CHAPTER ELEVEN TRAINING NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKING TESOL PROFESSIONALS EKATERINA NEMTCHINOVA, AHMAR MAHBOOB, ZOHREH ESLAMI AND SERAN DOGANCAY-AKTUNA Introduction Although non-native English speaking (NNES) graduate students receive a TOEFL score that guarantees admittance into Applied Linguistics and TESOL programs, their actual academic language proficiencies range from very high to very limited. Disregarding students’ variable language proficiencies, most MA programs in Applied Linguistics and TESOL in native English-speaking countries only focus on teacher education. These programs see their goal as helping their students understand how language works, how it is acquired, and how it can best be taught; what they don’t realize is that many of these students themselves have limited academic language proficiency which may limit their ability to understand the concepts and theories that are being taught. Our informal interviews with a number of instructors in these programs indicate that they do not consider working with graduate students to help them improve their English language proficiency as one of their goals. When they do explicitly think about this, they assume that the students will improve their language proficiency indirectly by engaging with the course material (including lectures, readings, and classroom interaction) and living in an English- speaking society. However, there is little evidence to support such assumptions. On the contrary, NNES graduate students continue to have problems with their English language proficiency. Brinton (2004) provides an example of one such student who states: Eslami, Z., Nemtchinova, N., Mahboob, A. & Dogancay-Aktuna, S. (2010). Training non-native English speaking TESOL professionals. In A. Mahboob (Ed.) The NNEST Lens: Nonnative English Speakers in TESOL. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.