Just another PARSNIP

You’ve surely heard of PARSNIP in ELT (the absence of pork, alcohol, religion and other taboos in English coursebooks – what arguably makes them bland and flavourless). In his TEFL Equity webinar called “Can we talk about our English?” Higor Cavalcante uses a new abbreviation: PARSNIPLDT, to show that language development for teachers is a taboo subject in teacher training.

It’s a great webinar to watch, by the way. In his own words, Higor doesn’t ‘sugarcoat’.   Yes, non-native speaker teachers should develop their language and work towards proficiency: “We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our students.” He suggests several ways we can do this: read and listen a lot, be organised and focused, have a vocabulary notebook – in fact, practise what we preach. And talk openly about the issue.

P.S. At the IATEFL Conference next week, I’m going to do just that: talk about language development for teachers. There’s more to come!