Kachrus circles and the growth of professionalism in TESOL

JA M E S E . A L AT I S
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages: the concept and the organization

[The text of a plenary paper presented as Distinguished Speaker at the conference Globalization and World Englishes: Identity and Creativity, convened by the International Association of World Englishes (IAWE) at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA, 1618 July 2004.] I MUST START with two disclaimers: First, my name is not James E. Alatis. It is Demetrious Efstathiou Alatis. In the early days of the 20th century, when many Greeks emigrated to the United States, the immigration authorities were troubled with the polysyllabic Greek names. They proceeded therefore to shorten them or otherwise change them to t the American assimilationist mold. This was done either by transliteration, phonetic respelling, translation, or shortening: that is to say, initial, medial, or nal clipping. The Greeks, of course, had a word for each of these processes: procope, syncope, and apocope. Thus, Papatriandaphilopoulos, became Papas or Poulos or Triandaphilos or Triandos or even just Tree. I knew a man whose name was Constantinous Papatriandaphilopoulos who had his name changed to Gus Rose. My own name, Demetrious, was shortened to Dim, and the closest thing to Dim was Jim. Most Demetriouses in those days became Jims. Then, when I was in the sixth grade, one of my teachers said, What is this Jim? A bright young man like you who might be President of the United States one day cannot go around with a name like Jim. From now on, your name is James. Whoever heard of a Jim or Jimmy in the White House? This, of course, was before President Jimmy Carter. The second disclaimer that I want to make is
DOI: 10.1017/S026607840500204X

that, notwithstanding many protestations to the contrary, I was not the father of TESOL. The father of TESOL was its rst President, Professor Harold B. Allen, of the University of Minnesota. In fact, by coincidence, in the anniversary issue of the TESOL Newsletter, he wrote an article reminiscent of our theme today, which he entitled, A Look Back to A Look Ahead. He was the rst President, and if anything, in my capacity as the rst Executive
JAMES E. ALATIS has a distinguished career in foreign language teaching and bilingual education that spans 50 years. Early in his career he served as a language researcher for the U.S. Departments of Education and State. At Georgetown University in Washington, DC, he has been a professor of linguistics and modern Greek since 1966 and was dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics from 1973 to 1994. His record of professional service is outstanding; he has served numerous national and international organizations in management and advisory positions. For 21 years, Dr. Alatis was the executive director of the international association Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). During his tenure, TESOL grew from 337 members in its rst year (1966) to over 12,000 in 1987. Dr. Alatis has also been chair of the annual Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. He has published dozens of articles in scholarly journals, written and edited numerous books, and delivered hundreds of presentations at conferences around the world. When TESOL created an annual award to recognize outstanding and extended professional service, it was named the James E. Alatis Award in honor of his years of vision and leadership. TESOL also established the James E. Alatis Plenary Session at its annual convention.

