Trends in ELT: Blurred Boundaries

A little over a year ago, I gave a presentation at the University of Seattle in Seattle, Washington on the topic of future trends in ELT. I entitled it: Blurred Boundaries: The Future of English Language Learning and Teaching. When I spoke of blurred boundaries, I was referring to boundaries between learner and teacher, learning and teaching, and life and learning. In retrospect, I’m glad I used the term, although little did I anticipate how blurred the boundaries would actually become over the last year.

The lecture I gave was for EFL/ESL instructors at the university, and basically related to the future of ELT as applied to an institutional setting. I touched briefly on Web 2.0 technologies, reviewing the use of wikis, blogs and podcasts. I had no idea, however, that social networking platforms such as Facebook and Second Life would have such an amazing snowball effect on both life and learning over the past year, and that the boundaries would blur even further.

Web 2.0, Social Networking Platforms and ELT

Speck (1996) suggests that when “goals and objectives are considered realistic and relevant to the learner’s personal and professional needs,” learners display greater commitment to learning. How true – we are motivated to learn what we need to know and what can help us in our lives. This principle has underpinned the reasons for language learning through the ages; people have learned languages for many reasons–to understand religion, to read great literature, to successfully integrate into new societies and, more recently, to communicate with others on a global scale. The use of Web 2.0 technologies extends the need to a new, virtual world. For people to develop a presence on social networking platforms, knowledge of English becomes an enabler.

Courses and products that leverage this tidal wave of interconnectedness of people by providing learners with the skills necessary to develop their online presence will be fulfilling objectives that take into account realistic and relevant uses of language. A new text-type has been born, that of the social networking profile, and a new jargon, the language of online interaction, must be presented.

Reinventing our Identities as Teachers 

So yes, 2008 will bring with it an even further blurring of the boundaries and a need for yet, once again, a reframing of our identities as teachers.  Social networking platforms may prove to be the great leveler of the 21st century. We will have to cope with the flattening of status in the world; if presidential candidates and plain folks are equal on Facebook and Youtube, then we as teachers must certainly be willing to expose who we are to our students. I have no doubt that, just as in the past, we will recreate ourselves to meet these new challenges.