Teacher Spotlight (Phillip) December 4, 2017

Teacher Spotlight:  Phillip Thompson (USA)

Phillip teaches the Level 4 class at NYEA. He started teaching ESL in 2012 in the lofty and somewhat foggy streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, and then taught for three years in the rainy Basque Country. Aside from being an ESL teacher, Phillip studies poetry at Brooklyn College where he also teaches an English composition course to college freshmen. He is currently engaged in a writing project that explores the literal translation of idiomatic expressions across languages and how the results are often indistinguishable from poetic effect. One of his favorite examples is from the Spanish: “to illuminate clothes hanger,” an expression used when someone “dresses to the nines” in order to show off.