Talk:Teaching English as a second language

message: This article, Teaching English as a second language (TESL), is brief because it is new. It is important to keep it here because it complements the longer Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) article. It is not appropriate to use that longer article to write about this one because they are different although related topics. TEFL and TESL are easy to conflate and doing so should be avoided. The teaching profession uses these two distinct acronyms because these two topics are mutually exclusive -- a teacher will generally be in one or the other situation, not both at once. They are not synonyms. Clarity is served by maintaining distinct articles here. Cheers, --Roger Chrisman (talk) 01:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
*Comment if this is merged, I think a new history should be started at the redlink title, with an edit summary indicating the originating articles, and no page move should be performed. The source articles would then just redirect to the new article. -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 05:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: :Any additional comments:
*I do not know what the name of the merged article should be. At first look, and unless anyone has supporting evidence otherwise, I think that I favor "English as an additional language" because this term seems to be supported by respectable nonprofit organizations including the British Council and because it seems to be less used by less reputable for-profit schools.
:This is a great educational concept but there are a lot of sketchy industries around this field of study. The name for the concept seems to be fought over by for-profit schools selling classes and certifications. I worry that if this Wikipedia article has the wrong name, then less worthy interests might be supported and the term that is most internationally respected might be de-emphasized. I regret to say that I cannot make a good judgement about what the best term is. Here are some names that I see used -
:*TEFL, teaching English as a foreign language
:*ESL, English as a second language
:*EAL, English as an additional language
:*ELT, English language teaching
:*TESOL, teaching English to speakers of other languages
:*preparing students for TOEFL, "test of English as a foreign language"
:To some extent, all of these terms are used as marketing terms. Each term seems to be promoted by its own collective of dubious online schools which promise quick and high paying jobs after paying for their classes. All of these names get significant numbers of Google hits. I do not know which term has the most legitimate academic and social backing, and which ones are most promoted by companies more interested in getting money for themselves than in providing good value and education to their students.  Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:12, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion