Kirsti Ørvik

My name is Kirsti Ørvik and I currently work in adult refugee education at Kragerø Læringssenter in Kragerø, Norway. I am a teacher, lecturer, teacher trainer and researcher.  I also have published poems and creative non-fiction essays, and am currently editing my first non-fiction novel.

I earned a BA in English and Russian studies from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon and an MA in poetry writing and English literature from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. My interest in the pedagogy behind English as a third language grew as I was presented with more and more multilingual students. Since 2018 I have worked with displaced multilingual adults, helping them to fulfill their general education requirements. In 2020 I completed the ENRICH course on teaching English as a lingua franca. I am especially interested in exploring how to make English accessible to beginning multilingual students through activating skills they already have, but have not yet owned. I have attended the two SCALED workshops and found them both inspiring and illuminating in my work, and I am pleased to be a friend of this very important project.