A TESOL CREDO

David Richards

As the newest (though not the youngest) member of the Payap TESOL staff, I feel it is appropriate to state some of the basic convictions that influence my work. For me:

• TESOL should now be treated as an autonomous profession
• Even ‘natural’ or ‘born’ teachers can get better through initial training and lifelong development
• Good teaching makes a difference
• The profession should set its own standards
• It is not necessary to be a native speaker in order to be an effective teacher of English

Some of these beliefs are so deeply rooted as to be almost axiomatic. Others may warrant more justification. I have to admit that my evidence here comes as much from reflection on a lifetime of practice as it does from research and theory.

   1.   TESOL should now be treated as an autonomous profession

When I started out in this field almost 40 years ago, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) could hardly have been considered a profession. My first experience involved little more than conversation sessions, for which I was hired on the grounds of being a native speaker of English who happened to be undertaking postgraduate training in Applied Linguistics at the time. But my program was for teaching French, not English! Whether or not teaching any subject was a professional pursuit was a contested notion, much less Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages specifically.

As the Immediate Past President of TESOL Inc., the international professional association, David Nunan (2001) reviewed four defining criteria of a profession:

• Advanced education and training
• An agreed theoretical and empirical base
• Standards of practice and certification
• Advocacy (through professional bodies)

When I decided I wanted to make a career of TESOL, I had to leave my native Australia (again) to find advanced education and training in the UK. The theoretical base on which I received my grounding was transformational-generative linguistics, which I rarely hear mentioned in Australian TESOL circles these days; and empirical research into classroom practices was in its infancy. The classification of ‘ESL teacher’ was not created by Education Departments in my home country until the late ‘70s, and there were no professional associations to codify standards of practice or advocate for practitioners until the mid-70s. Certification or accreditation is in fact a much more recent phenomenon. And yet Australia is often considered a ‘trail-blazer’ in TESOL.

In what follows, I hope some of the progress I think TESOL has made towards becoming accepted as a profession in its own right will come through.

    2.   Even ‘natural’ or ‘born’ teachers can get better through initial training and lifelong development

As the international TESOL association asserts: ‘The field of TESOL involves a professional activity that requires specialized training. The fact that someone speaks English does not by itself qualify that person to teach it’ (TESOL Inc. 2007).

Nobody would argue with the claim that teachers get better with experience. However,  initial training serves not only a ‘gate-keeping’ function to sort out any who might not be suitable for this pursuit, but also as a faster (more efficient) way of  becoming familiar with the expectations and demands of the job.

Nevertheless, not everything teachers need to know can be stuffed into one single package, if only because the knowledge base of teaching is in a constant state of flux, not to mention the demands of the job, especially for those who seek progression in their chosen career.

In my home state in Australia, the NSW Institute of Teachers now accredits teachers at the following four levels:

• Graduate teacher
• Professional competence
• Professional accomplishment
• Professional leadership

While TESOL is presently treated as somewhat peripheral to the Key Learning Areas, it is clearly in the interests of those who want to make a career in the field to accept the imperative of lifelong development.

      3.   Good teaching makes a difference

It wouldn’t make much sense to stay in this business if we didn’t believe this tenet. Initially, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that the weight of empirical evidence over the years has not always provided unequivocal support for the value of instruction, particularly in our field. For instance, Michael Long in a 1983 review of the literature could not find conclusive evidence that instruction in ESL classes, in addition to exposure to an English-speaking environment outside class, resulted in more progress than just untutored exposure for the same time. However, by 1988 he was advocating a principled role for instruction in second language development through task-based language teaching. While this was not so much to guarantee more learning but rather a faster rate, the turn-around seems to have come from more recent studies in which the tutored acquisition was much sounder and more systematic than in the earlier studies. Inevitably, this axiom has impelled us to pay more attention to what precisely makes for ‘good’ language teaching.

