"In our quest for quality English language teaching worldwide, research must come first."

James Alatis, TIRF Trustee

The International Research
Foundation
for English Language Education

Why I Give to TIRF > Liying Cheng and Andy Curtis

Why I Give to TIRF

Liying Cheng and Andy Curtis

Dr. Liying Cheng and Dr. Andy Curtis work as teachers, teacher educators, authors, and researchers in Canada. Dr. Cheng is originally from the People's Republic of China and Dr. Curtis is from England. They have both taught in Hong Kong as well, and bring an international perpsective to their work. Read about why they give to TIRF.

We give to TIRF together partly as this enables us to combine our financial resources in order to honour our commitment to the Foundation. It is also appropriate that we give together as one of the goals of TIRF is "launching a coordinated effort among ESL/EFL educators," and it is this kind of collaborative effort that we want to support through collective giving. It is important for us that TIRF is a non-profit organization, as there are already more than enough organizations making money through the global EFL/ESL industry.

As the two of us are relatively early on in our professional lives, for us, TIRF is part of the notion of "pay it forward." We have been extraordinarily lucky to have been supported in so many ways by mentors and guides such as Kathi Bailey, who has helped us understand the importance of supporting an organization like TIRF. Giving to TIRF is for us one way of doing more than simply saying "thank you." It is a way of taking action that helps to create new opportunities as a result of the opportunities that have been presented to us. Like most supporters of TIRF, we began our professional lives in classrooms, so another reason we give to TIRF is because an important part of the TIRF Vision Statement is "to improve classroom practice" and to "inform educational policy," both of which we feel especially strongly about.

For better and for worse, "knowledge is power," and that knowledge cannot be expressed without language. Consequently, those with little or no access to the world's dominant languages and cultures may not have the same opportunities as those with access. Likewise, the dominant languages and cultures of the world have much to learn from those that are not dominant if we are to increase understanding and reduce conflict. Therefore, another reason we give to TIRF is their Vision of reaching "beyond traditional information networks to develop a sustained dialogue among a globally dispersed community of researchers, educators, policy-makers, and citizens." We believe that we long ago stopped living in a political world, in spite of what our politicians tell us. We now live — and have lived for some time — in an economic world, rather than a political one. This means that financial support of the work of organizations like TIRF may do more than political rhetoric to help improve language education, especially ESL and EFL.

We are grateful for this opportunity to "pay it forward" through supporting the work of the TIRF foundation and grateful to all of our guides and mentors in the field of TESOL. We believe our contributions will help others to grow as well.