Chasing Encounters

With a vast language teaching experience, Dr. Heng Hartse describes his first experiences in ESL education as he tried to understand students’ backgrounds more in depth and trying to build bridges among the international students. He talks about second language writing and the difficulties some have when it comes to adapt to the Western forms of academic writing. He also discusses the tensions, challenges and possibilities of an EFL/ESL teacher. In understanding these, Dr. Heng Hartse explains translingual practice, world languages and English as a lingua franca (ELF) as concepts that respond to the emerging multilingual students in today’s classrooms. * Biography: Dr. Joel Heng Hartse is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches academic literacy and TEAL teacher training courses. His work focuses on academic writing at the intersection the internationalization of higher education and the globalization of English, and has appeared in the Journal of Second Language W