Eco-linguistics teaching the language of the environment.

I care deeply about the environment. I talk about it a lot. All my students now know how proud I was when my house got solar panels and a backup home battery. But the concept of crafting lessons around it or making the topic of the environment a central part of my teaching never occurred to me.  My language school is called Your Story English, and while I share the little environmental victories that happened in my life, I never tried to make it an important part of my students’ lives.

So when the concept of eco-linguistics came up in our class and we looked at how we teach the language about the environment, it made me wonder if my approach was correct.  Language and the world around us can’t really be separated, and how we talk about issues does affect how to react to those issues in our daily lives. (Steffensen, 2025).  I recognize that as an English teacher, I am providing the language that my students can use to interact with the world outside of their first language.

But I have always felt that it isn’t my place to influence how my students think.  I’m teaching them language, and while it is connected to culture, science, history, and everything else around us, I allow my students to form their own opinions and express them how they want.  I don’t hide my views on sustainability, environmental stewardship, and the need for renewable energy.  I proudly talk about how much energy my solar panels produce and how I wish the house was designed with more sustainability in mind.  (Most of my roof is facing the wrong direction for more solar panels.) If my students  take something away from my enthusiasm, then great, but if they don’t, it doesn’t bother me.

If I were a teacher in an elementary school setting, I would take very seriously the responsibility to teach and make environmentally conscious citizens. But as a tutor to high school, university, and adult students, I am not going to be teaching them environmental facts that they don’t already know in their L1.  If they want to express their opinions on the environment using English, I will be happy to help them learn the language that accurately conveys their ideas.

Steffensen, S. V. (2025). Surveying ecolinguistics. Journal of World Languages, 11(1), 1–49 [3, 4]. https://doi.org/10.1515/jwl-2024-0044 [3]