Meet your new ITBE Newsletter Editor

Jesus Villegas teaches in Purdue University Northwest’s intensive English Language Program. He has been an ELF/ESL instructor for 20 years, which include serving in the Peace Corps as and English Language Specialist and working in the Middle East as an English Language Fellow with the State Department. Born in Mexico and raised in Chicago, Jesus developed a love for languages and photography at a young age. These two interests have guided Jesus throughout much of his adult life, and he is always looking for creative ways to incorporate student-produced photography and video into his ESL/EFL classes.

Throughout his teaching career, Jesus has attempted to learn the various languages spoken by his students, in an effort to better understand the L1 interference issues that his students struggle with. While he found it impossible to learn every single language spoken in his classroom,  he focused on the major language groups when selecting his ‘next’ language. He studied Vietnamese in eastern Iowa, Chinese in New York City, Macedonian and Albanian while serving in the Peace Corps in Macedonia, and French and Arabic while working in Tunisia. Though he is not fluent in most of these languages, he still dabbles in foreign languages occasionally.
Jesus looks forward to working with the ITBE community and learning from all of the authors who submit articles for publication.