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dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

If you are looking for an informative post about it then I have to apologise, this is a *beep*.

Where does our profession begin? Many say that the oldest profession is prostitution, maybe not. Which is greater? Communicating or getting your end away.?

If we look at EFL as communication then we could say that our industry began with the first native speakers of English who were explorers and bumped into a few indigenous folks. But I doubt that sir Walter Raleigh backchained or even knew what PPP was.

So we move on a few hundred years. Soldiers in WW1. How did they communicate with prisoners? Is this EFL? When oh when did it all begin? When did RSA and Trinity award the first certificates?

Maybe John and Scot started it all and are living off the profits?

Seriously though where does it all begin? I know that Krashen is often misquoted about SLA. But as he himself said. All his research is about FIRST language acquisition.

John, care to own up?

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

Read *beep* as q u e e r y!

leby26 · Joined: 30 Jan 2004 Posts: 68

I'd go back further dmb- it may or may not pre-date Colonialism;Imperialism; discovery of the 'new world' or the Americas and the age of explorers (ugh, i'm a history major, I should know this), who knows ...maybe john and scot went back in time Shocked

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

What???? It began with dinosaurs?

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

I mean, TEFL is an offshoot of teaching languages to speakers of a different mother tongue; go back to Babylon, which must have experienced the world's first influx of foreign migrants speaking different mother tongues.
In Roman Jerusalem, for instance, Greek was widely spoken by Jews, while the less-educated Jews used ARAMAIC, AND THE OFFICIALS HAD lATIN.

khmerhit · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 9:10 am Post subject:

I believe it started with the rise to prominence of Scooby Doo.

advisedly yrs

el khmer heet Wink

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

EFL took off to some extent in the fifties. The International House franchise started around then.

It was also at the end of the fifties that the British Council stopped hiring interesting people and started hiring EFL teachers instead.

khmerhit · Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 9:02 am Post subject:

Yes, i agree, there were some interesting people employed by the British Council--once upon a time. Such as Bernard Spencer and Lawrence Durrell. There motto nowadays appears to be "the blander the better."

RIP Peter Ustinov.