The age and proficiency of the two major contextual variables that will

affect every aspect of your lesson or curriculum. They may, in fact, be the most
important variables. But two other domains also emerge for the language teacher-
sociopolitical and institutional contexts, without meaning that classroom lessons
may miss their mark. These domains are intertwine, which are sometimes
impossible to oppose them and examine one without considering the other. They,
subsumed under institutional considerations, are the general purposes for which
learners are taking a course in English.
SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT
It is easy to underestimate the importance of the sociopolitical aspects of
language. We have already seen, in looking at communicative language teaching,
how dominant the social roles of language are. Interaction, negotiation,
interpretation, intended meanings, misunderstandings, and pragmatics all
underscore those roles. When such considerations are extended into communities,
regions, nations, and continents, the political side of language becomes evident.
Political issues are among some of the social:
 Correctness and appropriateness
 Registers and styles.
 Acceptable speech varieties in a community.
 Regional and national standards of language.
 National language policy.
 International varieties of English.
SECOND AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE CONTEXTS
In some of our professional musing about teaching and learning, we are
interchangeable with English language teaching. (See PLLT, Chapter 7, for a
discussion of these two terms.) But some caution is warranted, parallels in relation
to curriculum, because (a) the difference between the two is significant, and (b)
this dichotomy has been overgeneralized in recent years
To distinguish operationally between a second and foreign language context,
think of what is going on outside your classroom door. Once your students leave
your class, which language will they hear in the hallways or, in case you are in the
foreign language department hallway, out on the sidewalks and in the stores?
Second language learning contexts are those in which the classroom target
language is readily available out there. Teaching English in the United States or
Australia clearly falls into this (ESL) category. Foreign language contexts are those
in which students do not have ready-made contexts for communication beyond
their classroom. They may be obtainable through language clubs, special media
opportunities, books, or an occasional tourist, but efforts must be made to create
such opportunities. Teaching English in Japan or Morocco or Thailand is almost
always a context of English as a foreign language (EFL).
The seemingly clear dichotomy between ESL and EFL, however, has been
implicated in recent years with increasing use of English worldwide for variety of
purposes (Nayar 1997). First, ESL is contexts vary from an American or context,
where mono-native native speakers abound, to countries such as India or
Singapore, where English is used as a second language for education, government
and commerce, to Scandinavian countries, where English has no offi the status but
is commonly spoken by virtually every educated person. Likewise, in where a
language might be quickly judged as foreign (for instances, Spanish Chinese in the
US, English in Japan), learners may find readily available for potential use of
native language as indigenous language especially countries or ties and the media
(Internet, TV, films).
With that fair warning, it is still useful to consider the pedagogical
implications for continuity of context ranging from high-visibility to the target
outside the language classroom access to the classroom door. In a typical second
language context, your students have a tremendous advantage. They have an
instant "laboratory" available twenty-four hours a day. I often remind my students
studying ESL at the American Language Institute that their classroom hours are
only a fraction of their language learning language hours. After subtracting hours
spent sleeping, they have more than eight years of opportunities to learn and
practice English! When you plan a lesson or a context that falls into the second
language category, students can realize various opportunities. Here are some ways
to optimize this "ESL advantage":
 Give homework that involves a specific speaking task with a person out-side
the classroom, listening to a radio or TV program, reading a newspaper
article, writing a letter to a store or a charity.
 Encourage students to seek out opportunities for practice.
 Encourage students to seek corrective feedback from others
  Have students keep a log or diary of their extra-class learning. Plan and
carry out field trips (to a museum, for example) Arrange a social "mixer"
with native English speakers. Invite speakers into your classroom.
Communicative language teaching in what we might broadly categorize as
an FL context is clearly a greater challenge for students and teachers. Often,
intrinsic motivation is a big issue, since students may have difficulty in seeing the
relevance for learning English. Their immediate use of the language may seem far
removed from their own circumstances, and classroom hours may be the only part
of the day when they are exposed to English. Therefore, the language that you
present, model, licit, and treat takes on great importance. If your class meets for,
say, only ninety a week, which represents a little more than 1 percent of their
waking minutes ours, think of what students need to accomplish!
Can students learn English in an EFL setting? (Or French in an "FFL
setting?) Answer is obviously "yes" because many people have done so. Here are
some to help you compensate for the lack of ready communicative situations the
guidelines outside the classroom.
 Use class time for optimal authentic language input and interaction.
 Don't waste class time on work that can be done as homework.
 Provide regular motivation-stimulating activities.
 Help students to see genuine uses for English in their own lives.
 Play down the role of tests and emphasize more intrinsic factors.
