GRZEGORZ ŚPIEWAK
DOS ELT founder, chairman
Teacher, academic lecturer, teacher trainer, EFL project manager, adviser and author. MA in Linguistics from University of Essex, PhD in Language & Linguistics from University of Warsaw. Former senior lecturer and deputy director for Practical English & CLIL at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, currently affiliated with The New School, New York, where he teaches on an on-line MA TESOL Programme. Head ELT Consultant for Macmillan Polska – key trainer and academic coordinator of the entire team of teacher trainers. Co-founder of deDOMO Education, an award-winning approach to informal and non-formal foreign language education. Lead author of Angielski dla rodziców deDOMO, an innovative series of support publications, for use by parents, individual tutors and educational institutions. Former president of IATEFL Poland, currently a member of its Honorary Committee.
Why did you decide to include your sessions in the programme of the academy?
My session is on how to present your materials and build your brand as an author – two skills that are crucial for long term success and satisfaction. If one chooses to embark on this career path and invest a lot of energy in the process of writing, one must be very smart about how to let the world know that you are out there, ready to cooperate! Especially that the competition is fierce… In my session, I won’t stop at the ‘why’, though, but rather give lots of tried-and-tested tips for the ‘how’, based on a number of success stories. I do hope you will write your own success story soon, too!
Where do you get your inspiration from as an author/ editor?
Mostly from reading other people’s pieces, long and short. I guess my greatest inspiration throughout my own teaching and writing career has been Scott Thornbury – apart from his seminal methodology books, I do recommend his blogs, especially the by-now classic “An A-Z of ELT”, at https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/. My other writing guru is Philip Kerr – check out his fantastically researched and beautifully written blog “Adaptive Learning in ELT”, at: https://adaptivelearninginelt.wordpress.com/about/. I also love well written reviews and so I’m quite partial to ELT Journal. I especially enjoy highly critical ones, so long as they are witty and/or intelligently sarcastic – Michael Swan never disappoints in this respect.