Podcasts about marek kiczkowiak

Marek Kiczkowiak has been in ELT since 2009. He has CELTA, DELTA and a PhD. He currently runs an educational company, Academic English Now, where he helps PhD students and researchers write research papers. He grew the company from 0 to 70k/month and now shares his insights with English teachers who want to start a widely profitable teaching English business.Alex HormoziBlue Ocean StrategyCrossing the ChasmJim CollinsSign up to our mailing list https://eflmagazine.com/the-efl-magazine-business-podcast/https://linktr.ee/eflmagazinehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/theeflmagazinebusinesspodcast

In this episode, I talk with Marek Kiczkowiak about native speakerism in the ELT (English Language Teaching) industry and how it promotes discrimination and inequality suggesting that native speaking teachers are more qualified and skilled to teach English as a second language as they represent the standard of English speaking and teaching. Marek shares his story as well as some tips and resources to help students and teachers battle this phenomenon. Marek runs TEFL Equity Advocates and Academy, where he helps teachers tackle native speakerism and teach English for global communication: https://teflequityadvocates.com/ TEFL Equity Advocates and Academy YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/TEFLEquityAdvocates He also helps university students and researchers write better theses and papers on Academic English Now: https://academicenglishnow.com This episode was originally aired on October 1, 2020. See the video version here: https://bit.ly/3KUbiCl

In this episode, I talk with Marek Kiczkowiak about native speakerism in the ELT (English Language Teaching) industry and how it promotes discrimination and inequality suggesting that native speaking teachers are more qualified and skilled to teach English as a second language as they represent the standard of English speaking and teaching. Marek shares his story as well as some tips and resources to help students and teachers battle this phenomenon. Marek runs TEFL Equity Advocates and Academy, where he helps teachers tackle native speakerism and teach English for global communication: https://teflequityadvocates.com/ TEFL Equity Advocates and Academy YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/TEFLEquityAdvocates He also helps university students and researchers write better theses and papers on Academic English Now: https://academicenglishnow.com This episode was originally aired on October 1, 2020. See the video version here: https://bit.ly/3KUbiCl

Marek Kiczkowiak talks to us about teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF). Is ELF a variety of English? How can teachers approach teaching it? In what situations is it helpful to students (and when might it not be)?TEFL Equity Advocates and AcademyFor more podcast, videos and blogs, visit our website Support the podcast – buy us a coffee!Develop yourself! Find more about our teacher training courses Watch as well as listen on our YouTube channel

Part two of our interview with Marek Kiczkowiak! This week Alan and Chris are delighted to be interviewing Marek Kiczkowiak from TEFL Equity Advocates who talks to us about informing students on teacher qualifications, teacher nightmares in the past and racism in ELT and what everyone can do about it. Don't forget to check out Marek's websites and certainly buy the book! Useful links - Marek on Twitter Teaching English as a Lingua Franca book on Amazon. TEFL Equity Advocates website. TEFL Equity Advocates Facebook Group. TEFL Equity Advocates on Twitter. ----more---- We're two teachers who have worked across the UK, Ireland, Spain and Italy. We worked together for a few years in Cáceres, Spain.  We've plenty to say on the ELT world, so thought we'd make a podcast on it. Contact us at any of the links below - Website - https://phrasallyverbocious.podbean.com/Email - phrasallyverbocious@gmail.comTwitter - https://twitter.com/PhrasallyVAlan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/RamblingProfeChris on Twitter - https://twitter.com/chris_eltFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/PhrasallyVerbociousYouTube - YouTube Channel Show notes and blog - https://phrasallyverbociouspodcast.blogspot.com/Music: Purple Planet.com

