As one of the first courses you encounter in the MATESL Program, this course aims to familiarize you with key concepts and theories in the field of TESOL as well as their implications in classroom teaching. The first half of the course provides a basic foundation in second language acquisition (SLA)-things you definitely need to know in order to be an effective language educator, such as Universal Grammar, Monitor Model, Output Hypothesis, Interaction Hypothesis and Focus on Form. The rest of the course explores topics that have become increasingly important in TESOL in recent years. Issues such as social identity, bilingual education, multicompetence, and critical applied linguistics will be discussed. TESOL is becoming a richly interdisciplinary field, incorporating ideas not only from linguistics and psychology, but also from education, sociology and anthropology. In all topics we discuss, I strongly encourage you to reflect critically on how we use language to teach, to learn and to negotiate who we are in various situations.