English Today 82, Vol. 21, No. 2 (April 2005). Printed in the United Kingdom 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Director, one might call me the Prime Minister. The last President under whom I worked as Executive Director was Professor Joan Morley, of the University of Michigan. I will therefore, use contributions from these two eminent scholars in the presentation that I am about to make. At the TESOL Annual Convention at Long Beach, California, this year, an informal discussion session was arranged to discuss the question Does TESOL need a new name? Apparently, because TESOL is the name for both the eld of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and the professional organization whose headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia, there is some confusion over just what the professional organization is responsible for. And that is a good question: What is conveyed by the name Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages? The TESOL Board of Directors, understandably, are unhappy when an educational institution with TESOL in its name offers services and certications that are not consistent with the values of the professional organization, and they are particularly unhappy when disgruntled customer-students complain to TESOL, the organization. While this certainly is an issue that the TESOL Board should address, it really draws attention to how much TESOL is associated with, and in some cases seen as synonymous to, English language teaching, and how this idea is shared and spread among communities around the world. From its inception, TESOL has been an international professional organization for those concerned with the teaching of English as a second or foreign language and of standard English as a second dialect (quite a mouthful), yet it includes TESL and TEFL. On the one hand, the title reects the domains (the academic areas of concern) of TESOL as they have developed, which in turn reect the history of the profession in the U.S. That is, it refers to both the organization and the eld. On the other hand, however, the acronym reminds us of all the other shortened names which have been suggested or had currency at one time or another: TENES, TEFL, TESL, ATESL (ELS/NAFSA), TEAL, TELL, TEFB, TEFLON (joke). In brief, TESOL equals TEFL plus TESL. In the U.S., the three most current and most frequently used expressions that have reference to teaching of English to non-native
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speakers of the language are: teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), teaching English as a second language (TESL), and teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). In American usage generally, TEFL has to do with the teaching of English overseas and to foreign nationals who are more or less temporary residents in the United States adult foreign students at American universities, visitors, diplomatic people, etc., in international programs. TESL, on the other hand, has to do with the teaching of English to nonnative speakers who are more or less permanent residents of the United States American citizens, such as Spanish speakers in the Southwest, American Indians, Puerto Ricans in New York, Chinese-Americans living in the San Francisco Bay area, etc.; usually for children in elementary and secondary schools in domestic programs. TESOL, however, an even broader expression, encompasses both groups: that is, TESOL contains both TEFL and TESL. An extended use of the term TESL includes the teaching of English in the Philippines, India and other countries where English is an ofcial language. Here the distinctions are between domestic and international, children and adults, schools and universities, temporary and permanent, and instrumental and integrative.

Dening TESL
About fteen years ago, Albert Marckwardt called our attention in the United States to the distinction which the British have traditionally made between English as a foreign and as a second language. By English as a foreign language they mean English taught as a school subject or at an adult level, solely for the purpose of giving students a foreign language
Table 1: A distinctive feature grid TEFL is: TESL is:

1. integrative 2. humanistic 3. academic 4. aesthetic 5. literary 6. enrichment 7. permanent

instrumental vocational utilitarian practical technical functional temporary

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competence which they may use in one of several ways: to read literature; to read technical works; to listen to the radio; to understand dialogue in the movies; and to use the language for communication with transient Britons or Americans. It is a use of the language not too different from what we have in mind when we teach foreign languages in the United States. By and large, ESL was what was taught in the British Empire, where English was the ofcial language or the language of instruction in schools: what would in fact be EFL in the rest of the world, and indeed the terms EFL and ESL have at times been used almost interchangeably in the U.S. This in fact is what I will be doing all through this paper, although I believe the more common term now is ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages), which incorporates both TESL and TEFL and reects the increasing emphasis given to native US populations as well as to foreign students and to the use of English as a language of instruction in schools and universities. In some ways it is like a secret professional password. The pronunciation of the term is something of a shibboleth, and it may be natural that the usage should be, as it were, divided, into for example tysol vs. tsol (with the stress on the rst syllable but different vowel values) or tesl (with the stress on the second syllable), or tyzol (with stress on the rst syllable, then a zee). However, Ed Anthony has taken the matter further, giving the elements of the acronym rather interesting values: T as in beret, E as in make, S as in island, O as in people, and L as in psalm, which hmph! suggests it virtually isnt there at all. Usage will tell. My doxy is orthodoxy, yours heterodoxy. I say teesol, and I talk more than most people, so my pronunciation will prevail. Note, however, that there is no National or American or North American anywhere in the word: its just TESOL, because the intention has always been to include membership and participation from all over the world. TESOL has from the outset been international, as witness 23% of its membership outside the U.S. We gave some thought to renaming the organization International TESOL, but the motion failed in the Executive Committee. So now the word international appears in the subtitle of the organization. We are called TESOL: an international organization, or, more precisely, an international professional organization for those concerned with the teaching of

both English as a second or foreign language and standard English as a second dialect. One can ask, however: What exactly do English language learners associate with TESOL? What do they think of the language English that they want to learn, and why do they choose to learn it? What is the role of English today? And what is the role of the professional English teacher? But before I address these questions, let me rst put the growth of the eld of English language teaching in North America in a historical context.

