TESOL Faculty and Staff

Jeanine Ntihirageza (Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL) holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, with a specialization in Bantu languages. She has an MA in Applied Linguistics from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.  She received her BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Burundi where she subsequently taught TEFL and ESL classes as a Lecturer.  She came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship to do her graduate studies.  Her primary research area is phonology and morphology.  Her other research interests include contact linguistics and Pragmatics.  In addition, she is a currently working on an online bilingual Kirundi-English dictionary with Teddy Bofman and Paul Prez (http://homepages.neiu.edu/~kirundi/dictionary/ ). She is an Associate Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, and Department chair of Anthropology, English Language Program (ELP), Philosophy, and Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language (TESL).  She is also on the core faculty of the African and African American Studies program. She has taught Theoretical and Applied Linguistics for the last 13 years. She spearheaded a Genocide Research Group that recently organized a symposium on Silencing Genocide in Africa and African Diaspora.

Former elementary school principal on Chicago’s West Side; former program manager at Healthy Families Illinois Program; former Instructor at Robert Morris University; former program director at Drug Free Schools and taught  ESL at the Northeastern El Centro campus in the Community Program for four semesters.

Teddy Bofman has a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan. She began her teaching career in 1973 and considers teaching her passion to this day. She has taught in the United States, Thailand, and Israel. Her areas of specialization include ESL, EFL, teacher training, literacy, language acquisition, atypical language development, and Thai. She is also the winner of the Audrey Reynolds Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2012. Most recently, she was awarded the 2017 Betsy Rubin Adult Educator Award. 

Senyung Lee taught English at an English for academic purposes program in the U.S. and at a middle school in South Korea. Her areas of specialization are second language assessment and second language vocabulary acquisition. She has extensive experience in designing and developing English tests. She received the 2020 Jacqueline Ross TOEFL Dissertation Award by Educational Testing Service. She is also a finalist for the 2020 AAAL Dissertation Award by American Association of Applied Linguistics.

William J. Stone holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Northwestern University; his dissertation was on African American Vernacular English with a focus on syllable structure. He has an M.A. in Linguistics from Northeastern Illinois University. He received his B.A. in French and Geography from the University of Wolverhampton in England and a post-graduate teaching diploma in French and English from St. Paul’s College, Cheltenham, England. He taught English as a foreign language in Tunisia, Qatar and Oman for a total of 13 years and English as a second language in the Chicago area for nine years. His current research interests are affective aspects of TESL, humor and engaged learning. He is an Associate Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, where he has taught Linguistics, TESL and ESL courses for the past 22 years.

His interests include African American English, pronunciation issues, grammar teaching, religion and humor both inside and outside the classroom. These interests are frequently combined. His most recent research has been in religion and humor and affective aspects of language teaching.