William Robert Hibbard

"As an ESL educator, my primary goal is to prepare international ESL students at the Boston Conservatory and Berklee for their current and future academic coursework. In both my undergraduate and graduate ESL classes, I focus on the development of the major language skills within the context of topics related to music, art, technology, neuroscience, biography, history, and literature, with some attention to literary criticism, reviews of concerts and recordings, and program notes. In the process, students critically engage and acquire new content knowledge; become exposed to increasingly complex grammatical structures and vocabulary; and gain confidence and experience developing and presenting ideas both in speaking and writing."

"Students should come away with a better understanding of the importance of the writing process, with improved editing skills. In particular, graduate students should have increased confidence with the core skills of summarizing, paraphrasing, and citing research for graduate papers and be familiar with the basic conventions of the Chicago Manual of Style."

"I believe the ESL classroom should be a safe space for discovery and sharing where students are encouraged to takes risks as language learners and to learn from one another. At its core, language learning is a social activity, best learned in a supportive community in which mistakes are seen as a natural part of the learning process."