Emina’s Long Journey to English Proficiency

Today on the podcast I am talking to my friend EminaTuzovic, who is an English teacher.

For ages and ages I have been meaning to have Emina on thispodcast for 3 main reasons:

1. Emina is absolutely lovely and it’s just nice to spendtime talking with her, plus there’s plenty I’d like to find out from her thatI’ve never really asked her before. That’s a benefit of the podcast, it givesme a chance to have in-depth conversations that often just don’t happen otherwise.

2. She is a non-native speaker of English who has learnedthe language to a proficient level – good enough to do a masters, a PhD, and toteach English at a very high level, to deliver workshops and seminars and justto live in the UK for a good length of time. So, she must have some valuableinsights and experiences about learning English because she’s done it herself,but also about the cultural experience of moving to London and living there forwhat must be about 15 years at least I think.

3. She is a very well-qualified and experienced Englishteacher and so I am sure she has loads of insights into learning English fromthat point of view too, including certain areas of specialist knowledge as aresult of her academic studies, including things like the challenges faced bynative speakers of Arabic when they learn English. I’ve never talked aboutArabic speakers of English on the podcast, so hello to all my Arabic speakinglisteners (or should that be marhabaan.

As I said, it’s been quite hard to pin Emina down andinterview her – mainly because our timetables are different, I live in Paris,she lives in London and she goes to bed so early in the evening. Thankfully theuniverse has finally allowed it to happen, here at the London School of Englishin Holland Park, London. This is where I used to work and where Emina stilldoes work.

So the aim here is to have a long(ish) and naturalconversation with Emina, touching on topics like learning English, culturaldifferences in the UK, teaching English and her academic studies inlinguistics.