Who I am

Hi! I am Nigel: 55% Canadian, 10% Quebecois, 10% British, … and after more than 25 years of living in Taiwan, 25% Taiwanese.

I am a big fan of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool. I also love languages and cultures–especially how they converge, intersect, and diverge in international communication.

Me - playing Deadpool, playing me ...

 

Nigel pretending to be Deadpool pretending to be Nigel … 

With a PhD in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and published research in SSCI journals on research English and language teaching, I have been teaching and training non-English speaking professionals for more than 20 years. I have a strong interest in and curiosity about the complexities of international communication, and it gives me great pleasure helping non-native English speakers enhance their competence and effectiveness when using English as an International Language.

I specialize in international communication on both the academic/research side as well as the business side. Academically, I provide services related to English for Research Publication, such as language editing services, and training for research writing and conference presentations. For Business, I offer communications training for presentations, writing (email, report, memo, social media), sales (B2B and B2C), and branding.

With the release of ChatGPT in 2022 and the rise of generative AI in 2023, I have become excited about its potential to democratize international communication in the fields of business and academia. I have started to write extensively on this topic to raise its awareness (see my newspaper publications on my blog) and to teach AI workflow skills to my students. Students and workers need not only AI literacy, but AI fluency, and in this way, I see AI as a crucial career skill for everyone, especially those with limited English abilities in the international communication arena.

I also have a passion for the planning, execution and communication of teaching and training. I strive to deploy strategic kinesthetic movement, visualized knowledge and gamification techniques during training sessions to enhance engagement and to achieve FLOW states for the learners.

When not researching, writing or training, I do a lot of listening to chillout music, catching up on the latest pop science, social media, business trends, and waiting for new Haruki Murakami novels. And in between all of these, I get my energy from bodyweight and Tabata HIIT workouts – especially if I can coax my daughter into joining me.