This week Alan and Chris are delighted to be interviewing Marek Kiczkowiak from TEFL Equity Advocates who talks to us about all things native speaker-ism, English as a Lingua Franca, IELTS examiners taking the IELTS exam (!) and labeling terminologies in ELT. Stay tuned for part two of the interview next week! Useful links - Marek on Twitter Teaching English as a Lingua Franca book on Amazon. TEFL Equity Advocates website. TEFL Equity Advocates Facebook Group. TEFL Equity Advocates on Twitter. ----more---- We're two teachers who have worked across the UK, Ireland, Spain and Italy. We worked together for a few years in Cáceres, Spain.  We've plenty to say on the ELT world, so thought we'd make a podcast on it. Contact us at any of the links below - Website - https://phrasallyverbocious.podbean.com/Email - phrasallyverbocious@gmail.comTwitter - https://twitter.com/PhrasallyVAlan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/RamblingProfeChris on Twitter - https://twitter.com/chris_eltFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/PhrasallyVerbociousYouTube - YouTube Channel Show notes and blog - https://phrasallyverbociouspodcast.blogspot.com/Music: Purple Planet.com

In reaction to Covid19, many teachers and schools have had to move their English courses online. But where to start? Dr. Marek Kiczkowiak tells us about his experiences creating online language courses for students and what he’s learned about online platforms, marketing and social media along the way.Setting Up Online English Courses (with Marek Kiczkowiak)Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." I'm Ross Thorburn. This week, my guest is Marek Kiczkowiak. Marek is founder of TEFL Equity Advocates and TEFL Equity Academy. He's a materials writer at the moment in Belgium.In this episode, I ask Marek about putting English language courses online. For obvious reasons, recently a lot of people are having to create online language courses for the first time. Marek's got experience of doing this, both as a material's designer and also as a teacher trainer.In this episode, you'll hear Marek talking about some of the challenges of putting courses online, the different platforms to use, and of course very, [laughs] very importantly, how to get students to actually take your courses. Enjoy the episode.Ross: Hi, Marek. We're obviously talking about this because of COVID‑19. Before we go on, how has the pandemic changed where you're teaching?Marek Kiczkowiak: Yes. I think the classes shut down late March, early April. I don't know if they're going to resume from the new academic year. I doubt it. I think maybe some classes will, the absolute essential ones like work in the laboratory that you can't do online. This might resume. I think a lot of it will be done online, still.I haven't been teaching. I've been just developing academic writing courses on academicenglishnow.com. The reason I set them up was...For three years I was teaching academic writing basically to university students in Belgium. When I started my new job in Brussels, I wasn't teaching anymore. I was developing materials.I've been thinking at the back of my mind that I could do all of what I was doing in the classroom with students, I could just offer that online. Then I'm not limited. I can be anywhere in the world and deliver the same quality program. When the lockdown happened, I was like, "That's it. If I don't do it now, then I've missed the boat."Ross: The online courses that we're talking about today Marek, can you tell us about them? I feel that online learning covers so much. You could have synchronous online classes in real‑time with groups of students in a virtual classroom. You can have asynchronous where people interact with each other, but maybe they are in different time zones, and they comment in a forum throughout the day.You can even have completely self‑accessed courses where learners are working their way through things at their own pace. They don't interact with each other very much. Tell us about the courses that you've created and why did you design them that way.Marek: Most of it is completely asynchronous, and there are two reasons for that. The first reason is that at the moment, I have most of my PhD students in Bolivia. The time difference is big. Therefore, finding a suitable time for a live class ‑‑ even now when these 15 students come from exactly the same university ‑‑ proved completely impossible.Also, because people can work through it at their own pace, they can jump through the different lectures and focus first on the ones that they feel are the most important to them. I might start at a certain point, and I, as a teacher, feel that this is the best point to start with, but maybe for other students, they have a different problem they want to tackle first.These are some of the reasons and why it's better for students. For you, as an online teacher, it's also much better because I don't have to constantly give the same material online. Time is money as a freelancer. That's why in the online courses that I offer, the basic package just includes the online work.There is no input from me apart from answering students' comments. There is a forum. They can ask each other questions, and I come in and answer their questions. The second higher tier that you can add is feedback on assignments. If you pay more money, you can do the assignments that are on the course, and then I'll check them and give you personalized feedback on them.I'm now including my time, so that's got to be more expensive. Then even above that, we've got group live sessions where we meet live and discuss any problems students have. They can send in the questions before when we have a live session. Even higher than that has to be a one‑on‑one class.It doesn't cost €20. It doesn't cost €50. It costs much more than that. Ultimately, there'll be few people who will buy it, but that's good. You want to limit yourself to people who actually really, really want to work with you. A lot of people might not need that. They'll just need the online course.Ross: You mentioned lectures there. In my experience, online courses tend to involve a lot of reading. They also sometimes have quite a high dropout rate. I think it's quite difficult sometimes to stay motivated for a long period of time when studying at a distance.What input do you use on your courses, and how do you make sure that those courses will be able to stay interesting?Marek: Sure. I guess I refer to them as lectures because my market is in universities. Otherwise, I would refer to them as lessons or maybe videos or whatever you want to call them. You definitely can't have lessons, lectures, or videos that are much longer than five minutes. People's attention span nowadays, we can hardly even finish a five‑minute video on Facebook.Maybe if it's educational and we paid for it, we'll give it more effort. I really like to think of them as little how‑to steps. To give you an example, one module is, "How to Write an Introduction." Within that bigger task, you have a smaller task, which will be, "How to Identify the Research Gap." This smaller task will consist of even smaller tasks, and those smallest tasks are individual lectures.You might have four how‑to lectures in, "How to Identify the Research Gap." Each of them takes about five minutes ‑‑ each video ‑‑ and then there is a task below it. A task could be for students to write something. Sometimes it can be as simple as writing one sentence. Sometimes it will be a longer 100‑, 200‑word assignment. It could also be a quiz.Sometimes, for example, because things vary from discipline to discipline in academic writing, I often like to give students