 Provide plenty of extra-class learning opportunities, such as assigning an
English-speaking movie, having them listen to an English-speaking TV or
radio program, getting an English-speaking conversation partner, doing out-
side reading (news magazines, books), writing a journal or diary, in English,
on their learning process.
 Encourage the use of learning strategies outside class.
 Form a language club and schedule regular activities.
ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
Closely related to the ESL/EFL distinction is the phenomenon of the role of
inter- nationalized varieties of English (see PLLT, Chapter 7). As English takes on
more and more of a second language role in a country (such as Singapore, for
example), there is a greater likelihood of the growth of a satirized variety of
English in that country. A good deal of research has been carried out on the
"Indianization" of English (see Kachru 1992), with implications for notions of
acceptability and Stan- faradization in other countries like the Philippines,
Singapore, or Nigeria. Two basic issues for English teachers have emerged:
1. English is increasingly being used as a tool for interaction among nonnative
speakers. Well over one half of the one billion English speakers of the world
learned English as a second (or foreign) language. Most English language teachers
across the globe are nonnative English speakers, which means that the norm is not
monolingualism, but bilingualism
2. English is not frequently learned as a tool for understanding and teaching US or
British cultural values. Instead, English has become a tool for international
communication in transportation, commerce, banking, tourism, technology,
diplomacy, and scientific research.
This multiplication of varieties of English poses some practical concerns for
the teacher. One of those concerns is the issue of grammaticalness and correctness.
What standard do you accept in your classroom? The practical issue boils down to
the need for your open acceptance of the prevailing variety of English in use in the
country where you're teaching, be it India, Nigeria, or the Philippines. It is
certainly not necessary to think of English as a language whose cultural identity
can lie only with countries like the US, the UK, or New Zealand. Your students
will no doubt be more interested in the practical, non-stigmatized uses of English
in various occupational fields in their own country than in imitating American or
British English.
If you’re not teaching in a country whose people use a widely accepted
variety of English, you will still, no doubt, find that your teaching must keep pace
with the new pragmatism. Standards of grammaticalness and of pronunciation may
well need to be viewed in terms of the practice of natives who are educated,
proficient English speakers. In Japan, for example, "Japanized" forms of English
are becoming more widely accepted by English specialists. Your own
pronunciation, especially may not be "perfectly native like" if you yourself are a
nonnative English speaker. The goals that you set for your students may therefore
more wisely be goals of clear unambiguous pronunciation of English phonology.
Even if you are teaching English in what Kachru (1992) called inner circle
countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), you are well advised to
base your judgments of the acceptability of students' production on the ultimate
practical uses to which they will put the language: survival, social, occupational,
academic, and technical uses. In a city like San Francisco, for example, we hear
many varieties of English. On one occasion, as I interviewed a prospective ESL
teacher, I concluded from her excellent but "Hong Kong-sized" variety of English
that she was originally from Hong Kong. Upon asking her, I discovered she was a
native San Franciscan!
LANGUAGE POLICY ISSUES
A final sociopolitical contextual consideration at play in your English
teaching is a set of sociocultural issues: What status does your country accord
English? Does your country have an official language policy toward English? How
does this policy or status affect the motivation and purpose of your students?
The status of English in the US is certainly not in question, but at present the
US is experiencing a language policy debate. At one end of the spectrum is the
English Only movement that advocates the exclusive use of the English language
for all educational and political contexts and that carries an implicit assumption
that the use of one's "home" language will impede success in learning English. In
con- English Plus advocates respond with programs in which home languages and
cultures are valued by schools and other institutions, but in which ESL is promoted
and given appropriate funding. The debate has polarized many Americans. On one
side are those who raise fears of "wild and motley throngs" of people from faraway
lands creating a linguistic muddle. On the other extreme, linguistic minorities
lobby for recognition in what they see as a white supremacist governmental
mentality. Yet enrollment in ESL classes across the US is higher than ever as
recently and not- so-recently arrived immigrants appreciate the importance of
English proficiency for US trust, survival and adaptation in the home, the
workplace, and the community.
Current sociopolitical trends in the US have created a unique challenge for
some college-level ESL programs. As more and more families immigrate into the
US, children are placed into elementary and secondary schools according to their
achievement in their home countries. Without adequate ESL or bilingual
instruction (see below, they may get a "social pass" from one grade to the next
without demonstrating mastery of the subject matter or the English proficiency
necessary for that mastery. After a few years, they find themselves in the upper
secondary school grades and in colleges, but with language skills inadequate for
academic demands. They have typically gained BICS (basic interpersonal
communication skills) (see PLLT, Chapter 9) that enable them to get along well
socially, but not the cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) needed to
progress through a college program. They fall into neither ESL nor native language
course categories in most colleges, and so specialized courses are sometimes
developed to meet their special needs. Such courses stress study skills, reading
strategies, academic listening skills, and techniques for successful academic
writing.
