Vol. 46 No. 1-2 Fall (2018): Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and Newcomer Integration

Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) may not be a familiar term for many people in Newfoundland and Labrador, and TESL professionals in the province are a very small group. One can easily count the numbers of ESL teachers in the K-12 school system, the government sponsored Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program, and the ESL Department at Memorial University. There are also a few ESL teachers in the community and a handful of graduate students who came from, and taught ESL in, different parts of the world and are still interested in the field. TESL professionals work with very diverse student populations and they need to feel connected and have their voices heard in a rather homogeneous province with a predominantly white English speaking population (Statistics Canada, 2016).