ELT: Converging Approaches and Challenges

Natalia Orlova is the Head of the Department of English and Associate Professor of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) at the Faculty of Education at J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, the Czech Republic. She has also worked at Herzen State Pedagogical University in Saint-Petersburg, the Russian Federation. She has given presentations at TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) conventions in the USA and has held workshops for teachers in a variety of countries. She is also a co-author of textbooks for school and university students. Her main research interests include ways of developing pre-service EFL teachers’ professional competence and cross-cultural issues.