a task to now go off and read an academic paper from their discipline. Then tell me whether what I said applies to their discipline. For example, some disciplines like to have introduction and literature review together as one section. Others will separate it.I tell them that in the lecture about organizing this. Now they need to read the text and comments and let us know how it's organized in the field.Ross: I wish I'd known about your academic writing course before I started my heavy dissertation.Marek: Well, take it, Ross, if you want to.Ross: Sadly, it's too late now. [laughs] For these courses, you need to put them online on a platform. Can you tell us about how you made that decision, which platform to use?Marek: That's a very good question because I think that's one thing obviously that's got to be pedagogically sound. There's lots of different platforms, and it really depends what you want to do and what you want to have.To give you one example, my initial TEFL Equity Academy courses were on a platform called Teachable. Teachable is free to access at the beginning with some limitations, and then it has certain plans. The advantage of platforms like Teachable or Kajabi, for example ‑‑ that's another one K‑A‑J‑A‑B‑I, Kajabi ‑‑ is that they are all in platforms.They give you free video hosting ‑‑ free as long as you pay the platform. It's video hosting. It's a payment gateway. The websites are predesigned for you, basically. Kajabi has email funnels. When somebody buys your product, they get a sequence of emails. Kajabi has webinars, for example, built‑in. It's an all‑in solution.It's a good solution if you don't have time and you don't feel very techie, and you just want something quick. However, if you want to put in a little bit of effort ‑‑ and it's not that difficult because I was able to do it and have zero website building skills, literally zero, I just watched YouTube tutorials and did it ‑‑ is to host it on WordPress.That gives you incredible flexibility. Obviously, Teachable has its website layout, and you can't really change it that much. You cannot make it look as you want it to look. To really access all the features you want to have, you'd be looking at $100 a month with Teachable and $150 with Kajabi. This is only for people who have high volumes of sales. You might not have that.Now all my courses are on WordPress, and I don't personally think it's too difficult to set up. Just to break down the numbers, instead of paying $100 a month, you're probably looking at maybe $30 a month or less. It's just you need different pieces.You need your WordPress hosting, you need video hosting, and then you need your online course plug‑in like LearnDash or something like that.Ross: Let's talk about finding students. How do you go about marketing your courses and making sure that students actually want to buy them?Marek: Sure, yeah. Never create an online course just because you think it's a good idea. Don't create a whole course before getting the proof of concept and trying to see if it actually sells. You'll spend months creating this amazing online course, but nobody wants to buy it.The simplest idea is the sales funnel. You start with something free that's downloadable, so people give you their email address. It always has to be something valuable for your audience, so maybe even before that, you need to really define who your audience is. I help university students and researches write better academic papers and thesis.I'm not interested in people who want to learn Business English. When people download it, they need to give you their email address to be able to download it. Then usually there is a very cheap offer of something. This could be a 60‑minute training session on something. This could be a mini‑course.A hundred people opt‑in to download something, maybe 10 percent of them ‑‑ if you've got a very, very good funnel ‑‑ will decide to get the opt‑in offer. You already have some initial clients. Then a smaller percentage of those might get the upsell as well. Once people opt‑in and buy something from you, you can offer them a higher package or another product.Think about it as building a relationship with someone. First, they get to know you and then maybe then read a blog post that you've written. They kind of think, "Wow, that was really, really helpful." Then they see this PDF guide that further helps them, and they're like, "Oh, I might download that."Once they really like you and feel that you're knowledgeable, they will buy something from you. Never offer a course to people that don't know you. Don't go to a Facebook group and something and post, "Hey, I've got this amazing course. Do you want to buy it?" It's not appropriate. People need to get to know you. In marketing, it's kind of the same.Ross: Really, it sounds there that a lot of it is about making sure that your potential students trust you before you try and sell them something.Marek: Yeah, I think so. I think you need to establish trust and also show people that you genuinely want to help them. If you start with the idea that I'm in this to make money, people will easily see that. The reason why you're offering a certain product is because you can't just help people for free. You can do that in a blog post but in a very limited way.It probably means you need to know your target audience pretty well. That's why I started with the academic writing courses. That's something I've been doing for a long time now. I feel I really know what problems my target audience is suffering from, what questions students have asked me over the last 10 years.Ross: Obviously, the sales funnel though is after people get to your website. Another really important part of this is getting people on to your website in the first place. Tell us about that, Marek. How do you just attract people to come on to your website?Marek: Absolutely. There are two ways of getting to your target audience. You can buy your way in which is through Facebook ads. This has got the advantage that if you run them correctly, and if you've got this funnel that I described to you, you can basically break even.You're not really spending any money because, for every hundred dollars that you put in, people buy a hundred dollars of your courses. Much quicker, you are building an audience.The second way is not buying it but through hosting content, doing content marketing that is valuable to my audience, and that Google is going to start ranking highly on the search pages. This is really, really important because if Facebook changes their advertising policies, your whole business could go bankrupt if you just rely on Facebook ads.Another really important way is to do what we are doing here, for example. Do collaborations where you, for example, do a podcast, a video, or a blog post for somebody else who already has your target audience or has people who are very similar to your target audience. Both of us reach more people, but also, if other websites add hyperlinks to your website, that increases your ranking in SEO.If you do collaborations like this, you add a hyperlink to my website, I add one to yours, and hopefully, we're going higher in the search rankings as well.Ross: One more time, everyone, that was Marek Kiczkowiak. For more from Marek, please check out his website www.teflequityadvocates.com. You can also find the TEFL Equity Academy on there with some of the online courses that Marek has created before for teachers.If you enjoyed this podcast, please visit our website, www.tefltraininginstitute.com, for more. If you really enjoyed it, please give us a good rating on iTunes or wherever you listen. We'll see you again next time. Goodbye.

