Chia Suan Chong

Chia Suan Chong blogged for English Teaching professional for 8 years, every fortnight, writing her final post back in September 2019. During her time as a blogger, she wrote 173 blog posts, writing from 5 different cities – through holidays, through changes in her career, through 3 periods of maternity leave. She took on different roles as she continued to blog as a teacher, a teacher trainer, a communication skills trainer, an intercultural skills trainer, a writer, a freelancer and an educator and her blogs reflected those experiences as well as discussing controversial and topic issues in ELT and reporting back from conferences. Fascinated by the interplay between culture, language and thought, Chia is now an intercultural skills trainer, materials developer and author. She continues to write for Pavilion ELT’s magazines and had a long-running column in ETp called "Not Only But Also". She is also the author of Successful International Communication (published by Pavilion Publishing and Media, 2018), and is now based in York.

The dangers of falling in love with language rules

Are language rules there to describe language use or to dictate how language should be used? By strictly adhering to the language rules ELT has created have we become inflexible to language variation and change? Chia Suan Chong talks about the dangers of sticking to the very language rules that we teach our students.

Project-based learning: The basics of film-making

What are the main stages and considerations when making a short film? Chia Suan Chong gives us a ready-to-use handout for the classroom project that could result your students winning ETp's filmmaking competition.

In this day and age…

In her blog this week, Chia Suan Chong asks whether we are really catering to our students’ needs for English in this day and age?

Ways to socialise with our colleagues

Aside from bettering our work-life balance, socialising with colleagues can be good for innovative thinking and professional development. Chia Suan Chong looks at five simple ways we can increase opportunities for socialising with our colleagues.

IATEFL Global Issues SIG Pre-Conference Event: Learnt Helplessness

Founded in 1995, the Global Issues Special Interest Group attracted a large number of participants to its Pre-Conference Event at IATEFL this year.