The background
Harold B. Allen, the rst president of TESOL, dated the beginning of English as a Second Language in North America to the early 17th century, when the English colonists taught at least some English to the native peoples. Later, when English missionaries attempted to convert the Indians to Christianity, they in effect began the formal teaching of English to nonnative speakers. ESL in the British context, of course, began under different circumstances: the British had their far-ung empire, where English was the ofcial language or the language of instruction, or both. However, three things we can say about the roots of ESL are:
1 It began as the teaching of the language of colonists, of economic power, of imperialism, if you will. Under these circumstances, the rst English language learners were less socially powerful they did not in turn teach their language to the English-speakers, at least not in large numbers. 2 English was a language of opportunity for the learners opportunity for, albeit limited, social and economic advancement within the colonial system. 3 It was, obviously, native English speakers who taught English.

These three points have proved to be resistant throughout the development of TESOL as a profession. We have not stopped pondering the social power of English, how non-native speakers put it to use, and the role of native speakers as teachers of the language: ideas that I will return to shortly. In the U.S., the teaching of English only became a major enterprise after World War II, when large numbers of foreign students arrived to matriculate in U.S. universities. By the end of the 1940s, there were over 90,000 foreign students: adult learners at college level
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who came to the U.S. to embark on studies in academic elds such as public administration and air trafc control, and then take their expertise back to their homeland. The authorities gradually became aware that special English classes were needed for this group of students, and so they drew instructors from English departments and sometimes also foreign-language departments. Eventually, special teaching materials were developed for the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), and by 1953, some one hundred and fty institutions had English programs for foreign students, and, as more persons received specialized instruction in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), a sense of belonging to a special discipline began to take hold. Then came the realization that there was another new and growing group of English language learners that needed attention: children in U.S. elementary and secondary schools whose native tongue was not English but who were studying together with native English speakers. These learners were children born in the U.S., a very different group from the foreign university students who were here temporarily. What was needed for this group of learners was teaching English as a second language (TESL). In 1964, Harold Allen conducted a survey, sponsored by the U.S. Ofce of Education and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), that showed there was little awareness in the school systems that teaching English to children with other rst languages is a discipline calling for professional competence and specialized textbooks and other educational materials. So, as recently as forty years ago, ESL as a formal discipline was still new to U.S. school systems. Eventually, however, with the development of specialized class materials, teacher training and programs, and support from both the federal government and private foundations, a sense of a professional discipline began to emerge. And members of this discipline felt a need to come together to create a publication and a professional home of their own. Upon Harold Allens initiative, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Association of International Educators (NAFSA) agreed to sponsor a joint spring conference for the discussion of ESL problems and, specically, the possibility of creating a new EFL journal. The Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington DC acted as a neutral organizing
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agent, and, in September 1963, called a meeting to plan a series of annual conferences. The rst national conference in the U.S. devoted to the teaching of English to speakers of other languages was held in Tucson, Arizona, May 89, 1964. Its expressed purpose was: to establish lines of communication between the various interested groups who were represented in a number of organizations to bring to bear the body of interdisciplinary knowledge relevant to the teaching of English to speakers of specic languages to give consideration to a professional status for those who teach English as a second language The total number of participants at this rst conference was estimated at 800, and they came from thirty-one states in the U.S., together with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, as well as from Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Japan. There were professors of linguistics, anthropology, English, education, psychology, and psycholinguistics as well as teachers of ESL and EFL and trainers of teachers. There were also directors of TESL programs in government agencies, ofcial personnel from federal and state education departments, school principals, coordinators of adult education, supervisors, and consultants. And this rst TESOL conference was so enthusiastically welcomed that, on the second day of the Tucson conference, organizers met to plan the next conference. In October 1964, just ve months after the Tucson conference, the National Advisory Council on the Teaching of English as a Foreign Languages (NACTFL) met and afrmed four decisions, the second of which was destined to impact greatly upon the planning of the TESOL conferences and precipitate the forming of a new association. The Council recognized the need for a register of teachers of English to speakers of other languages, and believed it should be established and maintained within the framework of an independent professional association. Specically, they recommended that immediate steps be taken by appropriate individuals within the profession toward the formation of an independent national association of teachers of English to speakers of other languages. The Council felt that this called for immediate action, and therefore asked for a concrete proposal for
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such an association to be prepared and presented at the second TESOL conference. By the time the third TESOL conference was held in 1966, the name and constitution for the national association were unanimously adopted and thus TESOL the professional organization was born. It is important, however, to note that its name at birth was Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages colon An International Professional Organization for Those Concerned with the Teaching of English as a Second or Foreign Language or Dialect. A very long name indeed, but the intention there was both to bring together EFL and ESL, and include such dialects as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). As time went on, however, and interest in American dialects faded, the designation (or Dialect) was eliminated and forgotten. I have only given part of the picture, of course. TESOL as a eld developed not just out of domestic English learning needs. In the 1940s, the U.S. initiated wide-scale participation in English language teaching abroad and established adult education projects in Latin America under the Good Neighbor Policy. By the end of World War II, with the expansion of U.S. national interests, TESOL activities had spread to the Near East, the Far East, and to parts of Europe. In effect, the 1940s laid the groundwork for what was to be a major educational concern. In the 1950s, the Exchange Program of the Department of State expanded to include over twenty countries, while more English institutes had been established at the universities. By the 1960s, TESOL had truly become a worldwide endeavor and the spirit of internationalism had become a reality. The United States Information Agency (USIA) conducted adult English classes in over 50 countries, and held seminars and workshops for local teachers in countries throughout the world. By the mid-60s, there were over 2,000 Peace Corps volunteers teaching English in over 40 countries. The Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation also played their parts in the development of overseas training. According to Joan Morley, the former TESOL president and professor at the University of Michigan, the growth of TESOL internationally can be attributed to three factors: the population explosion, the knowledge explosion, and the instructional revolution in ESL. We can take each here in turn:

