Anne Barkow, the founder or Wantok, first walked into a classroom in 2006 while living in Quito, Ecuador. Though she taught English as a way to make money to fund her Spanish classes, this choice changed the course of her life. Since that first class, she has taught hundreds of classes over a fifteen-year period. After having lived in Latin American for almost 7 years, she retuned to the States to pursue a Masters in the Teaching of Languages, which focused on Applied Linguistics and practical teaching strategies.  Shortly after finishing her degree, she was awarded a Fellowship through the U.S. State Department and taught English at the Court of Appeals in Libreville, Gabon. After which, she taught at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata, Japan. Anne has taught on four continents: North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. She has taught in all types of situations and ages, but her true calling has been higher education and adults. These varied experiences of universities both public and private, abroad as well as domestic, elementary school, middle school, language schools, and the corporate world each have given her unique experiences that have enriched her life and teaching. Moreover, the actual experience of becoming trilingual as an adult helps her have compassion and understanding for the struggles of her students.  She has had real world experience, formal education, and a driving passion for language learning.  This led to her desire to create a thriving language community which values other cultures.

 

What does wantok mean?

 

Anne struggled with the name she should give her business and spend hours putting together random strings of words such as culture, language, learn, unity, but one day while listening to a linguistic lecture by Dr. John McWhorter, she heard the word wantok. Wantok is a word from a New Guinean pidgin, which is a combination of want to talk or one talks and it is used to describe a person with whom you share cultural and linguistic bonds. It can even have the idea of friend or buddy. This spoke to her as a word that represented her goals for her business which is to increase social and linguistic bonds that people share as well as a specific focus on conversation.