Language teaching can be described as teaching people a foreign language so that they can understand and speak the language. The goals of ELT or language teaching are both far-reaching and highly individualized. This is because most of the answers on why a person would like to learn a second language come from the individuals involved. Although most of the reasons may be individualized, some of the reasons are universal. These include the idea that English language is one of the global languages spoken in a large number of countries worldwide. From a general perspective, people cite various reasons for learning this language that include but not limited to the future of one’s career, travelling reasons especially in countries that speak English, to gain a better comprehension of the ways of life experienced in the countries where the language is spoken, and to be able to live in a country where the language is spoken. The external goals relate to the usage of the learnt language outside of the classroom context. This could be usage of the language while travelling around or when using the language in trains. It can also be seen when an individual attends lectures in another country or when surviving in a country as a refugee. These contexts represent the usage of a language to fulfill the external category. On the side of the internal category, the goals are related to the individual’s mental development. After learning the second language, the individuals may begin thinking differently, start approaching language from a different perspective, and become better citizens because of the effects of learning a new language. This is because a new language can have diverse effects on the learners’ minds (Nunan and David 48-52). While the L1 language may train the brain, the L2 can increase the individual’s awareness. In most instances and for most individuals, external reasons dominate the language teaching methodology. Self-development is also a key reason of learning a second language.

3. Lang1 a human representation system
Lang2 an abstract external entity
Lang3 a set of actual or potential sentences
Lang4 the possession of a community
Lang5 the knowledge in the mind of an individual
Five meanings of language’
Cook (2007) distinguished five meanings of language,
summarized in the following table:

4. Language teachers must know!

5. Like human beings in general, people who use a
second language, L2 users, come in all shapes and
sizes, races, and creeds and can be divided up in
many ways. In other words there are many possible
goals in language learning, amounting to choice of
which kind of L2 user you want to be.

6. Kihaya (at home)
Kishawhili (in Elementary)
English (in
Secondary)
Latin (when he trained to be a priest)
French (out of
curiosity)
Rukiga (when he went to Uganda)
Kikamba (when he went to Kenya)
Spanish (in Illinois and needs to
communicate with his parishioners
in Spanish)

8.  In the area where you live, how many languages are
spoken?
Officially or actually?
 How many languages do you know?
How many do you use in a day?
 Would you, as a parent, bring up children to
speak two languages or not?Why?

9. Keywords
elite bilingualism: either the decision by parents to bring up children through
two languages, or societies in which members of a ruling group speak a
secondlanguage
official language: language(s) recognized by a country for official purposes
multilingualism: countries or situations where more than one language is
used for everyday purposes
linguistic imperialism: the means by which a ‘center’ country dominates
‘periphery 'countries by making them use its language

11. Parental
choice
Being an
expatriate
Higher
Status

12. George Saunders (1982) describes how
he and his wife decided to bring up their
children in German in Australia, though
neither of them was a native speaker.
Parental
choice
Others have three languages in the
family; Philip Riley’s children spoke
English and Swedish at home and
French at school (Harding Riley, 1986).

13. Being an
expatriate
One of the common challenges of
living abroad is where English is
not widely spoken. That would
make communicating with the
locals difficult. So, learning the
common language of that particular
location before you leave will
definitely help.

14. Higher
Status
Choosing this type of bilingual
education usually depends on
having money. While a second
language is often considered a
‘problem’ in the education of lower-
status people. It is also seen as a
mark of distinction in those of
higher status.

15. Muslims
Jews
Hindu
Quran/Prayers in Arabic
Prayers in Hebrew
Sanskrit
Catholic Latin

16. English (Official)
Arabic (Religious)
Urdu (National)
Local
languages

18. Internationalism and Second Languages

20. 1. People speaking their native language.
2.People using an L2 within the majority community.
3. People historically from a particular community (re-)acquiring
its language as L2.
4. People speaking an L2 as short-term visitors to another
country or to short-term visitors to their country.

21. 5. People using an L2 with spouses or friends.
6. People using an L2 internationally for specific functions.
7. Students and teachers acquiring or conveying an
education through an L2.
8. Pupils and teachers learning or teaching L2 in school.

22. 1. People speaking their native language.
Some people use their native language exclusively. So monolingual
Londoners speak English with each other and potentially with anybody else
who speaks English in the world; in London they make up the sea, so to
speak. But native speakers may also be an island in a sea; deaf people in
London use British Sign Language in the midst of the hearing. And, of
course, many native speakers of one language are L2 users of another
language rather than monolinguals.

23. 2.People using an L2 within the majority community.
Some residents use a second language to communicate with the majority
language group, say, resident Bengalis in Tower Hamlets using English as a
central language for their everyday contacts with other citizens of London. Often
this group is permanent and may pre-date the existence of the majority
community, such as Aboriginals in Australia. They are using the second language
for practical purposes– the classic ‘second language’ situation – while having a
first language for other social and cultural purposes. In addition, many people
living in multilingual communities use the second language as a central language
with speakers of minority language groups other than their own, essentially as a
local lingua franca. The Bengali L1 shop owner in Tower Hamlets uses English for
speaking with Arabic L1 customers, both equally English in nationality, true of most
of the L1 speakers of the 300 languages of London (Baker and Eversley, 2000).
Sometimes the L2 lingua franca crosses national borders. Swahili has 770,000
native speakers, but 30 million lingua franca speakers spread across several
African countries(Gordon, 2005).