The panel chat to Marek Kiczkowiak - founder of TEFL Equity Advocates & Academy - to find out more about native speakerism and English as a lingua franca. Learn more: https://teflequityadvocates.com/

Learn English in this interview episode where I chat with Marek Kiczkowiak about teaching English & whether native or non-native ESL teachers are better.

Marek talks with us about the discrimination non-native English teachers face in finding jobs, being promoted and being respected in general.

In the world of English language learning and teaching there is an obsession with the native speaker. Recently I spoke to someone who explains exactly why that has to end: Marek Kiczkowiak from TEFL Equity Advocates. This class is essential viewing for anyone learning English, but especially non-native English teachers.

In this episode, I speak to Marek Kiczkowiak, Ph.D. who is the founder of TEFL Equity Advocates and Academy. Marek is something like Martin Luther King of English Language Teaching. Essentially, he strives to obliterate the so-called "native speaker bias". In other words, he is fighting for the rights of non-native English teachers. He does that by researching this topic academically and finding some very compelling evidence. You can get a taste of his arguments in this episode. As you all know, this topic has highly personal relevance to me so having Marek on ZEP is a massive moment not only for me but also for the podcast itself.  ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  Facebook - join Zdenek's English Podcast Facebook group, like, share and comment on Facebook teacherzdenek.com - my website (work in progress)  I-tunes - write a brief review on I-tunes and help more people find this podca    