The population explosion With the current world population of over 6 billion, around 750 million people are believed to speak English as a foreign language, and about half that number use English as a second language (Source: the British Council, citing both David Crystal and David Graddol. This number continues to grow yearly, as does the growth-rate gure of English-language learners. It was recently revised by David Crystal to two billion. The result world-wide is a population explosion of ESL/EFL students who need effective instructional programs carried out by well-educated ESL/EFL teachers. The knowledge explosion During the past several decades there has been an extensive and wide-ranging increase in professional study relating to theory and research in the social and behavioral sciences. Joan Morley, has called it a knowledge explosion. Developments in psychology and linguistics have been of major importance to the eld of second-language learning and teaching, especially those in the emerging interdisciplinary elds of applied linguistics, anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics, and, particularly, studies in rst- and second-language acquisition. the instructional revolution Significant features of this revolution in ESL include a focus on ve distinct areas: the individuality of the learning; the learners language; the special-purpose needs of particular students; genuine communication; and a humanistic classroom. We may note at this point the following important changes in ESL concepts: that classroom attention is moving to a special emphasis on language function as well as on language form that more emphasis is being placed on reading, in which it is now being taught more systematically and from an earlier stage Language study is being integrated with other areas of the curriculum, such as mathematics, sciences, and social studies. Increasingly, concepts and vocabulary from content elds are being introduced in ESL classrooms, something that is most clearly evident in English for Science and Technology (EST) and English for Special/Specic Purposes (ESP) classes. Since the late 1960s, there has been a
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smaller (but a signicant and respected) explosion of information related directly to theory and research in second language acquisition. The increasing numbers of conference papers, journal articles and new books appearing in publishers inventories are a measure of the emerging interest in this eld of specialized study. Notably, Joan Morley, the late Peter Strevens, and (Sir) Randolph Quirk and his colleagues have provided the following information on the international impact of English language use:
1 English is the most commonly taught foreign language in the schools of countries where it is not the mother tongue of the inhabitants, including the former USSR and the Peoples Republic of China. Some 250 million Chinese are currently learning English more than the entire population of the U.S. 2 In the most signicant technical and critical elds science, education, commerce and trade, technology, medicine, engineering, international politics, and journalism there are more publications in English than any other language. 3 More books, newspapers and magazines, radio and television programs, records and tapes, and lms are produced in English and distributed more widely than in any other single language. 4 English is the most commonly used language at international conferences. 5 English is the ofcial language employed in international air trafc and in international shipping. 6 Three-quarters of the worlds mail is written in English. 7 By the mid1990s about 90% of all Internet communication was taking place in English, and, although other languages have been gaining ground, English is still the most massively used language in cyberspace.

