TESOL AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL: A GLOBAL CONCERN

Abstract

In this age of speed and abbreviations, alphabetic contractions proliferate apace and often puzzle. The 1968 edition of the Dictionary of Acronyms astoundingly contains more than 50,000 entries. While many of these occur in military (MIRV), scientific (DDT), and social welfare (CARE) fields, they are now appearing more frequently in education. English second language teaching, which has received its greatest impetus since World War II, has its quota of initialisms to set apart the various applications of its special methodology. Among these TESOL, or teaching English to speakers of other languages, is probably the most all-embracing. It covers programs for working adults as well as those for children and for students in institutions of higher education. At the university level, several acronyms have been devised to describe the different kinds of programs, approaches and correspondingly different goals established for each.