You've probably heard (possibly on this podcast) about the discrimination "non-native English teachers" can face finding jobs, in being promoted or receiving equal pay. But how does Native-speakerism affect what happens inside the classroom? Ross Thorburn: Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. This episode, our guest is Dr. Marek Kiczkowiak. Marek teaches in Belgium. He runs a TEFL show podcast, as well as the website TEFL Equity Advocates.In this episode, Tracy and I interviewed Marek about native‑speakerism inside the classroom. How do our views and assumptions about native speakers, non‑native speakers influence how we teach students, and how does that influence the students and how they use English. Hope you enjoy the interview.What Does Native‑Speakerism Inside the Classroom Look Like?My first question, I think most of the listeners out there will be familiar with the idea of native‑speakerism outside the classroom and discrimination that maybe non‑native English teachers face when they're job hunting. Can you tell us a bit about the other side of native‑speakerism and how that manifests itself inside the classroom?Marek Kiczkowiak: At the beginning when I got interested in it, obviously the first point that you notice is discriminatory recruitment policies. All the other aspects have a lot to do as well with teaching English.If you look at all the major coursebooks, if you look at the pronunciation syllabus, the aim is either to imitate standard British or general American English. This perpetuates the idea that your students have to speak like a native speaker in order to be successful.Of course, coursebooks have been moving forward with a few artificial non‑native speaker accents, usually recorded by actors. Actors are trained to imitate voices and accents, so there's a reason why coursebooks do that.It's very subliminal, you can call it, or subconscious. It's not overt, but I think if, for a very long time that's how you learn English, it doesn't surprise me that so many students prefer native‑speaker voices. The way we're teaching them leads them to believe that, "Yeah, clearly native‑speaker accents are better than non‑native speaker accents." That would be one example.Tracy Yu: I remember when I was a student from middle school to high school and university, maybe 10 years, definitely it's close to either British accents or American accents. At the end, I don't know which accent I have.Ross: It seems clear then from the point of view of schools employing non‑native teachers that there's an advantage there, that you can get great teachers.If you have students that say, "I want to learn authentic American English," or, "I want to learn British English," I wonder what their business argument is to a publisher for saying, "You need to include more examples of non‑native English."Marek: There's another reason why publishers have been reluctant, let's say, to abandon this model, where they primarily have American and British accents, is that students and teachers might complain.I remember talking, at a conference, to a coursebook author from a very big publisher. He said that they went on a tour to Russia. He was approached by one of the local teachers. The local teacher openly told them that, "We don't like your coursebook because there are all these strange accents in your coursebook. We want the British accent. I won't buy your coursebook."I had spent years persuading the publisher to finally do this, and now I get this. It's probably because those teachers have been educated and teacher trained to believe that, that British accent is the only accent they should aspire to.Accent is just one belief and factor, but there are many others. One example would be culture. A lot of people say the native speakers are better teachers because they know the target culture. If you look at some research by, Ryan Bank, if I remember the names correctly, in these coursebooks, a vast majority of place names, characters, and so on, were Western and the local Chinese students would never be familiar with it.That leads to a situation where in order to be a successful language learner, you need to learn a stereotypical image of British or American culture. That further makes native‑speakerisms seem normal and common sense.Ross: Something that Vivian Cook has written about, about how non‑native speakers should not be considered equals and failed native speakers. He says that you really need a different yardstick to compare those students. I think that's true if you look at the CEFR.Probably, there's an assumption if you're a native speaker, you should be a C2 level. Has there even been any research about a different set of standards that are based around something else that do not hold this final goal as being pretty much the same as a native speaker?Marek: The difference here that we should make is perhaps not between native and non‑native speakers but between monolingual and bi or multilingual users of the language.If you look at second language acquisition research that compares the research into critical period or compares the proficiency and intuitive knowledge of grammar, for example, pronunciation, it's usually a group of monolingual native speakers to which non‑native speakers are compared.That's a bit like comparing apples and pears because your monolingual brain is different from my multilingual brain. I might use the language in a different way. If you were to become, maybe already are a bilingual or multilingual users of English, even if your mother tongue is English, learning those other languages will change your brain.I remember reading a study where all the monolingual speakers performed completely differently on tests of intuitive grammaticality than those who are bi or multilingual, even bi or multilingual from birth. We do have this idea that the monolingual native speaker is at the top, but why should that be?All of our students will be at least bilingual. That's the goal. We're trying to create people who can operate successfully in two languages. Comparison points should be somebody who already speaks two or three languages, not somebody who's a monolingual native speaker.If as a non‑native speaker, for example, you're listening to this podcast and you've never felt confident about your identity because you're a failed copy of a native speaker, you have a foreign accent, and so on, you have to think of yourself as you're a bi or multilingual user of the language. It's absolutely amazing.There are so many people in Britain or the States who have never learned any other foreign language. Equally, if you're a native speaker and you know other foreign languages, I think your selling point should be not that you're a native speaker, but that you're bi or multilingual user of the language.Tracy: I think as a non‑native English speaker, I definitely experienced a lot