Significant progress has been made toward greater professional recognition for adult ESL instructors in Canada over the past decade. At the same time, an ever-increasing demand for English-language teachers, particularly abroad, has resulted in a substantial growth in the number of private companies offering short-term ESL/EFL teacher training.…

Like others in the teaching profession, second language education (SLE) teachers have been subjected in recent years to a process of work intensification and accountability. This process makes use of externally developed sets of behavioral objectives, assessment instruments, commercially produced classroom materials, and externally controlled…

The author contends that the topical content of ESL lesson materials in schools and universities is of ethical significance. Based on an established model for ethical judgment in social services, five guidelines for ethical selection of lesson topics are proposed and illustrated. Lesson topics must help ESL students: (a) adjust to local…

The language-through-content movement of the past decade has promoted the use of authentic texts for language-learning purposes. Content-based instruction, however, has had the effect of emphasizing content as the driver of curriculum rather than language-learning objectives in the language-through-content equation. Longitudinal studies of ESL…

Over the last 15 years, the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has facilitated a revolution in how we use language. Online environments have facilitated creative and variable spelling using code hybridization and stylistic use of mechanical conventions such as punctuation and capitalization, lexical coinages, new…

A survey of 63 employees in LINC programs in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta Indicated that the mandate of LINC to incorporate information on "Canadian values" remains partly unfulfilled. Although professionally trained ESL instructors may be equipped to incorporate Canadian values into the content of classroom instruction, those…

This article reports on the results of a survey of pedagogical grammar courses in MATESOL programs in the United States and Canada. An analysis of 39 self-reporting questionnaires and 23 course syllabi provides much-needed information about the content and emphasis of the courses and how pedagogical grammar is defined in current TESOL training…