This paper aims to (re)engage ESL with the broader literacy debate, by calling for a better recognition of what literacy means for second language learners within contemporary Australian education systems, and acknowledging the specialist professional knowledge that ESL teachers bring to the mainstream. The literacy debate that has shaped so much of the educational reform in the last 10-15 years has assumed an almost exclusively monolingual, mother-tongue orientation about what it means to be a user and learner of English. The result has been a muddying of the specialist needs of those learning the same skills in English as a second or additional language, and this paper seeks to identify what must be reclaimed in understanding the nature of those needs as a specialist area of teaching and learning.