BRAZ-TESOL: Plenary “Challenges, trends and aspirations in ELT” (Brock Brady)

Brock Brady spoke as past president of TESOL about the irony that demand for ELT is on the up and up, and yet the pressures on the profession threaten to bring standards lower and lower. Among these pressures is the assumption that simply knowing the language as a native speaker is sufficient. ELT is not valued as a profession – and not paid as one either. There is also the commodization of ELT, and commercial competition among key players such as examining boards and publishers, with a pressure to value profit margin more than integrity/quality. Finally, there is the tendancy to regard English’s status as a global language as some kind of supremacy of the language, with the consequent undervaluing of other languages. Brock suggests that the key roles for TESOL in the future will be defining the profession, establishing quality control criteria and advocating a respectful coexistance of English in a multilingual world.