Book in Focus: English in Non-English-Speaking Countries: Practices, Perceptions, Challenges, and Perspectives

In our newest edition of the #bookinfocus we're joined by Marjana Vaneva to discuss her newest work 'English in Non-English-Speaking Countries: Practices, Perceptions, Challenges, and Perspectives'

People who try to learn and speak a non-native language deserve full admiration, since the act of learning, by itself, requires respect towards the learner, for their motivation, commitment, dedication, sacrifice, commitment to doing it for themselves, but also for their cosmopolitan drive to learn about another culture, tradition, and history, so that they better accommodate themselves in the ‘linguistic map’ of the other country and competently ‘popularise’ its language.

Having been an English language teacher for twenty years and having worked with all age groups and language levels, first, teaching general English and Cambridge ESOL exams in an international language school, and then, at the university where I work, training students to become linguists, English language teachers and translators/interpreters, at the end of 2019 an idea was born. I wanted my colleagues to share their experiences of teaching English to non-native students and have their say in the teaching-learning process. I proposed the idea to Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and it was in March 2020, several days after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, that this book idea was accepted, and a contract was signed between Cambridge Scholars Publishing as a publisher and myself as an editor. At that moment, the idea about how to compile this book was quite vague to me, since it meant that the collection was to be written in those new, unprecedented pandemic circumstances that brought so many uncertainties to everybody’s lives.

A new daily routine was established for everybody: like never before, people had to be extra cautious regarding their health, as they had to protect themselves from something most strange and invisible, thus not knowing how exactly they should behave and how to surely combat the opponent. But at first and for quite some time, the only piece of advice (that turned into a command, since not obeying it meant endangering not only our own but everybody’s health), suggested by the world health authorities was the ‘stay at home’ alert. Besides the health consequences, the psychological and social impacts of this crisis were undoubtedly enormous to absolutely every human being – everybody had to adjust their everyday routines and adapt to the new situation, while the employed adults had to learn to adjust to their new, online working environment. This was the biggest challenge for teachers, the colleagues whom I had planned to turn to in order to ask them to contribute to this collection. I knew it was going to be difficult to make them share their thoughts on the matter, since they all come from the educational sector and at that time the educational process was undergoing drastic changes and challenges with the different online platforms being installed, but not for a moment did I imagine how receptive they would be to the idea of participating in this project. They certainly had their own ‘battles to fight and, to hopefully win’ – in both their private and professional lives – but nonetheless they turned out to be eager to talk about their teaching and research endeavors. This brought light into the darkness around us all – the call for papers was released and the project was started.

Thus, that initial invitation eased the lockdown melancholy; for everybody in the process, it turned the long uncertain hours into the most productive days and nights. Obviously, all contributors had so much to say, on an array of topics. They had used the imposed physical restrictions to contemplate their role as a teacher, translator/interpreter or researcher, and decided to submit their own stories, showing their readiness to share them with the general public.?????

Thus, a collection of 14 chapters was compiled, with different approaches and perspectives on the subject. Prior to this final product, the selection criteria focused on safeguarding academic integrity and making them worth publishing, while ensuring that the most creative concepts secured their place in this series.

Structure and Content

Thematically, the book is structured in 4 parts.

The first part consists of 3 papers united around the “Purely Linguistic Side of English”, in which Ana Arsovska and I analyse Donald Trump’s tweets, Katerina Vidova discusses the English present participle and its Macedonian equivalents, and I talk about the ways in which Macedonians negate in English.

The second part, titled “English in Education”, is comprised of 7 papers. Sashka Delova talks about the British English and American English variants in primary schools in North Macedonia, Marija Dzonova and I discuss dyslexia in the ELT materials used in North Macedonia, Marija Petkovska elaborates on the ‘Habits of Mind’ strategy used in the EFL syllabus during the pandemic, Marlena Bielak and Artur Urbaniak discuss the educational maturity of Polish undergraduates, and Julijana Zlatevska analyses the impact that video conference teaching has on students’ communicative and interactive skills. Biljana Temelkova talks about the assessment of EFL students in North Macedonia, and Biljana Naumoska-Sarakinska takes a similar approach by outlining the assessment techniques which improve EFL students’ linguistic competences and portrays the perceptions of university-level EFL students in North Macedonia.?

The third group of papers is titled “English in Translation and Interpreting” and consists of 3 papers. Tamara Jolevska-Popov and Sonja Vitanova-Strezova discuss current idiomatic English for Macedonian translators, Iskra Stojanovska analyses the process of consecutive interpreting from Macedonian into English, and Ana-Marija Hot and I compare and contrast the original “Macbeth” and its Macedonian translation.

The fourth part, “English in Use”, consists of a chapter in which Adnan Shefkiu and I discuss the kind of English used in a Macedonian bank – a study that presents a case from the banking sector.

Since the contributors are people who speak the language in many of its forms, this collection offers readers a combination of articles in which some discuss English from a linguistic point of view, some deal with English from a teaching perspective, and others analyse it from a translator’s angle, while one paper sheds light on the way English is used: how one organization’s employees use it in their everyday work activities.?????

CSP are offering 25% off all of our book in focus titles, when purchasing from?www.cambridgescholars.com ?directly, simply use the code BIF25 at checkout.