A comparison of my teaching experiences

Words of the Day: Acronym Addition!
ESL- English as a Second Language- This is what I taught as a volunteer in the US...or more  accurately....
ESOL- English for Speakers of Other Languages- This term is sometimes favored instead of ESL because many people learning English know other languages as well, a strength that can be harnessed in the classroom
EFL- English as a Foreign Language- This is what I teach now.

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Since I've been a volunteer ESOL teacher for many years, making the switch to EFL has been interesting.

ESOL, as taught to (adult) immigrants in the United States, has goal of helping them communicate to be able to integrate into the country where they currently reside. The idea of "integration" is a loaded and complicated term particularly for non-white immigrants, but I'm trying to use it in a benign way related to language functions... Students generally are motivated, because they immediately recognize the relevance of English in their lives, whether in helping them get food at the grocery store, speak with their child's teachers or get a better job. They may (although not necessarily)have possibilities to interact with native speakers of the language in their workplace or places in their community, or at the very least, hear native speakers on the television and radio. Classes, particularly for beginners, are easy to focus, and almost automatically geared to a communicative approach, because students need to be able to be able to perform at least a few functions of spoken language to reach their goals.

EFL teachers in contrast, teaching English in countries where it is not widely spoken, can fall into the trap of teaching the English language as you might teach any other subject: physics, math, etc: by teaching the rules without demonstrating real life relevance, which may sometimes be very abstract and hard to excite students about. Students may struggle to see why learning the language is an important skill and generally present lower levels of motivation.

On the other hand, EFL can sometimes be an easier setting to navigate. Generally, you are working with students who have one language and culture in common, which makes classroom management and giving directions infinitely easier. If students are really lost, you can refer back to a common language. Secondly, there's a possibility that your students are of a similar age and level of education.

ESL classrooms can be far more complicated spaces for a teacher to guide in this respect. For example, in my last ESL volunteer gig in the States, I was teaching (or co-teaching rather,  alongside a Brazilian immigrant) students originally from El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Turkey, Nepal and Haiti. If I referred back to Spanish, half of the class hung in the air. I could not always call upon Spanish to build confianza with my students and show them that I cared. Some students were in their early 20s and others were in their 80s. Some of my students were college graduates in their countries of origin, while others might have had a 6th grade education at best. Cultural differences in what classroom behavior is appropriate led to difficult moments. For example, the Haitian students preferred to use Haitian Creole to help each other understand what was going on in class, which led to loud and animated exchanges, which were deemed unbearably rude and inappropriate by the Turkish grandmother in my class. It was a little bit more free wheeling and it was sometimes harder to move quickly through material. On the other hand, students paid more attention because they knew I could not repeat instructions in their native language, a different situation from working with students in the institutos, who often try to exploit the fact that I speak Spanish.

Certainly, this multicultural melange could be called upon to create interesting lessons. In one brief example, we had students think about what time of day it was in their country, and what daily activities their friends or relatives might be doing at that moment. We could talk about foods or places they missed, what their town or city was like...there was an incredible richness that this multicultural space provided that I miss sometimes.

But working with kids is a lot of fun too.