Language policies and social climates may dictate the status accorded to
native and second languages, which can, in turn, positively or negatively affect
attitudes and eventual success in language learning. Two commonly used terms
characterize the status of one's native language in a society where a second
language is learned. A native language is referred to as subtractive if it is
considered to be detrimental to the learning of a second language. In some regions
of the United States, for example, Spanish may be thought to be sociopolitically
less desirable than English. A native Spanish-speaking child, sensing these societal
attitudes, feels ashamed of Spanish and must conquer those feelings along with
learning English. Additive bilingualism is found where the native language is held
in prestige by the community or society. Children learning English in Quebec are
proud of their native French language and traditions and can therefore approach the
second language more positively.
Most EFL programs are additive since the native language is the accepted
norm Moreover, as the foremost international language, English is usually valued
highly as a tool for upward mobility. But in many countries English is a required
subject in secondary schools and higher education institutions, thereby diminishing
possibilities of intrinsic motivation to learn. Teachers are in a constant state of war
with the "authorities" (ministries of education) on curricular goals and on the
means for testing the achievement of those goals. A student's "proficiency" is
determined by a grueling computer-scorable standardized multiple-choice
examination. That proficiency unfortunately often turns out to be related more to
the ability to cram for a standardized test than to the ability to use English for
communicative, meaningful purposes
How can you teach a classroom of students under such circumstances? Can
you focus their efforts and attention on language rather than on the exam at the end
of the course? Can students develop an intrinsically oriented outlook on their
motivation to succeed? As a start to answering such questions, go back to the
principles of intrinsic motivation discussed in Chapter 5 and put them to practice,
as suggested there. And always try to keep your students' vision fixed on useful,
practical, reach- able goals for the communicative use of English.

INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS
One of the most salient, if not relevant, contexts of language teaching is the
institution in which you are teaching. ESL/EFL classes are found in such a wide
variety of educational establishments that textbook publishers have a hard time
tailoring material for the many contexts. Even within one "type" of institution,
multiple goals are pursued. For example, language schools in many countries are
now finely tuned to offer courses in conversation, academic skills, English for
specific purposes (ESP), workplace English, vocational/technical English, test-
taking strategies, and other specializations.
Institutional constraints are often allied to the sociopolitical considerations
discussed above. Schools and universities cannot exist in a social vacuum. Public
elementary and secondary schools are subject to official national language policy
issues. In the US and other countries, the type of second language program offered
schools is a product of legislation and governmental red tape. Students' purposes
taking English at the higher education level may be colored by institutional
policies, certification and degree requirements, instructional staffing, and even
immigration regulations.
Elementary and Secondary Schools
Language policies and programs in elementary and secondary schools differ
greatly from country to country. Within some countries like the US, English
Language Development (ELD) programs, designed for school-age children whose
native language is not English, vary not only by state but also by school districts,
which may number in the hundreds in larger states. In EFL countries, English is
sometimes a required secondary school subject and almost always one of several
foreign language options. In certain countries (Sweden and Norway, for example)
English is even required in elementary schools.
A number of models are currently practiced in the United States for dealing
with nonnative English-speaking students in elementary and secondary schools
some of these models apply to other countries in varying adapted forms.
1. Submersion. The first way of treating nonnative speakers in classrooms is really
a lack of treatment: pupils are simply "submerged" in regular content- area classes
with no special foreign language instruction. The assumption is that they will
absorb" English as they focus on the subject matter. Research has shown that
sometimes they don't succeed in either English or the content areas, especially in
subtractive situations. So, a few schools may provide a pull-out program in which,
for perhaps one period a day, students leave their regular classroom and attend
special tutorials or an ESL class.
2. Immersion. Here, pupils attend specially designed content-area classes. All the
students in a class speak the same native language and are at similar levels of
proficiency in English. The teacher is not only certified in the regular con- tent
areas but also has some knowledge of the students' first language and culture.
Immersion programs are found more commonly in EFL contexts than in ESL
contexts. In most immersion programs, pupils are in an additive bilingual context
and enjoy the support of parents and the community in this enriching experience.
3. Sheltered English. This is a specialized form of immersion program that has
become popular in recent years. It differs from immersion in that students come
from varying native language backgrounds and the teacher is trained in both
subject-matter content and ESl methodology. Also, students often have a regular
ESL class as part of the curriculum. At Newcomer High School in San Francisco,
for example, newly arrived immigrants are given one year of sheltered instruction
in which ESL-trained teachers combine content and ESL in every subject.