an increasing demonstration of the failure of structural linguistics and behavioral psychology, especially in terms of the audio-lingual method (ALM), to account for crucial properties of language, language learning, and language behavior. ESL students are now being encouraged to experiment with the language, to create sentences on their own, going beyond the safe limits of what they have seen in a book or heard a teacher say. This is heretical to teachers trained in audio-lingual techniques, for whom accuracy before uency was the slogan. Their aim was never to let students make an error, lest the error become habitual through practice. Today however there is a practical truce between old and new theories and professionalism is the tie that binds. Both the knowledge explosion and the instructional revolution have contributed to a period of enormous expansion in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language, an expansion which has been felt in every aspect of professional and organizational activity. From the beginning, linguistic theory and methodology have been intertwined with language teaching. Linguistics as a discipline contributed scientic attitudes which insisted upon the objective observation of the facts of language and served to dispel misconceptions and prejudices about language often used by bigoted people to justify their oppression of others. I have often remarked on a striking coincidence of early linguistic theory: that the rst students of ESL were the American Indians (as Harold Allen has told us), and the rst linguistic theorists were students of the American Indian languages (Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Leonard Bloomeld). Their systematic analysis of language as succinct a denition of linguistics as youre likely to nd was fundamental to the formation of linguistic theory and practice in the United States of America. The methods and ndings of these early linguistic studies were extended and applied to the study of more commonly known languages such as English. It is signicant that these early linguists were also anthropologists, and were thus also interested in the culture of the people they studied. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis introduced the notions of linguistic relativity and cultural relativity. That is, that other peoples cultures were as good as ours, and worthy of study, and that we might even learn from them.
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The instructional revolution in ESL

Another development began in the late 1960s and quickly gained both momentum and magnitude during the 1970s. This has been called an ESL revolution and it has brought about signicant changes in the form and substance of ESL classroom practices. The emergence and rapid growth of this movement was related primarily to two factors: a growing disenchantment with traditional ESL methodologies and materials, and with student achievement

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This digression reminds me of another of my favorite stories, the one about the early Virginia settlers and the Indian chiefs, which is attributed to Ben Franklin. After signing the Treaty of Lancaster between the government of Virginia and six Indian Nations, the Virginians offered the Indian chiefs the opportunity of sending their sons to Williamsburg College for an education. They assured the chiefs that the sons would be taken care of and would be taught all the knowledge of the white man. The Indian spokesmans response is instructive.
You, who are wise, must know that people have different ideas about things, and thus you will not take it badly if our ideas about this type of education are not the same as yours. We already have some experience of it. Several of our young men have already been taken into the colleges of the provinces of the north. They were instructed there in all of your sciences but when they returned, they were bad runners, they knew nothing of all the ways to live in the forest, they could not stand cold or hunger, they did not know how to build a hut or catch a deer or kill an enemy, and they spoke our language badly, so they could not make either good hunters or warriors or advisers. They were absolutely good for nothing. However, we are grateful for your offer, even if we must decline it; and to prove our gratitude, if the gentlemen from Virginia wish to send us a dozen of their sons, we will take responsibility for their education, we will teach them all that we know, and we will make them men.

