About Meng-Wei Lin: A Teacher, a Language Learner, and a Language Lover

Download my CV

Languaging in the U.K.

    A Spanish teacher I met in Ecuador told me, “Once you become a language teacher, you cannot stop analyzing language wherever you go.” I found this to be true after noticing my “language pictures” increased when I went backpackaging in the U.K. I have come to realize, over the past two years, that I have turned myself into a language teacher from someone who was just interested in language.

As a language learner

    Born in a multilingual family (my father speaks Southern Min and Mandarin, and my mother speaks Hakka and Mandarin), I have a strong awareness toward languages and translingual practices. Because of my love toward Chinese literature and Chinese history, I chose History as my undergraduate major, but kept learning English and Japanese. The experience as an EFL learner led me to question the role of English education in Taiwan. 

Teaching EFL in Otavalo

Become a teacher

    My professional training was mainly done in the MA-TESL program offered by the department of Applied Linguistics in the Pennsylvania State University. The TESOL-Ecuador program also provided me with teaching and immersion learning experience, which gave me an insight of English teaching in other EFL context. Both of them prepared me with the knowledge as well as experiences to become an ambitious and enthusiastic teacher. 

Materials decorated in the classroom in Otavalo 

Living in languaging

Languaging in Ecuador

    Although in many textbooks language is presented as the prescriptive knowledge which is pretty stable, I take language as a living thing and a part of my life. This is also what I try to demonstrate to my students, since learning a language is for communicating. Even in contexts where a language is taught for testing or building up social capitals, learners still have to accept the fact that in this era in which information exchanging happens so frequently, they might need to communicate in their second or third language. This is why I would like to define my profession as teaching “languaging” rather than teaching language.

This blog records my development of “languaging.” Although the artifacts are categorized and presented as “products,” I hope you take them as “processes” which are still on-going. For a brief description about my education, professional employment records, and skills please refer to the CV above.