4. Mainstreaming. In some submersion programs, students first receive instruction
in ESL before being placed into content areas. Once teachers and tests conclude
that students are proficient enough to be placed into ongoing content classes, they
are mainstreamed into the regular curriculum. We need to remember that this ESL
instruction should be content-centered so that pupils will not be at a disadvantage
once they are placed in an ongoing class.
5. Transitional bilingual programs. In the United States, three different forms of
bilingual education-in which students receive instruction in some combination of
their first and second languages-are in common use. Transitional programs teach
subject-matter content in the native language, combined with an ESL component.
When teachers and tests determine that they are ready, students are transitioned
into regular all-English classes. This has the advantage of permitting students to
build early cognitive concepts in their native language and then cross over later to
the dominant language. The major disadvantage is that students are too often
mainstreamed before they are ready, before their academic and linguistic skills
have been sufficiently built.
6. Maintenance bilingual programs. Here, students continue throughout their
school years to learn at least a portion of their subject matter in the native
language. This has the advantage of stimulating the continued develop- ment of
pupils' native languages and of building confidence and expertise in the content
areas. Disadvantages include discouraging the mastery of Englislh and the high
cost of staffing maintenance classes in budgetary hard times.
7. Enrichment bilingual programs. A third form of bilingual education has stu-
dents taking selected subject-matter courses in a foreign language while the bulk of
their education is carried on in their native language. Students in such programs in
the US are not doing so for survival purposes, but simply to enrich" themselves by
broadening their cultural and linguistic horizons.
Institutions of Higher Education
English language teaching programs exist in two-year (community) colleges,
four- year colleges and universities, post-graduate universities, extended
(continuing) education programs, language schools and institutes, vocational and
technical schools, adult schools, and in the workplace (companies, corporations).
And you may even be able to think of a category that has been omitted! Cutting
across those institutional contexts are a number of purposes for which languages
are taught. Following are six broad types of curricula that are designed to fit such
varying student goals:
1. Pre-academic programs are designed for students who anticipate entering a
regular course of study at the college level. Some such programs are intensive
programs, that is, students have class for twenty to twenty-five hours per week,
usually for a quarter or a semester. The focus varies in such programs from rather
general language skills at the advanced-beginner level to advanced courses in
reading, writing, study skills, and research.
2. EAP (English for Academic Purposes) is a term that is very broadly applied to
any course, module, or workshop in which students are taught to deal with
academically related language and subject matter. EAP is common at the advanced
level of pre-academic programs as well as in several other institutional settings.
3. ESP (English for Special Purposes) programs are specifically devoted to
professional fields of study. A course in English for Agriculture or in Business
Writing would fall under the general rubric of ESP Usually ESP courses are
differentiated from Vocational/Technical English in that ESP refers to disciplines in
which people can get university majors and degrees, while Voc/Tech refers to
trades and other non-baccalaureate certificate programs.
4. Voc/Tech (Vocational and Technical) English targets those who are learning
trades (carpenters and electricians, for example), arts (such as photography),
5. Literacy programs are designed to teaching students whose native language
reading/writing skills are either nonexistent or very poor. Learning to be literate in
English while learning aural-oral forms as well requires energy and motivation on
the part of students. Teachers need special training to teach at this challenging
level.
6. Survival/Social curricula run the gamut from short courses that introduce adults
to conversational necessities to full-blown curricula designed to teach adults a
complete range of language skills for survival in the context of the second culture.
By definition, such programs would not progress beyond inter- mediate skill levels.
These courses are frequently offered in night-school adult education programs and
private language schools such as Berlitz Schools.
Table 8.I on page I24 outlines eight venues and the above-mentioned six
general types of curricula. An "X" indicates that such a program is likely to be
offered.
These institutional contexts are somewhat oversimplified. In determining
how to plan lessons and carry out techniques within each curriculum, quite a
number of other institutional factors apply. Consider, for example:
 the extent to which institutional regulations demand a certain curriculum
content,
 the extent to which budgetary and bureaucratic constraints dictate class size,
number of hours, etc.,
 the extent to which an administrator or supervisor forces you to teach in a
certain way, the textbook (which you may detest) assigned to your course,
 the support and feedback that you get from fellow teachers,
 how other teachers in your institution teach and the extent to which they may
subtly coerce you into teaching "their" way,
  the number of hours you must teach in order to make a living and how that
affects your energy level,
 the conditions of your classroom (size of the room, lighting, furniture, etc.),
and
 whether or not your English course is required and the effect that has on the
motivation of your students.
The list could go on. Institutional constraints are sometimes the biggest
hurdle you have to cross. Once you have found ways to compromise with the
system and still feel professionally fulfilled, you can release more energy into
creative teaching. Many of these issues will be dealt with in future chapters.