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  • How a TEFL certificate can help you live and earn abroad October 30, 2010
    Louisa Walsh suggests how to get started in the TEFL profession. About TEFL There is an absolutely huge demand worldwide to learn English from a TEFL qualified native or near-native English speaking person. This enables thousands of teachers to live and earn abroad in their dream location. The first step into the industry is to take a [...] […]
  • Popular movies – Teaching English online using scenes from YouTube October 20, 2010
    Websites like YouTube, notes Rowan Pita, have given us the capability of quickly and easily embedding videos into our own sites, blogs and through links. A great way to make teaching English online more creative, is to use this resource with students of any level as an online teaching tool. There are lots of different [...] […]
  • Analysing teaching through student work October 20, 2010
    As a parent and a teacher educator, I am acutely aware of the need to “practice what you preach.” Yet, in both roles, I often find it a challenging axiom to carry out. When I warned my eldest child about the latest research on sleep deprivation, I resolved to make adequate sleep a priority in [...] […]
  • Preparing mainstream teachers for English-language learners: is being a good teacher good enough? October 8, 2010
    Introduction More and more teachers find themselves teaching students from increasingly diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In a recent report (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002), 42% of the teachers surveyed indicated that they had English Language Learners (ELLs) in their classroom, but only 12.5% of these teachers had received more […]
  • Teaching English to prostitutes in China October 6, 2010
    By Robert Vance “Quite a few of your English students are prostitutes,” a friend told me today as she recounted a conversation that she had with her hair stylist recently. “The guy who cut my hair told me that many of your training center’s female students come to him two or three times a week to [...] […]
  • Without 1, where would we begin? Small sample research in educational settings September 29, 2010
    I study preservice teachers and the ways they attempt to make sense of method course instruction (theory) and real classroom applications (practice). Given the complexity of completing this task my chosen sample size has always been quite small. Coming out of graduate school, I actually thought that what I learned about qualitative research made sense. [...] […]
  • Writing research papers… alternative options September 29, 2010
    Students are turning to alternative methods to solve their time management dilemmas. Employing the services of online research paper sites is becoming an ever more popular solution. Students have a heavy load of work to complete for which they have to study day-and-night, in addition to attending supplementary studies in order to achieve high grades. A [...] […]
  • TEFL training courses – accreditation and certification September 15, 2010
    Every TEFL teacher training course should be accredited with “accredited” meaning that an outside institution has reviewed the course, course content and the trainers delivering the course. Accreditation is important for teachers looking to enroll because it is a way of telling that the TEFL course meets a minimum of standards with regards to [...] […]
  • International TESOL training and EFL contexts: the cultural disillusionment factor. September 14, 2010
    Md. Raqibuddin Chowdhury’s article reports on a study examining the implementation of communicative language teaching (CLT) in Bangladesh in general and at the University of Dhaka in particular. When CLT was first introduced across Europe, the English as a foreign language (EFL) context in which it would inevitably be applied was not considered. Here univers […]
  • Exploring a new pedagogy: Teaching for Intellectual and Emotional Learning (TIEL) August 31, 2010
    The role of teacher educators is to develop the capacity in pre-service teachers for complex teaching that will prepare them to create and teach in “learning communities [that are] humane, intellectually challenging, and pluralistic” (Darling-Hammond, 1997, p. 33). To establish and maintain such learning communities, however, requires knowledge of intellectu […]

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An Acronym By Any Other Name

By Brenda Townsend Hall

I don’t know about you but I loathe acronyms. Yes, I know they have a convenience factor but they also seem to me to be potentially sinister, redolent of George Orwell’s Newspeak. Our field has its fair share of them and woe betide anyone who uses one wrongly. Never, for example, say ESL or TESL when you mean ESOL or TESOL. Why? because you might unwittingly insult a learner by referring to ESL (English as a second language) when the learner might be a speaker of several languages with English some way down the pecking order: it is politically more correct to refer to English for speakers of other languages (ESOL).

So important has this distinction become that the heavy hand of officialdom in the UK now requires people seeking British citizenship to demonstrate that they have at least ESOL Entry Level 3 from the national “skills for life” curriculum (strange distinction, after all we hardly need “skills for death”). Exam boards now dutifully provide ESOL qualifications that seem to have eclipsed the old EFL certificates, making English as a foreign language somehow less relevant.

So have EFL and TEFL lost status? Not exactly, but they imply the use of English in international situations, perhaps among non-native speakers. They still get a look in, but to teach English as a “foreign” language requires different emphases. For example, TESOL would require the teacher to concentrate on situations and contexts that the learners would meet in everyday life in an Anglophone country.

TEFL, on the other hand, suggests an orientation towards travel and global situations. I don’t dispute that these distinctions have their uses but the trouble is that you can see the potential for all sorts of new acronyms on the horizon. When we will start to teach EIL (English as an international language) or EIB (English for international business)? I’d happily settle for good, old-fashioned ELT (English language teaching).

About the Author

Brenda Townsend Hall, a contributing editor to ESLemployment, is a writer in the fields of English for business, cross-cultural awareness and business communications. Interested in receiving TEFL job listings weekly for free? To learn more visit TEFL Jobs.

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4 comments to An Acronym By Any Other Name

  • The acronym I hate the most is ESL because it reminds me that I’m a whore who sold out this profession to all those
    scumbag cowboy language schools that pay me big bucks to put their ads on myh site.

    Forgive me, I’m weak.

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  • david

    THE Mr. Sperling? Surely it’s not you. If so, you’re more than welcome – we all feel your pain.

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  • i was home schooled too but i would still prefer regular schools.’.;

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  • i was home schooled and it is quite satisfactory when providing basic education’`.

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