      4.   The profession should set its own standards

One of the hallmarks of a profession is that it sets its own standards. Professional associations in various parts of the world have taken initiatives in recent years to try to define what makes a TESOL professional different from any other teacher. For example, the Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA) has developed 9 core standards (in bold in the table below), elaborated through a further 18 subsidiary elements to reflect the particular dispositions, understandings and skills that accomplished Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages bring to their work, specifically in regard to the socio-cultural milieu of English in Australia, theory of learning and teaching a second language, and professional practice in TESOL.

Although I was on the national committee responsible for guiding the development of the standards, it does not mean that I personally embrace every one with equal alacrity. For example, at the time I questioned whether ‘scaffolding’ was sufficiently implanted as a concept to justify inclusion in elements supposedly applicable all over Australia, and even in EFL contexts with a greater interface with international issues, much less as the last of the 9 core standards. At that time, it seemed to me that scaffolding was still an ill-defined and poorly-researched theoretical construct even in Australia, varying between little more than modeling and explanation for some, but encompassing nothing short of any ‘pedagogy’ for others. Again a case for researching and spelling out what makes ‘good teaching’.

But the point is that, while ideologically loaded, the standards represent a consensus achieved through extensive consultation not just with state representatives on the national committee, but also with the wider membership of all state associations. As it happens, over time I have myself warmed more to the benefits of text-based linguistics and socio-cultural views of learning. Whether all teachers should be expected to embrace these theories remains a moot point. Notice that at this stage the standards only apply to ‘accomplished teachers’, so the way remains open for alternative perspectives to be acknowledged at the other stages of accreditation – graduate, professional and leadership – as they are developed, and indeed for the standards for professional accomplishment to be refined in the future.

For me, the interest of the standards lies not just in teacher accreditation, but in the parameters they set for professional development, and eventually for initial teacher preparation when the specifications for graduate teachers are worked out.

5. It is not necessary to be a native speaker in order to be an effective teacher  of English

In Australia, employers now expect even part-time casual teachers to have at least a specialized Graduate Certificate. Permanency normally demands a Graduate Diploma, while an MA is becoming the norm for promotion purposes. Conversely, in Asia some employers (and consumers) seem to place more store by native-speaker proficiency than by specific qualifications in TESOL. Yet I contend this is not even necessary, much less sufficient, to make a TESOL professional. I would rather employ an appropriately qualified non-native speaking teacher than an unqualified native speaker of English.

To ensure the credibility of TESOL in the region, professional associations in Asia should take the lead in defining their field, by articulating what makes a good teacher.  The Australian standards may be suggestive, but standards for Asia need to be responsive to Asian socio-cultural context(s). For example, referring to a context where most ESL teachers are native speakers, the Australian standards do not address the issue: what is an acceptable standard of English to be modeled by non-native speaking teachers?  I argue that native speaking proficiency is just one possible standard among many. Non-native teachers who can incorporate authentic models of spoken and written English into their teaching have no cause to be apologetic. In my view, it is just as important to have a successful history of language learning. Non-native teachers serve as successful role models in class every day. Correspondingly, shouldn’t native speakers be expected to display an acceptable standard of foreign language learning and intercultural knowledge? (cf. Ellis 2004).

Conclusion

On the whole, it seems to me that the foundations for a profession are in place in parts of Asia. Advanced education and training is available without leaving home. We may not all agree on the details of an empirical and theoretical base, any more than doctors or engineers agree on everything, but there would be consensus that each TESOL professional ultimately needs to develop their own ‘theory’ of language teaching. There are professional associations active in advocacy in most Asian countries. And Pan-Asian bodies already exist which could endorse standards of practice and certification.

References

Ellis, L. 2004. Language background and professional competencies in teaching ESOL. English Australia Journal 21/2: 55-71

Long, M. H. 1983. Does second language instruction make a difference? A review of research. TESOL Quarterly 17/4: 359-382

Long, M. H. 1988. Instructed interlanguage development. In L. M. Beebe (ed.), Issues in Second Language Acquisition: Multiple Perspectives. Rowley: Mass., Newbury House  (pp. 115-141)

Nunan, D. 2001 (August). Is language teaching a profession? TESOL in Context Vol. 11, No. 1: 3-7

TESOL Inc. 'What is TESOL?' retrieved on 26.9.2007 from http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=709&DID=401