLearning
Eric’s guest post: Proactive Discipline–Tend to your Garden
Özge Karaoglu is an EFL teacher and a teacher trainer in Istanbul,Turkey. She is also the educational coordinator, script and screenplay writer of “Yes,I Speak English” DVD series in America.
Blog: Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog
Wiki: Ozge Karaoglu’s e-Portfolio
Twitter: @ozge
Ozge’s guest posts: Teaching Kindergarteners in Turkey:Enjoying Every Minute of It, Moving Your Kindergarten into Web 2.0 with 5 Different Tools
Dan Kirk currently teaches at Yokkaichi Nursing and Medical Care University in Yokkaichi, Japan. Whether he’s in a classroom or his fields, cultivating English as a Foreign Language or rice, horticulture is his work. He has lived in Japan for 23 years and teaches English as a Foreign Language, Professional Speaking, and Teacher Development. In addition to his career as an educator, he is also a professional farmer.
Teacher blog: EFL in Japan
Farmer Blog: Jinriki
Twitter: @yokkaichi1
Dan’s guest post: Whatever Gets Them Through the Door
Mark Kulek makes his home in Gifu, Japan, where he has a small English conversation school for both adults and young learners. He has been teaching EFL for 15 years. He’s interested in professional development and activity-based curriculums.
Twitter: @gifumark
Mark’s guest post: Lexical Chunks for Kids
Anita Kwiatkowska holds a M.A. in English Philology from the University of Gdansk, Poland. She has been teaching kids and adults since 2001, in Poland, Turkey, and Spain. During the week she does her best teaching young learners. At the weekends she performs her duties as a Cambridge ESOL oral examiner, runs workshops for teachers or travels. She is a huge fan of Pedro Almodovar, loves face painting and sometimes indulges in Indian cuisine.
Blog: L_missbossy’s ELT Playground
Twitter: @l_missbossy
Anita’s guest posts: Teaching in a Small Village in Poland, I Know that I Know Nothing, Sometimes Less is More
Cecilia Lemos has been teaching English in Brazil for 17 years. She works with teens and adults, from beginner to advanced levels. She loves teaching and thinks teachers can really make a difference in the learners’ lives and in the world.
Blog: Cecilia’s Box of Chocolates
Twitter: @CeciELT
Cecilia’s guest post: About Mountains, Challenges and Teaching
Márcia Lima has been involved in TEFL for over 25 years and currently teaches and trains teachers at her own language school in Brazil. She is also an Associate with the International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi). Her passions include teaching (very) young learners and using technology in the classroom.
Blog: Where English is Fun
Twitter: @bamarcia
Márcia’s guest post: The Swing of the Pendulum
Vicky Loras is a Greek-Canadian EFL teacher now living in Switzerland. Her primary interest in teaching is the incorporation of multiculturalism in the classroom as a means of humanizing the educational process.
Blog: Vicky Loras’s Blog
Twitter: @vickyloras
Vicky’s guest post: Multicultural Activities in Class
Tamas Lorincz has been teaching English and working with teachers of English for more than 20 years. After a 3-year stint in the UAE, Tamas is back in Hungary, where he hopes to enhance his learning by working in the public education sector with teachers and students open to the challenges and opportunities a rapidly changing learning environment presents.
blog: ELT Musings and Tidbits.
Twitter: @tamaslorincz
Tamas’ guest post: Things I’m Happy to Know
Dayle Major taught General English and Academic English in New Zealand for several years before moving to South Korea in 2007. Initially an English assistant in public schools, he now works as a university English instructor.
Twitter: @daylemajor
Dayle’s guest post: Teaching Middle School Students in South Korea
Blog: Student’s Page
Twitter: @christina_mark
Christina’s guest posts: My Teaching ‘Journey’ in Greece, How to Integrate Blogging in EFL Teaching, How to Create Video Activities on a Teacher’s Blog, Meeting Challenges in the EFL Classroom Part 1: Read Aloud Activities, Meeting Challenges in the EFL Classroom Part 2: Using Technology, Tell a Story!
Life put more than one obstacle in the way of Conchi Martínez de Tejada before granting her dream to become a teacher. Law and Economic degrees to satisfy her parents weren’t enough to dissuade her from getting her hands dirty at the blackboard. A twist of fate on the South-Western corner of the Arabian peninsula ended up putting her in front of real, live students (as opposed to the stuffed animals and reluctant cousins she used to teach as a child). From there she taught in Azerbaijan and the smiling classrooms of Laos before ending up against her current and biggest challenge…the analog-age Spanish Education system. A fearsome and unrelenting foe for some, but for this teacher, a piece of chalk.
Blog: Ken and Karen
Twitter: Azulaza
Conchi’s guest post: When Did I Become a Teacher?
