Читать книгу The English Teachers - RF Duncan-Goodwillie - Страница 8

English teachers are spectacularly diverse in almost every aspect. They come from all around the world for different reasons, speaking many dialects and possessing a variety of outlooks on life and the English language. When many of us start teaching students for the first time, we are encouraged to do a “needs analysis”. This helps teachers find out about their students’ backgrounds, language requirements and goals for development. The idea is that by knowing our students better, we can teach them more effectively. Similarly in this book, to understand our teachers more effectively we must have a complete picture of where they come from. Life may be more about the journey than the destination, but it’s a good idea to know where you started from to know where you are going.

This chapter is somewhat different to the others which follow. For each interview I’ll provide a section called “Setting the Scene” where I’ll describe the participants, where we met, how they were feeling at the time and what the atmosphere was like as we talked. Some smaller comments will be provided later to add context but the focus – as ever – is on what is being said.

Every interview I conducted started with the same request: “Tell me about your background.” To avoid repetition, I have omitted this starter question from the transcripts. With the same objective, I have started the scripts in each chapter with the names of the interviewees and then replaced them with the first letters of the names they provided. With a single exception, they are ordered in the manner conducted from January to August 2019. A full list is below for reference.

John Shaw (JS)

Ninha (N)

ID (ID)

Nadezhda Boguk (NB)

Anastasia Dereviankina (AD)

Daniel Saraiva San Pedro (DSSP)

Heather Belgorodtseva (HB)

Christopher James Leckenby (CJL)

Nataliya Pronina (NP)

Lisa Shichkova (LS)

Luka Miksic (LM)

Günther Cristiano Butzen (GCB)

Maksim Levkin (ML)

Edward Crabtree (EC)

Elena Atlasova (EA)

Felipe Fülber (FF)

Frances (F)

Chee-way Sun (CWS)

Carlos Monroy (CM)

Cheng Zhang-Stoddard (CZS)

Anastasia Kolcheva (AK)

Luis Clavijo (LC)

Gary Krautkramer (GK) and Polina Pivovarova (PP)

Daria Starova (DS)

Leandri Butterworth (LB)

Irina Grekova (IG)

Varvara Tyurina (VT)

Andy S (AS)

Vika K (VK)

Olga Shushunova (OS)

Sebastian Orlande (SO)

Aline C (AC)

Nico Benger (NB)

Elena Kalkova (EK)

Note: Nadezhda Boguk and Nico Benger have the same abbreviations but appear towards the beginning and end of each chapter respectively. I hope this fact and the pronouns used will prevent any confusion.

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