Professional Relevance in a Multilingual World

Abstract

In renewing my TESOL membership for 2008, I noted that the mem bership letter stated that TESOL is a professional organization for English language educators. This was of particular interest as I pre pared for TESOL's Bilingual Education Interest Section 2008 session titled Imagining Multilingual TESOL, because on a global scale, English language educators are crucially interested in multilingualism. However, being relevant to English language educators in different parts of the world is a tall order which requires that TESOL address differences as well as commonalities in international teaching contexts (e.g., culturally embedded teacher and student roles, class size, availability of resources). Is it possible to do so? Can we be relevant both globally and locally? I would like to address these questions with specific reference to multilin gualism and second language learning. When I use the term multilingual ism throughout this article, I mean it to include learning of two or more languages. A quick look at our organizational history shows that there has been a predominant interest in English teaching and learning in the United States, but also a continuing concern with English teaching worldwide. In TESOL Quarterly's first issue, H. B. Allen (1967) introduced three con cerns for research in TESOL: teaching English overseas, teaching English to foreign students in the United States, and teaching English as a second language (ESL) to U.S. residents, many of them U.S. citizens (pp. 4-5). Along with this bifocal view (national and international), there have been consistent attempts to consider theoretical foundations and pedagogical adaptations for second language and foreign language contexts. What is often missing from these attempts is recognition that in all cases, second and foreign language learning involves multilinguals or emergent multi linguals (see Garcia, this issue). Correspondingly, though many educa tors tend to categorize themselves as ESL, EFL (English as a foreign language), or bilingual teachers, all ESL/EFL teachers are fundamen tally teachers of multilingualism. TESOL's Bilingual Education Interest Section (BEIS) was one of the earliest interest sections to be established. However, it is somewhat ironic that TESOL has a bilingual education interest section at all, as if bilingualism is not at the heart of all we do. Currently it is clear (at least from the point of view of one who works outside of the United States,