Vladimira Michalkova teaches English as a foreign language at State Language School in Slovakia. She teaches general and business English to adults and teenagers. She is interested in student-centered approaches, developing learners’ autonomy and believes that a teacher shouldn’t be a slave of course books and that inspiration, motivation, purpose and meaning are essential in learning. She brings colours, crayons and surpr@ise (surprise + praise) to her classroom and just recently also on the canvas.
Blog:Vladimira’s blog
Twitter:@vladkaslniecko
Vladimira’s guest post: Bringing Happiness to the Classroom
Bob Middleton has been laughing and learning with children in Japan for over 20 years. Wearing other hats, he has taught English for all ages from wee small children to really big adults and even went back to school to learn and read more about what it was he was doing. He has recently been team teaching, training teachers, and helping to develop an ongoing curriculum and materials in a Monbukagakusho (Japan Ministry of Education) pilot program for the past nine years, using a content-based approach in both the local elementary school and junior high classrooms. He encourages humor in the classroom, along with a ‘be curious and discover’ approach.
Twitter: @catsndogs)
Bob’s guest post: Rice in Japan and Rice around the World
Sandy Millin has been teaching EFL since 2006, and has loved it since the start. So far she has worked in Paraguay, Borneo, the Czech Republic and the UK, and plans to add more countries to that list very soon.
Blogs: Sandy Millin and (Almost) Infinite ELT Ideas
Twitter: @sandymillin
Sandy’s guest post: Teaching English in Europe and the U.K.
Naomi Moir has been involved in education for over 15 years and has worked with students and teachers from a wide range of environments, including those in the state sector and the private sector. In the past few years Naomi has run training courses and presented at conferences for a number of different organisations on a variety of areas connected with teaching English to young learners and adults. She was also the Young Learner Coordinator for the International House World Organisation. In addition to her training work, Naomi has also written (for Oxford University Press) a ‘Learn English at Home’ pack for parents of preschoolers and Starting and Ending Lessons (Oxford Basics for Children) for primary teachers as well as contributing to the pre-school series First Friends. Naomi now works full-time for Oxford University Press as a teacher trainer.
Blog: Oxford University Press English Language Teaching Global Blog
Twitter: @naomi_moir
Naomi’s guest post: Lessons Learned
Sandie Mourão is a freelance English language teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer based in Portugal. She specialises in early years education and lower primary. She’s especially interested in how picture books and free play can promote language learning opportunities.
Website: Sandie Mourão
Blog: Picture Books in ELT
Sandie’s guest post: To Champion the Picture Book
Theron Muller is a teacher and researcher based in Nagano, Japan. His publications include exploration of task-based learning (TBL) and academic publishing, and currently he’s interested in exploring reviewer evaluations of academic papers submitted for publication and contrastive analysis of academic writing across languages and cultures. He is active as an editor with JALT Publications and the Asian ESP Journal. He is also part of the University of Birmingham CELS Open Distance Learning team.
Twitter: @theronmuller
Theron’s guest post: An Invitation to Participate in Academic Publication
Ric Murry has been teaching middle school students since 1995. He has taught Social Studies, Technology, and has worked as a Instructional Technology Specialist through the Media Center. When he began teaching at Dalton Middle School, the Hispanic population was classified as “Other” (less than 2%). The school currently has a Hispanic population of 68% do to the carpet and poultry industry in Northwest Georgia.
Ric was one of the first four “official” teachers in the middle school to teach ESOL students in 1997. They did not have an organized approach for teaching English language learners, but his team of teachers attempted to learn all they could through our own research. Ric has learned with ELLs for over 12 years, and have worked to make them and their parents become a valuable part of the school and community.
Blog: Murry’s World
Twitter: @rrmurry
Ric’s guest post: I Only Thought I Knew My Students
Troy Nahumko is an unashamed traveller who TEFLs to make ends meet. His TEFL-Travelling has taken him across 5 continents and shown him that there is little more frightening in this world than being faced with a group of rowdy 4 year olds. He currently twitters out of his Almohad refuge in a Spanish city few bother to reach and has a strong penchant for local wines. For more quieries into the mysteries of teaching Young Learners in Spain, among other things, visit Troyshouse.
Troy’s guest post: Lion Tamers and Circus Clowns
Mari Nakamura is an ELT materials writer, teacher-trainer and the owner of English Square in Kanazawa, Japan. Her main interest is the development of curriculums that nurture a sense of exploration, discovery and joy in students’ minds. In her free time, she loves to network with ELT professionals in various teaching environments and to listen to music.