All this is to suggest that, as TESOL professionals, we recognize that language teaching is a multidimensional effort dealing with the learner not just as a language student but as a complex cultural entity. These rst studies in linguistics were also a starting point for TESOL. It is worthwhile tracing the history of TESOL methodology from its rst close links to linguistic theory in order to understand its present interdisciplinary stance. In its beginnings, TESOL methodology was set within two major frameworks: descriptive linguistics and behaviorist psychology. Descriptive linguistics stressed the value of contrastive analysis; behaviorist psychology treated language as a set of habits learned through repetition of patterns. In TESOL, these two approaches were combined to create the audio-lingual approach. TESOL professionals felt fairly condent in this approach and were concerned primarily with developing more and

fuller contrastive analyses, more and better teaching materials, and more and larger teacher-training facilities. By the close of the 1960s, however, the transformational-generative school had usurped the place of descriptive linguistics as the most widespread and inuential movement in American linguistics. This Chomskyan revolution had the effect of challenging the structuralists assumptions about the nature and system of language, and represented a turn towards cognition as opposed to behavioral psychology. These two factors combined to create the most recently acceptable approach known as communicative competence. It is signicant that Harold Allen, in his 1979 article, What It Means to Be a Professional in TESOL, listed as rst among nine characteristics, competent preparation leading to a degree in TESL. This would include an introduction to contemporary theoretical approaches in linguistics; phonetics, particularly articulatory phonetics; and cultural anthropology or crosscultural communication. This last one he added specically to dispel the cultural myth that the ways of the speaker of English are always superior. This is a long way from the rst years of the Peace Corps, when the Director, Sargent Shriver, ofcially stated that if one can speak English, one can teach English. All one needed was idealism. The other eight characteristics that Harold Allen listed were: (1) a love of the English language; (2) the critical faculty; (3) the persistent urge to upgrade oneself; (4) self-subordination; (5) readiness to go the extra mile; (6) cultural adaptability; (7) a feeling of excitement about ones work; (8) professional citizenship (that is, a professionally-minded teacher seeks to work as a part of his professional organization: its publications, its meetings, and its committee activity. Allen himself said that while an ideal prole would be a high score in every category, more likely teachers would rate higher in some categories than others. For me, three characteristics of the ESOL teacher are non-negotiable, absolutely essential: they should be linguistically sophisticated, pedagogically sound, and culturally sensitive. Let me elaborate on each one: Linguistic sophistication One of the guiding principles or tenets of TESOL is that teaching and learning a second language is different from teaching and learn-

