Tatiana is an ESL/EFL educator with over five years of experience teaching English across Russia and China, from young learners to university level. She has a particular interest in English for Specific Purposes, especially Business English, and preparing learners for authentic international communication. Tatiana holds TEFL/TESOL and TKT qualifications and is a member of IATEFL and its ESP Special Interest Group.
Tatiana will be presenting a workshop at the ESPSIG PCE in Birmingham drawing on her experience teaching Business English and Translation students at a Chinese university. She will focus on how much of the standard university curriculum exposes learners to only a narrow set of “standard” native accents, but her learners are preparing for a workplace where most of their English-speaking communication will be with other non-native speakers, in a wide range of accents. She will present a three-stage framework she is developing for using authentic recordings, from sources such as TED Talks and podcasts, to build learners’ familiarity with diverse accents.
This solid focus on listening and non-native accents, which are fundamental aspects in real-world ESP scenarios but are often overlooked in many ESP conferences and materials, was why the ESPSIG committee awarded this year’s scholarship to her. So congratulations on winning the ESPSIG scholarship, Tatiana!