Recently, I had a blast from the past when my former Iranian English teacher, Mitti, kindly sent me a few of my English writings from about 17 years ago. It was both eye-opening and quite hilarious reading a very young me trying to express myself in English. First of all, let me tell you about Mitti. She had this magical quality where she encouraged us to speak English in class but never gave us the side-eye if we threw in a Persian word here and there. Looking at the youthfu

Differentiation is key to meeting teaching and learning objectives at school. Some students need extra help to reach required achievement standards, others are exceeding expectations and need to be extended, and still others need a different way of thinking about achievement standards altogether. English-as-an–additional-language (EAL) students in Australia are generally labelled as EAL because they are considered to need some kind of additional language support. It can be di

Born and raised in Vietnam, I learned and later taught English as a foreign language. My monolingual background significantly shaped my perspective, and I was particularly influenced by two key experiences during my learning and teaching journey. The first pivotal experience was being selected to attend a provincial high school where students were trained to become leaders in the province. At the welcoming ceremony, the head teacher, a renowned Russian language instructor, ad