of the criticism. I totally agree with you, what you just mentioned. Be proud of who you are and what kind of accent you have, and also you can speak more than one language.In reality, there are a lot of negative information or feedback or criticism just around you. It just damage your confident, you always think, "OK, I'm still far away from the standard that people perceive."Do you have any suggestions or something that you think, this could help other speakers, and they can feel more confident or boost their confidence, what kind of suggestion you want to give them?Marek: Absolutely. One suggestion, sales pitch starts, you can join TEFL Equity Academy where I have a course specifically designed to boost your confidence, end of sales pitch.First thing, you have to rethink how you brand, market yourself, think of yourself. You really have to, not just on a superficial level though, but deeply believe in yourself in all the abilities that you have. You have some amazing superpowers. For starters, that you've learned English. That can be used as a great selling point to students.In terms of pronunciation, people will tell you, "Well, you have a foreign accent. That's bad." Why is that actually bad? Ross has an accent as well because that's where he comes from. If we're to be honest, the vast majority of our students will never be able to speak like Ross does, for example because there's...Ross: They probably wouldn't want to, Marek.[laughter]Ross: Yeah, I'm not sure if they would want to. The Scottish accent is not specifically desirable, yet.[laughter]Marek: There is a critical period, right? It's an unrealistic model to present them with. Whereas you are a successful user of English, your students can imitate you, and they can improve themselves. They can imagine themselves speaking English as well as you do.If you're told that, "Well, you've just made a mistake there, clearly you're not proficient enough," but then there's hundreds of examples of native speakers making what we would call "mistakes" by just speaking non‑standard English.Also, you need to understand as well, why native speakers are not better teachers because they are native speakers. A native speaker can be a fantastic teacher, not because of their first language but because of the skills and experience. You need to understand the native speaker myth, its different components, and why it's not true.Ross: I definitely find myself having that cognitive bias. If I'm listening to a non‑native speaker and I hear a mistake, I go, "I heard a mistake there. That's interesting." Whereas if you hear a native speaker making a mistake, you just go, "It's just part of ordinary spoken discourse that we don't always speak according to grammar."To go back to the other thing you were saying about the lack of confidence there, how much of that do you think there is down to not just the attitude of the non‑native speakers but the attitude of the expat, new teacher who just finished, "I'm a native speaker, come and ask me. I'll tell you the answer."What do you think, more generally, teacher education needs to do to reverse those attitude?Marek: There's a lot of truth to that. As non‑native speakers, everything in our profession or industry, industry is probably a better word here, leads us to believe that native speakers are better teachers. We're constantly told that.You go on Facebook and the stuff that you see, you wouldn't believe people telling me sometimes, "Marek, you're still banging on about the same thing? Won't you ever stop? It's over, right?" No, it isn't. Go to Facebook, and stuff that you will see, it's just unbelievable.It's your colleagues, fellow English teachers saying really horrible things about non‑native speakers. You read that.Some of the students might say those things about you like they're surprised to see a Chinese teacher at B2 level. In some cases, native speakers as well, who will have a very condescending attitude, their place of birth and their mother tongue gives them the right to correct you all the time. All of that can really affect your confidence negatively.In terms of teacher training and education, there's a lot that needs to change. At the moment, I can't see how CELTA or Trinity, CEFR could ever incorporate that because the courses are just too short. It's unbelievable. It's a topic for another podcast, that we still have four‑week crash courses and we call the people after them professional English teachers.Ross: Those are the best courses as well, right? That's the irony. They are four weeks.Marek: I think that there should be sessions specifically for non‑native speakers to boost their confidence, to talk about these issues that we've discussed. There should be sessions for everybody to discuss native‑speakerism and discuss how it can negatively affect all of us in the industry, how it makes our industry much less professional than it should be.It devalues your qualification. It devalues your experience. The only reason why you might be hired is because you're a native speaker.Ross: And white. [laughs]Marek: And white. Absolutely. A white, native speaker. You want to be hired because you're a fantastic teacher, and you fit the qualifications.Ross: Oh, and male. I forgot. [laughs]Marek: Sorry?Ross: And male. [laughs]Marek: And male, yeah.[laughter]Ross: It's terrible. Final thing on this topic then, we've been using the term non‑native speakers. I know Vivian Cook suggested L2 users as a term to use instead. What do you think about the terminology that we use? How does that play into the attitude?Marek: I think it's a difficult issue here because none of the other terms capture the same meaning. If we talk about multilingual teachers, that can be both you and me. I think L1 and L2 users perhaps it doesn't have the non‑prefix, perhaps it's slightly better, but in essence, it's still exactly the same.When we were writing the book with Robert Lowe, we were very much aware of the fact that, on the one hand, we are rallying against and showing that these terms are subjective, ideological, but then we are using them. We did try, whenever possible, to use, for example, multilingual users of the language and so on.Sometimes, the terms can be good to draw attention to the problem. They do also reflect how some teachers see themselves. I see myself as a non‑native speaker of English and a multilingual user of English, as well.I do think that perhaps in professional ELT discourse, be it in job ads, in advertising, but also in teacher training, there has got to be a move away from these issues certainly, in recruitments. I've seen absolutely no place for these two terms, in recruitments, in advertising.Ross: Once again, everyone, that was Marek Kiczkowiak. If you'd like to find out about Marek, please visit his website www.teflequityadvocates.com.Thanks very much for listening. We'll see you next time.

