Talk:English as a second or foreign language

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 September 2021 and 8 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Umiuottawa. Peer reviewers: Volt101, Sultanmoe.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:38, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

5th paragraph of intro irrelevant to topic
It's very nice that there are witty quips about the differences between UK and US English, but I don't think this information is relevant enough to take up a full paragraph in the overview section of an article about English as a second or foreign language. Surely it would be sufficient to mention that differences exist and link to a relevant full article, such as List of dialects of the English language. --Gretchenmcc (talk) 19:48, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm working on editing the intro in my sandbox, and I'm debating just removing that paragraph from the introduction and putting it somewhere else in the article? Do any more experienced editors have any opinions? I'm very new here. Aiue (talk) 14:43, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * ah sorry, i misread this. was thinking about fourth paragraph Aiue (talk) 14:44, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

ESL, ELL & LEP
Apologies if this has been brought up before, but perhaps we should tie these three articles together via See Also mentions, since they all describe variations on a similar concept? English as a second or foreign language, English-language learner, & Limited English Proficiency. Any thoughts? <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 04:45, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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For example, the only other Indo-European Languages with /θ/ and /ð/ sounds are Spanish and Greek.
Albanian, Aromanian, Icelandic, Faeroese, Welsh, Tuscan, Scottish Gaelic, Venetian etc don't count then? I'll remove this since it's a blatant lie and also irrelevant — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.197.38.106 (talk) 14:24, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Possible Typo in second sentence
Second sentence of article begins Instruction for English-language learners .... Shouldn't it begin with Instructions for ... ? Because English is my second language, I'm not sure. -- Juergen 95.223.151.37 (talk) 10:02, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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English?
Looks translated from another language. Could author please consult others for help in clarifying major concepts in the introduction, etc.?Sbioggio (talk) 11:32, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Assorted Comments on 2018-08-10
I have significantly refactored the lede section. I removed an entire paragraph (nominated for deletion above, with no objections) that was just an off-topic discussion of the differences between US English and UK English. The paragraph included three famous quotes that are arguably jokes, including the famous (and possibly misquoted) "America and the UK are two countries separated by a common language". This paragraph (that I have deleted) began with an unsourced and inaccurate statement that US and UK English diverged after the common ancestor of Old English, which represents either a significant misunderstanding of when Old English was a contemporary language or of when British colonists first arrived in North America.

I fixed quite a few grammar mistakes in every paragraph that I edited (all in the lede section), and I changed a significant amount of vocabulary to make it more consistent, easier to understand, and frankly more correct. For instance, I replaced the single word "instruction" with "educational materials (including spoken lectures and written assignments)". If this article is to be useful for actual English language learners, it is important to avoid words like "instruction" that are highly polysemous and are not very clear from context. I reduced the grammatical complexity of several sentences while keeping the meaning and vocabulary identical. For instance, I changed sentences from passive voice (with irregular past participles) into active voice, and I moved prepositional phrases such as "in countries where English is not a major native language" to the beginnings of sentences, because they establish context (the topic) and what follows is only true within that context. I used both of these methods of reordering sentences in order to place the topic first and the comment second, which is generally easier to understand. See topic-comment. I left in all instances of passive voice when it was appropriate for clarity. For instance, I think a passive voice sentence such as "English is taught in two ways..." is easier to understand for non-native speakers than "English instruction follows two different paradigms...". The latter is technically active voice, but "to follow" is another polysemous English word, and there is honestly nothing wrong with using the passive voice.

I added a "dubious - discuss" tag to the statement that the term "English as a second language" implies English is of "secondary importance", but I was very tempted to delete it entirely. The statement was possibly sourced, because a source is listed at the end of a few deeply related sentences, although not at the end of that specific sentence. I suspect this statement is simply false. A fast Google search shows that people who encourage newer terms (English as a foreign language, English as an additional language, and English for speakers of other languages, to name just three from the lede section) generally discourage the term "English as a second language" (ESL) for just one reason: English may be your third or fourth language. It is a "second language" in a linguistic sense because it is not a "first language" (L1 or native language). The term does not seem to imply that English is a "secondary language", because "secondary" and "second" are different words, although they are cognates. Some countries draw a distinction between ESL and EFL, but this is more related to how frequently English is used in that specific country and the common goal of English education - whether it is for travel and international business (more often EFL), or whether it is for use in one's own country (more often ESL).

The lede section is fairly long and hard to navigate, so I was strongly tempted to delete even more, but I restrained myself for now. For example, the paragraph discussing the two models for English instruction seems out of place in the lede section. It is nicely sourced and it makes some true points. The two models discussed in this paragraph are classes for students who intend to move to an English-speaking country, and students who do not intend to move but want to use English for scholarship, entertainment, or business. Unfortunately, this overlooks a third major type of EFL education, which is the education provided in English-speaking countries for recent immigrants. It also overlooks self-directed study, which is becoming extremely common with the widespread availability of internet and software resources, which is itself discussed later in this article.

Please let me know here if you object strongly to any of my changes. I am likely to make more edits, especially to fix grammar mistakes and change vocabulary choices for ease of comprehension. Much of this article seems to have been written by EFL speakers, many of whom are very advanced in English, but I strongly suspect these authors have favored English words that have cognates of the same meaning in their native languages - this is especially obvious with the abundance of Latin-based English words that are not quite right, such as "instruction" instead of "teaching" and "educate" instead of "teach". I recognize that "teach" is a strongly Germanic word, but I think we can assume readers are familiar with the word "teach", and at the risk of being slightly redundant, we should use consistent language throughout this article.

I also deleted a sentence that represented a dramatic misinterpretation of the source, which was cited. The sentence said that "English grammar is derived from Latin", which is incorrect. English grammar is largely derived from Germanic grammar, and is also fairly unique. The source that was cited actually said that grammar "rules" inspired by Latin were adopted starting in the 17th century, and this led to significant irregularities in the way English is taught and even the way it is spoken, including common grammar mistakes such as "between you and I" (it should be "between you and me").

I was tempted to delete the entire paragraph mentioned above (about English grammar) because although it is true, it is not especially relevant. The thesis of the paragraph was basically "English grammar is hard". It has a citation, and this is true in my opinion, but it is equally true that "English spelling is hard". These details belong on the main page about the English language - where they are discussed at length. Fluoborate (talk) 05:10, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

TEFL companies
An article on the TEFL companies seems to be in order, because there are many companies out there but there's not an impossibly long list of them, and many are not American owned and run and therefore don't have the American standard. -Inowen (nlfte) 23:57, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation
I found Pronunciation sub-heading a bit confusing. My first concern was that it was missing evidence or citations to support the information provided. As a Turkish speaker myself I find sound "th" pronounced widely as "t", which wasn't mentioned in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Umiuottawa (talk • contribs) 02:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)