Website: English Square
Blog: English Square
Facebook: Mari Nakamura
Mari’s guest post: Creating a Buzz in Teens’ Classrooms
Rob Newberry is a technology specialist at Ruamrudee International School in Bangkok, Thailand. He began his teaching career specializing in Interactive White Boards and multimedia integration, and now focuses on Web 2.0 applications in the classroom. Rob is the license holder for TEDxBKK — the first independently organized TED.com event in Thailand. In 2009 he began a long term relationship with Prezi — an online zooming presentation tool and was nortorious for seeing Posterous on the side.
Twitter: @RobinThailand
Rob’s guest post: Learning Lessons in Thailand
Henrick Oprea is a teacher, teacher trainer and Director of studies at Atlantic Idiomas, Brasília, Brazil. He’s been teaching English for about 13 years and is currently taking his MA in TEFL/TESL from the University of Birmingham. As any good Brazilian, he’s a football fan and supports Vasco da Gama, the best football team in the world (or so he thinks).
Blog: Doing some thinking
Twitter: @hoprea
Henrick’s guest post: Teaching English in Brazil
Melania Paduraru has been teaching English for 25 years, level K-12 in state schools and adults in LLL programmes. For the last 15 years She has been teaching mainly high school students (9th-12th grades) and adults. Between September 1, 2007 and August 31, 2009 she was a county school inspector with Constanta County School Inspectorate, Romania. Now She’s full-time back among her students, enjoying every minute of it!
Blog: Melania Paduraru’s Blog
Student Blog: English@Callatis High
Twitter: @MellanieP
Melania’s guest post: Love and Respect
Chiew Pang is currently based in Las Palmas in The Canary Islands, which are politically Spanish, but geographically, African. His blog is named a cLiL to cLiMB, a name alluding to its raison d’être, now focusses on resources and ideas for ELT teachers and their students.
Blog: A cLiL to cLiMB
Twitter: @ClilToClimb
Chiew’s guest post: Images à la Dogme
Brad Patterson has been a language teacher for over a decade and is a passionate language enthusiast himself. These days, he is the social media manager for an English Language-Learning Publisher called Edulang.
Blog: a journée in language
Twitter: @brad5patterson
Brad’s guest post: 10 Tips for a Great First Impression with Students
Marisa Pavan is a teacher of English as a second language, a translator and an interpreter in Rosario, Argentina. She teaches one-to-one classes of adult students and group classes at a School of English, where she is in charge of teenage students at intermediate and upper intermediate levels.
Blog: Linguistic Consultancy
Linked In: Marisa Pavan
Twitter: @Mtranslator
Marisa’s guest post: Teachers or Trainers?
Randy Poehlman has been teaching ESL for three years in Japan. He is currently working in Osaka, both developing and teaching extensive children’s programs. He is most interested in Bilingual studies, Immersion programs and Literacy development in young learners.
Randy’s guest posts: Students Picking Pics, Moving Beyond “Do you like?”, Teaching High Level Kids
Matt Richelson is the creator of DreamEnglish.com a website with children’s songs and materials to learn English. Matt is also the author of the music in Circle Time, a three level Book/Workbook/CD/Animation series published by Bonding Education. His songs are also featured in the Big Step English Text Book Series available soon from Maddso Publishing.
Website: Dream English
Facebook: Dream English
Twitter: @dreamenglish
Matt’s guest post: Teaching Young Learners with Songs
Yitzha Sarwono is an English teacher living in Jakarta, Indonesia. She is currently teaching kindergarten but has always had one foot in teaching English. She is an optimist who believes that education can and will be better when we all put our minds to making it so. She feels lucky to be a teacher and tries to always explore ways to be better.
Blog: Yitzha Sarwono’s posterous
Twitter: @yitzha_sarwono
Facebook: yitzha.sarwono
Yitzha’s guest post: Are we going too global?
Joanne Sato is a British woman who has been living and teaching in Japan for thirteen years. She has lived in Fukushima (yes, THAT Fukushima) city for the last ten of those and works at a women’s college. She has an MA in TEFL from the University of Birmingham, England.
Twitter: @sugarjo
Joanne’s guest post: The Treasures of Teaching
Maria Victoria Saumell holds a degree in Literary and Technical Translation and a Diploma in the Theory and Methodology of TESOL (Distinction). She is the co-author of Teacher Development Interactive: Preparation for the Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT), author of Meeting Point 3 and 4 for the Storyline coursebook series and series consultant for English in Common coursebook series, all for Pearson. She is currently the author and tutor of New Learning Environments for the Master’s in ELT at Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia. She is the Overall Coordinator of the EFL department at Instituto San Francisco de Asis, a private school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is also a freelance materials writer and a presenter at professional development conferences, especially on the integration of ICT for language learning. She is an amateur acrobatic gymnast and a proud mum and pet-owner.
Blogs: Educational Technology in ELT and Vicky Saumell’s blog
Vicky’s guest post: Choice in the EFL Classroom
Tatiana Sobral is a primary teacher at The British School of Rio de Janeiro. She has been in charge of the primary English curriculum, and has recently accepted the post of Student Voice coordinator. You can learn more about Tatiana’s work as an educator at The Educator’s PLN Ning.
