Page 5 - ELG2003 Mar Issue 469

El•Gazette 469.qxp_El•Gazette 469 25/02/2020 21:49 Page 5

WELCOME . EDITORS’ LETTER

The sun sets on two

ELT empires

theteam .

The cosy hegemony of the US and the UK is ending. MELANIE BUTLER,
Melanie Butler and Ron Ragsdale examine why editor-in-chief,
started teaching EFL in
Iran in 1975. She worked
Shortly after the Second World War, representatives of the UK and the US government met at a for the BBC World
British country mansion to divide the world into spheres of influence for English Language Teaching Service, Pearson/
(ELT). The British got Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. America took Longman and MET
magazine before taking over at the
East Asia and Latin America. Gazette in 1987 and also launching
But as the last evacuation flights leave Wuhan, as we report on page 6, it is not just the two ELT Study Travel magazine. Educated in ten
superpowers flying their teachers out. Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders have been flown schools in seven countries, she speaks
home, with the Irish hitching a ride on the UK flights. fluent French and Spanish and rather
Is the age of the Anglo-American ELT hegemony over? As two editors from the two ELT rusty Italian.

superpowers, one British and the other American, it looks like it to us. RON RAGSDALE,
Even in the glory days, the duopoly was not in lockstep, following different methodological managing editor,
pathways. Take the difference in the way we educate children from non-English speaking gained his MA-TESOL at
backgrounds. Portland State University
As we report on page 10, most US states educate English Language Learners (ELLs) separately from in Oregon 25 years ago,
and has worked in ELT
their L1 peers for part or all of the school day. As our report on the latest research shows, L2 children publishing ever since,
in ‘sheltered’ English-only programmes are with teaching stints in Istanbul and
seen as less able by their teachers, and Cairo. In addition to managing teams at
The best ELL perform worse on tests, than L2 children with Pearson and Cambridge ELT, including
the same level of English who are assigned to as Publishing Director, Ron has worked
outcomes are found in mainstream or bilingual classes. with Ministries and local partners in over
30 countries.
The whole idea of separating children with
Canada, New Zealand what the British call ‘English as an Additional MATT SALUSBURY, news
editor and journalist, has
and Australia. Language’ (EALs) comes as a shock in the worked for EL Gazette
UK, where the practice has been banned
since the 1980s as discriminatory. Bilingual since 2007. He is an
activist in the National
programmes are not an option in a country where 20 languages in one school is commonplace and one Union of Journalists and
London school boasts 71. co-edits its newsletter,
So, which of the big two does best? The results of ELLs in the Pisa tests show the British edging it The Freelance. He taught English for 15
years in the Netherlands, in Turkey, in a
over the US, but the best ELL outcomes are found in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, which all North London further education college
have a higher percentage of L2 school children than the ‘big two’. and now as an English for Academic
The situation appears to be the same in the private language school market, where the UK and the Purposes tutor at the London School of
US appear to be taking the largest hit, as we report on page 12. In both countries, teachers are taking Economics. He is a native English
action, with teachers protesting their redundancy in London on page 7, while in Global News, a US speaker and is also fluent in Dutch.

ELL specialist teacher is running to be speaker of the Kentucky legislature. GILL RAGSDALE,
Are the Irish and the Canadians taking over? Maybe. They have an advantage: they are not research news reporter,
monolingual countries, they run school systems in more than one language. The evidence and the has a PhD in
neuroscience is clear: the monolingual mindset that bans L1 in class needs to go. Evolutionary
Ask Josefina Tinajero, our bilingual thought leader. She tells us on page 30 what it felt liked being Anthropology from
Cambridge, and teaches
an L1 Spanish speaker dubbed slow at reading in the second grade of an English-only school. Psychology with the
“I felt ashamed and humiliated, frustrated and at times even angry. Of course, I could read! There Open University, but also holds an RSA-
just weren’t any books in Spanish …mine became a world of social isolation and distance.” Cert TEFL. Gill has taught EFL in the UK,
This English-only Empire must end, ojalá! Turkey, Egypt and to refugees in the
Calais ‘Jungle’ in France. She currently
MELANIE BUTLER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RON RAGSDALE, MANAGING EDITOR teaches English to refugees in the UK.

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