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ing a native language. A TESOL teacher who has some knowledge of the pupils language or another foreign language, would understand the process of learning a second language rst hand. Such a teacher would have a more tolerant, exible attitude toward other peoples languages and cultures. Pedagogical soundness We believe in preparing teachers who are capable of making important and appropriate educational decisions at any time and under any circumstances in which they may be thrust. TESOL has always been opposed to models of teacher education that perceive the teacher primarily as a technician. We prefer a model rmly rooted in the humanistic tradition, which includes a sound general education, academic specialization and professional education. Cultural sensitivity For TESOL, the purpose of teaching English was never about homogenizing all of society. Instead TESOLs attitude has been additive, rather than replacive. This means that by our work, we seek to add a new register of language to a students repertoire rather than eradicate or replace the register he already possesses and in doing so, conveying that his own register was less worthy. The goal of TESOL has always been to impart to our students the ability to switch codes instinctively and to communicate in the most appropriate language or dialect, in a manner most conducive to producing the greatest amount of cooperation and the least amount of resistance. Teachers of English need to be linguistically sophisticated, pedagogically sound, and culturally sensitive because TESOL as a eld has always been an international activity, and our profession has always advocated cross-cultural communication as a means of fostering international understanding and world peace. TESOL (the organization) has always opposed imperialism of any kind linguistic, cultural, or political. For this we can thank TESOLs early association with the precepts of linguistic science that predisposed the whole profession to the acceptance of other peoples language, culture, and beliefs as legitimate and valuable. Of course, linguistics as a eld has changed greatly since the early days and has now embraced interdisciplinary or even multidisciplinary inclusion, with prominent researchers
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like Braj Kachru and Larry Smith looking into interdisciplinary approaches as opposed to monolithic insistence on the autonomy of linguistics as a discipline. Among the various subdisciplines is the eld of sociolinguistics, which includes research on the social, regional, and functional varieties of the language. Research in this area has been very relevant to TESOL professionals because it is here that much work has gone into examining the notion of a standard English. Larry Smith and Braj Kachru have done seminal research to demonstrate that neither British nor American English can be used as a standard, and they came up with the concept of not just English but Englishes: that is to say, a large number of varieties of English. They recognized, as Geoff Nunberg and R.A. Hudson did, that there is no one standard of English that is acceptable throughout the world, unless one is created as a prescriptive exercise (Sociolinguistics, 1980). Kachru and Smith also came up with the notion of the neutrality of English as opposed to association with British, or American, or Australian, or Canadian, English, and Kachru developed his theory of the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle, roughly equivalent to ENL, EFL, and ESL. Another feature of the newly developing eld was to debunk the theory that only native speakers could teach English to others. It was in 1984 at the TESOL conference in Houston that Kachru and Smith presented a proposal to the afliate assembly of TESOL to create an interest group dedicated to English and all its varieties as a world language. Unfortunately, the assembled group rejected the proposal out of hand. Hence, Kachru and Smith decided to create their own organization which came to be known as the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE). Americans are a nation of joiners. We belong to countless organizations, which proliferate over time into more organizations. The historical development of the language profession in the United States can be likened to Biblical genealogies. Early in this century, linguists established the American Philological Society (APS), which dealt primarily with the classical languages. Later, scholars interested in modern languages separated and created the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). Thus, APS begat MLA. Because MLA dealt primarily with English and foreign literatures at the university level, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), which dealt with
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the teaching of English language in the schools, was created. Thus, MLA begat NCTE. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), in turn, was formed to deal with foreign language (rather than literature) teaching at all levels of education. Thus, MLA also begat ACTFL. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) had multiple parents: MLA, the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), the American Speech Association (ASA, later the American Speech and Hearing Association), NCTE, and the National Association for Foreign Student Affairs (NAFSA). When some members of TESOL felt that bilingual education should have its own focus, activities, and organization, the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) was created. When some members of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA) felt that there should be a professional organization in the United States for applied linguistics (the application of the insights, methods, and ndings of linguistic science to practical language problems, including the teaching and learning of languages), the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) was created. (For years, applied linguists in the United States had been members of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliqu [AILA] and had traveled overseas to attend AILA conventions). Members of TESOL also became involved in the formation and support of AAAL, feeling that TESOL did not have a strong enough research focus. More recently, scholars working in the eld of World English formed a separate organization, the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), when they felt that TESOL had failed to respond to their needs. Let me digress a little here. This brings to my mind the words ssiparity (divisiveness) and omphaloskepsis (parochialism) which I have used whimsically in past presentations. Let me explain. Fissiparity means a splitting apart; a division of parts. It is a term taken from biology which refers to a form of reproduction in which the parent organism divides into two or more parts, each becoming an independent individual. In political terms, it has been used during the British colonial days to refer to the ssiparous tendency on the part of some of the colonies to separate from the Empire and become autonomous. Omphaloskepsis refers to the contemplation of ones navel as a part of mystical experiences.

I use these terms playfully to describe the tendencies of special interest groups to separate from the parent organizations which, in turn, are so intent on maintaining contemplating their own narrow identity and preserving their own unity and status quo, that they fail in their responsibilities to serve the interest of individual members and groups within them. Notwithstanding their playfulness, fissiparity and omphaloskepsis aptly describe how IAWE came to be its own organization, paying deserved attention to the notion that there are many Englishes in the world. TESOL the organization is today still struggling with the fact that the E in TESOL continues to imply a standard variety of English that is taught in ESOL classes. The problem is: the idea of a standard is untenable because it ignores the internationalization of both the uses of English and of those who use it. The British Council in 1986 quoted a USIA estimate that 700 million people use English as a rst or second language on an everyday basis (British Council 1986). Of this total, 315 million were native speakers, while the majority (375 million) were non-native speakers. In 1994, Professor Kachru pointed out that there are at least four non-native speakers of English for every native speaker, and most of the channels of spread are especially controlled and funded by the non-native users of the language in Asia and Africa, and by agencies that they support. Also interesting has been research by Larry Smith comparing the intelligibility of narratives told in English by highly educated speakers from the United States, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. When the tapes of these narratives were played back to this group of speakers, as well as to people from other non-English speaking countries, it was found that the most internationally intelligible pronunciations were those of India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Japan but notably not the American, which was, in fact, considered least intelligible. In this case, native-speaker pronunciations clearly failed as a standard for international communication. These ndings contradicted the traditional wisdom that non-native speakers must be taught to approximate native-speaker pronunciations in order to be intelligible across cultures. What is more important is to take into account the different communicative strategies
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and conventions of different cultures. English, in other words, is a world language in that it is used around the world, adapted by different cultural groups for their purposes, with each variety representing a cultural identity. There is no one culture or nation or group of speakers who by implication has more rights over the language than other speakers. At this point, Id like to tell the story of Wellington Ku. In the early 1920s, a Chinese diplomat attending an international banquet in Washington was seated next to a buxom socialite, and the lady, not knowing how to deal with him, asked him, Likee soupee? Later, Mr Ku was asked to make a few remarks to the assembled guests. He rose and gave a 20-minute speech in impeccable English. When he sat down again, he asked his dinner companion, Likee speechee?
Who owns English? As Kachru puts it, If you can use it, you own it.

