Foreign, Second or First - the difference matters

A leading language institute in Chile recently advertised that they were seeking an E2L (ESL) teacher for an E2L (ESL) programme. Of course they were not; they were looking for an EFL teacher for an EFL programme. The evidence? Classes were one hour long and held twice a week which in an English-speaking country would be insufficient for E2L, but in an hispano-hablante country, impossible.

This provokes two questions. Does the institute, and do teachers and do schools, know the difference between Second and Foreign? Secondly, what is the difference between Second, Foreign (and by extension, First)?

This session reviews the three terms and how they might usefully be defined, and provides a working definition for the Chilean context. Chile's national curriculum for English is EFL; how and why is this different from E2L? Accordingly, the session also considers how Second and First language programmes can indeed be provided in an hispano-hablante country.

And we touch on the question of whether a school can be "bilingual" if it prepares students for an EFL certificate such as Cambridge English or TOEFL.

You might also be interested in : How are your English as a Second Language Skills?

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Photo by Ivan Shilov on Unsplash