ESL vs. EFL

My fiance used to be an ESL learner at Vancouver Island University. ESL stands for English as a Second Language. I understand this is a commonly used term, but so many English language learners speak more than one language prior to learning English. My fiance, for example, speaks 4 languages! This doesn't include the various dialects he knows from his home country or Italian, a language he has studied but isn't fluent in. This is difficult for a native Canadian such as myself to understand and comprehend! After all, English is my first language and French was studied within the Canadian curriculum, but I don't consider myself to be fluent.

Comprehend! How do all these languages remain separate within streams of thought? I pose this question due to my own language learning experiences. When I studied Spanish in my undergraduate years I would add French words into my Spanish sentences without even knowing it probably because the languages are similar in terms of vocabulary and structure. THIS REALLY SCARED ME! I thought I was speaking a perfectly good sentence until I was told about my added French words!

Although I was horrified by the fact of combining two languages unknowingly, I quickly learned my error and vowed not to repeat it! This is how languages are learned! DON'T BE AFRAID TO MAKE MISTAKES! I do not consider myself to be a shy person, but insecurities creep into me when asked to speak in French. Knowing my icky feeling having to speak a foreign language in front of my peers, I take many considerations into classroom EFL, English as a Foreign Language, teaching in order to minimize such discomfort and encourage learning.

My experience allows me to better understand language learning and shed insight into what my students might also be experiencing. It is also important to understand what languages students speak and when they were learned...as children or adults. I find most of my learners have been taught more than one other language. Thus I find the term ESL misleading for the most part and prefer to use the more accurate descriptive term EFL, however I do occasionally use the more commonly known term, ESL.