English: The World Language
Teaching English takes several forms, the world over, much like our language itself. Just like we have dialects for the English language, so we have terms we all must know for the instruction of this language to our students. In the USA we call it ESOL or ESL. TESOL is the catch-all term for Teaching English to speakers of other languages. ESL is English as a second language! By the same token, English language learners are ELL's, and for places overseas we say EFL or TEFL for the teaching of English as a foreign language. Often in legal circles we will see the reference to LEP: Limited English Proficient students. Also, there is EAL: English as an Additional Language. Finally, some refer to EAP and ESP, which are spelled out English for Academic Purposes and English for Specific Purposes. The specific purpose could be a vocation or travel, for which we utilize workplace literacy and functional literacy, respectively. We see variegated labels for our World Language.
Literacy: The World Over
Literacy is the universal need in the modern world. The global community in which we live renders literacy to be operative in all practical circumstances. From the news to the advertisements interspersed throughout the news we watch (or hear: take VOA or Radio-Free Europe), there is a continual need to reading, and for understanding words in every way. Navigating the worldwide web requires reading comprehension, as does almost every single job. The world is smaller, and gone are the days when some people, such as serfs in the Middle Ages of Europe, did not have to know how to recognize words, especially in print. When I was in the Peace Corps, villagers took great pride in their two-three town languages, and in the English I brought to the table as well. We decorated our school, their own scholastic landscape, with Russian, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, English, and even German words, not to mention pictures of their own country, neighboring lands, and far-off places like North America and the vicinity thereof. The lesson here is two-fold: literacy and diversity, and I learned it more from them than I did from anyone else. It is probable they taught me far more than I ever taught them, but I will not sell myself short. We journeyed together for one school year, 1998-1999. This was on the precipice of the internet explosion, among other things. I wonder where they are now. Last I heard, there were some changes there, in Kyrgyz Republic, as grassroot and governmental levels. Folks move on; life changes. English remains the Lingua Franca of the world at present, the axle of the spokes that move and the wheel the spins.
Justice
The Milagro Bean Fields of Robert Redford make it clear, as does Starbucks' and other coffee beans culled in far-off places on the globe: we need equality in the world. It is this that motivates the fact of equal access to English education in the USA now at the national federal level on down the line. Everything short of equal access is falsehood. In this country, where English is a norm, every person has the right to be instructed in it. All people deserve that sort of respect and attention. ICE abuses aside, the entire idea of an English Only State not only grates on a teacher's nerves, but also is patently unconstitutional. Period. This is what we are here for: to teach.
Purpose
This site is for English teachers, especially those who teach it to those who are learning it for the first time. Some of these learners are lonely, or don't have money, or come from difficult places and rough backgrounds. Many have spent time in refugee camps and worse. So, as the old Motown song says, let it be "for members only tonight." And let us teachers be a beacon and a lighthouse to all those in need of this incredible gift of attention which the human spirit craves and which a teacher will invariably foster in her/his pupils.
