“ESL” is accepted here, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. In the world of TESOL, ESL has a much more specific purpose than other reasons for learning English. An ESL class is intended to get learners out into the real world, ready to use English, the language they hear everywhere around them and need to get around, because they are in an English-speaking location.
What Taiwan claims to sell is EFL — English as a foreign language. English is taught as a foreign language here, and done with no intention of producing actual English speakers.
Incorrectly using terminology in any other industry would get you laughed out of the room. The fact that people continue to call it “ESL” here while all TESOL programs make a clear distinction on day one when ESL vs. other titles should be used, should be red flag number 1 that the whole English language instruction concept in Taiwan has always been a farce, run predominantly by people who only want to make money, not actually teach anything. (There are of course exceptions, but those are rare)
Yeah I dont know why it was removed either, but I guess I had better things to do today than get upset about my correcting of terminology getting temped…
Most places in the US now call it “EL” (English learners) because people are unaware of the field of “second language acquisition” and think its “unfair” to call English a “second” language when many learners already speak multiple languages. If anyone at the top making these decisions took a moment to understand that “second language” refers to “language learned after a first language has already been acquired in early childhood” and not literally “the second language that someone learns”, we wouldn’t have to come up with so many new terms. And “EL” is a step away from “ELL” because “learners of English” are learning “English and the culture” and not just the “English language”.
What is “ENL”? English as a new language? That’s less inclusive than ESL — for many they sat in English classes for years before arriving in the US!
But even with all the individual states coming up with increasingly more annoying ways to refer to people that are learning English, my state license still says “ESL”, not “EL” or “ELL” or “ENL”