Tatiana’s guest post: Teaching Language or Teaching Through Language?
Matthew Spira has been an EFYL instructor for the last eight years. He currently lives in South Korea with his wife, an English teacher from South Africa, and their two young children. Before deciding on a whim that he wanted to try something different, Matt was the workforce planning, forecasting and analysis manager for a large multi-site high-volume customer care organization in San Francisco. He’s never regretted the career change.
Matt’s guest post: Formative Assessment
Leahn Stanhope has had the travelling bug since she was a child and has lived and worked in various countries including Thailand, Greece, Austria and the USA. She’s a dip qualified, freelance teacher and trainer in Spain where she lives with her partner, five cats and four dogs. She works as a language assistant in two primary schools during the day and in the afternoon and evening she runs teacher training workshops for primary and secondary school teachers and teaches one-to-one private classes. She love steaching and living by the beach!
Blog: Early EFL
Twitter: @Fuertesun
Leahn’s guest post: Animal Magic
Hobie Swan has been a writer and reporter for the past 20 years. He has been a producer for the highly regarded CBS radio host, Charles Osgood, and produced and directed award-winning documentaries. He has written one book and countless articles for San Francisco Bay Area and national newspapers and magazines. He has worked for two mind mapping companies, and is currently a writer for CS Odessa and its blog. CS Odessa develops ConceptDraw MINDMAP, ConceptDraw PROJECT, and ConceptDraw PRO, a business graphics application.
Hobie’s guest posts: Mind Mapping: Learning and Teaching with Both Sides of the Brain, Mind Mapping for Writers Part 1, Mind Mapping for Writers Part 2, Mind Mapping for Writers Part 3
Shelly Sanchez Terrell began teaching inner city children in 1994 in Texas as part of a pantomime and puppetry troop. She later managed hands-on science museum programs for children. In 2000, her nonprofit organization, ETHOS, won the SAMMinistries Volunteer Group of the Year award for their creation of a homeless children’s art and music program. Currently,she is a freelance technology trainer, the VP of Educator Outreach or Parentella.com and an English languge teacher based in Germany.
Blog: Teacher Reboot Camp
Twitter: @shellterrell
Shelly’s guest posts: EFL Teacher’s Kit for Surviving Kids, Digital Digits: Creative Ideas for Finger Plays
Torn Halves is a teacher, designer, writer and smallholder, based in Greece.
Website: fullspate
Blog: Torn Halves
Torn Halves’ guest post: The Blasted Oak
Jennifer Verschoor holds degrees as English University Professor, Bachelor in Educational Management, English Public Translator and ICT in the Classroom validated by Trinity College London. Her emphasis in training teachers to integrate technology into the classroom started several years ago. Since then has given numerous workshops on the integration of New Technologies in Education. Currently she is an ICT Teacher Trainer at ESSARP. She is proud WEBHEAD and President of ARCALL Argentine Computer Assisted Language Learning.
Blog: My Integrating Technology Journey
Daughter’s blog: Vicky’s Learning English
Twitter: @jenverschoor
Jennifer’s guest post: Raising a Digital Native in Argentina
Kathleen Kampa and Charles Vilina are passionate about creating a “magical” learning environment for young learners. They have been teaching children for over 25 years in Japan and America using music, movement, and multiple intelligences strategies. Kathleen and Charles are the co-authors of “Magic Time,” a starter level English course that uses these strategies, published by Oxford University Press.
Kathy and Chuck’s guest post: Music and Movement for Young Learners
Tomo Wakui is an English teacher in Niigata, Japan, where she works in an academic high school.
Tomo’s guest post: Teaching English as a Japanese Academic High School
An EFL teacher/lecturer/teacher trainer since 1977 teaching in Indonesia and then the UK, Berni Wall set up her language training company RLIin 1995. She launched Gapfillers E-learning site in 2007 to work with advanced level English language students helping them continue to improve and develop. Having taught 6 years of primary school through to university Berni have seen the ‘education’ process at all stages. Her desire is to see more excitement and wonder in learning.
Blog:Radical Language
Twitter: @rliberni
Berni’s guest post: Never Underestimate What Your Students Can Teach You
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Michelle Worgan has been teaching English for over ten years, mostly in Spain. For the past eight years she has been living and teaching in Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz. She loves teaching children!
Blog: So This Is English
Twitter: @michelleworgan
Michelle’s guest post: Tips for Teaching Teens
Zahra is a student who enjoys learning English online. She shared her reasons for her preference in this guest post. If you want to know more about Zahra, you can see her profile on My English Club.
Zahra’s guest post: Benefits of Online Learning
