Amy Tsui: Understanding Expertise in Language Teaching (TESOLacademic.org)

by Jürgen Kurtz, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Academic is a knowledge dissemination site which links the work of TESOL-based academics to teachers, teacher-trainers, teacher-trainees, decision-makers and other researchers. Edited by Huw Jarvis, it provides a global forum for people to talk about how their published research, or an aspect of it, impacts on language pedagogy. TESOLacademics.org only posts talks about research which have gone through the peer review process and this ‘guarantees’ the quality of the submissions.

In the following video webcast, Amy Tsui discusses the nature of expertise in language teaching, its development, and how teachers employ it (click on image to view):

I very much agree with what Amy Tsui has to say about improvisation in structured learning environments. This essential aspect of teaching (which she refers to as “skilled improvisation” in her talk) should definitely not be underestimated (in the midst of the standards- und test-oriented teaching hype).