In 1982, Charles Ferguson observed two trends in the spread of English: rst, that English is less and less regarded as a purely Western language; second, its development is less and less determined by the usage of its native speakers. The second point is particularly true in such countries as Nigeria, India, and the Philippines, multilingual colonies of Britain and the United States that gained independence after World War II and retained English as the language for communication with other nonnative speakers in their own country. They use English for intra-national uses, in areas such as education, government, and the mass media. What about the rst point: that English is less and less regarded as a purely Western language? Still true, though in recent developments in the Middle East, English has to some extent been re-identied as a non-Arabic, if not an anti-Arabic, Western language. It is a telling development when the BBC begins an Arabic language service in an attempt to reach its audience in the Middle East. In a recent article in the TESOL organizations publication, Essential Teacher, Julian Edge counted among the things we know about our livelihood, as teachers of English, is that English has become more than an optional lingua franca, it is now the required language of world empire: political, military, economic and cultural. He goes on to say that, with TESOL jobs available for foreigners in Iraq and Afghanistan, the incoming English
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teacher could understandably be seen as an imperial trooper of sorts. This is a highly disturbing idea to those of us in the profession who have long been sensitive to charges of linguistic imperialism and cultural aggression. But I can see how such charges will continue to appear so long as TESOL retains the idea of native speaker English: in other words, a Western variety, as a standard and reference point, rather than embracing the fact that English is open to everyone to use and to adapt according to their own cultural needs and identity. English is not about exclusivity. If it was, it would not have spread as far and wide as it has. The fact that two-thirds of the worlds population uses English demonstrates just how much it is inclusive rather than exclusive. When I started this presentation, I mentioned the on-going discussion within the TESOL organization about whether or not to change its name. I think that now is an opportune time for TESOL to acknowledge what IAWE has known from the beginning: that there are many varieties of English, and Western varieties are no more legitimate than the others and no more worthy to be taught. English is a language to be used by different cultures in the world; it potentially belongs to all cultures. Western users of the language are in the minority, and it is time that notions of linguistic imperialism be put to rest. I have always said that names have a way of fossilizing, and the E in TESOL continues to imply the fossilized attitude of a Westernimposed standard. As we all know, fossilized is not an appropriate idea at all when were talking about the ever-adaptable English language. I would propose that, if TESOL the organization was to change its name, it should go back to its roots, its birth name, which was: TESOL colon An International Professional Organization for those concerned with the teaching and learning of English as a Second or Foreign Language or Dialect. Simply by reinstating that last phrase or Dialect, TESOL the organization would be acknowledging the worthiness of teaching other dialects or in IAWE parlance, Englishes. OR, TESOL could change the E to mean Englishes, without too much damage to the acronym. It may be twenty years since IAWE broke away from TESOL. It is high time for these two organizations to work more closely together to change fossilized attitudes about teaching not English, but world Englishes.
ENGLISH TODAY 82 April 2005

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