In this episode, Andrew sits down with teacher, author, and advocate Marek Kiczkowiak. They talk about the long-standing bias against non-native speaker teachers in the English training industry. As Marek explains, it has been a significant problem for a long time, but it doesn't need to be. Through his organization - TEFL Equity Advocates - and his Academy where he runs his own courses for tackling the stigma - TEFL Equity Academy - Marek has made quite a positive impact. And he's only just getting started.  On that note, he has also co-authored a book with Rob Lowe, called Teaching English as a Lingua Franca: A Journey From EFL to ELF. In the book, they look at ways to encourage our classrooms, in every sense, to be more inclusive of English as a global language instead of only through the lense of native speakers or from the perspective of nations that speak English natively. Contact Marek: Email: info@teflequityadvocates.com TEFL Equity Advocates TEFL Equity Academy Teaching English as a Lingua Franca: A Journey From EFL to ELF is available on Amazon and at Klett-sprachan.de  *Get a free 30-day trial with all new accounts with TEFL Equity Academy!   For more info on what we do at LYE, check out: Our Website Our catalog of online courses on Thinkific Or shoot us an email: info@learnyourenglish.com

Welcome back to the TEFLology Podcast - a podcast all about teaching English as a foreign language and related matters. In this bonus episode, Rob and Marek Kiczkowiak present an audio version of their recently published duoethnographic study: Native-speakerism and the complexity of personal experience: A duo ethnographic study. Marek is founder of TEFL Equity Advocates and co-host of The TEFL Show podcast. Marek previously appeared on our podcast as a guest host, the episode can be found and listened to here. The article can be viewed for free here. Thanks for listening! Email - Ask us questions, give us feedback, tell us what you think of the show. Website - Listen to previous episodes, find out more information about us and the podcast.  iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast, or rate and review us.  Facebook - Like our page, share it with your colleagues or friends. Twitter - Follow us and retweet us.