24. 3. People historically from a particular community (re-)acquiring its
language as L2.
The descendants of a particular cultural or ethnic group may want to learn its
language, for instance, to talk to their grandparents who were first-generation
incomers. Language maintenance classes take place in London ranging from
Polish to Greek. Some people are trying to find their roots through language.
Others are returning to their country of historical origin and need to reacquire the
language, or sometimes to acquire it for the first time. One example is Puerto
Ricans returning from the USA to Puerto Rico (Clachar, 1997),rejoining a
community of L1 speakers as L2 users. Another group are the children of expats
going back to the country their family originally came from, say, Japanese children
returning to Japan (Kanno, 2000); these need to acquire the language of the
homeland for practical purposes as well as cultural identity, many finding it an
extremely difficult task.

25. 4. People speaking an L2 as short-term visitors to another country or to
short-termvisitors to their country.
Some people are short-term visitors to another country, say, tourists. English for tourism is no
longer a matter of English-speaking tourists going to non-English speaking countries, or non-
English-speaking tourists going to English-speaking countries, as we have seen. Some tourists
may nevertheless try to learn the language of a country before visiting it – English people
learning French to go to France, Japanese learning Spanish to visit Spain. English for tourism is
a theme inmost EFL coursebooks, Spanish for tourism a key attraction for evening classes in
England. Other short-term visitors to another country include: athletes going to the Olympic
Games, businessmen attending conferences, policemen investigating crimes, pilgrims, retirees
visiting their villas in Spain – the list is endless. Again, some may want to use the central
language of the country, some a language that will get them by, such as Latin or Klingon at
conferences of their devotees.
The reverse is people using an L2 with visitors to their country, whether the
visitor’s L1 as with Japanese people in Tokyo using English with English-speaking
L1 visitors, or the visitor’s L2 as with Japanese using English with L1 German speaking
visitors.

26. 5. People using an L2 with spouses or friends.
L2 users may speak their second language within a small social group.
People have often joked that the best way of learning a language is to marry
someone who speaks it; such married bilingual couples feel they are quite
capable of passing for native speakers (Piller, 2002). Parents can choose to
use a language with their children that they will not encounter outside the
home. Indeed, unrelated pairs of people can decide to use a second
language: Henry VIII wrote love letters to Anne
Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon in French (Vatican City, n.d.), the language
of courtly love.

27. 6. People using an L2 internationally for specific functions
English as lingua franca (ELF) belongs to a variety of groups of speakers. One
is made up of academics, using the language for academic journals and
conferences everywhere. Other groups use specially designed varieties of
English, like Sea Speak for mariners (Weeks et al., 1988) or ASD Simplified
Technical English, a carefully restricted English for technical writing (ASD,
2007). And of course, international business uses English regardless of L1, say,
Danish businessmen talking to Indians or Syrians on the phone (Firth, 1996).
People who speak ELF belong to communities that cross frontiers, united by a
common interest. In one view, English no longer counts as learning another
language; it is an addition to the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic),
necessary for primary school children everywhere (Graddol, 2006). But super
central languages also have specialized transnational uses, for instance,
Japanese in martial arts or Arabic for Muslims.

28. 7. Students and teachers acquiring or conveying an
education through an L2.
Another group of L2 users are gaining an education through a second
language, as we saw earlier. On the one hand, they may be another L2
minority island in an L1 sea; in the Netherlands, universities use English
alongside Dutch. In reverse, students go to another country to get their
higher education, Zaireans to Paris, Greeks to England. In other words, a
second language is the vehicle for education, more or less regardless of
its native speakers (except in so far as they can profit by teaching ‘their’
language). Within this general framework comes the elite bilingualism of
children educated in multilingual schools.

29. 8. Pupils and teachers learning or teaching L2 in school.
Finally, children are taught a second language as part of the school curriculum –the classic
‘foreign’ language situation, whether French in England or Spanish in Japan. The children do not
themselves form a community of users – perhaps the only group we can really call ‘learners’
rather than users. Often the goal is to get through the hurdles set by the examination system –
language as a school subject, taught and assessed like other subjects. Members of this group are
unique in not having an L2 identity of their own; their use is not an end in itself so much as the
route to getting somewhere else. Doubtless many other groups could be added, for example,
interpreters, whether professionals or children helping their parents, a widespread use in minority
groups. Some use the second language to native speakers, some to other non-native speakers.
The goal of becoming a native speaker or even understanding a native speaker is beside the
point; the aim is to become an efficient L2 user. Separating community from the monolingual
native speaker leads to new groupings of speakers. Moreover an individual may have multiple
memberships in these groups: a professional footballer coming to London needs not just the
visitor language to cope with living there, but also the specialized ELF of football for
interacting with the rest of the team (Kellerman et al., 2005) – 60 per cent of league footballers in
England at the time of writing (2008) are non-native speakers of English.

30. Language and groups
● Language users are members of many possible groups,
ranging from the family to the nation.
● Many groups are genuinely multilingual rather than
monolingual.
● It is crucial to see L2 users as belonging to many groups
and as being part of a new group of L2 users, rather than as
supplicants to join native speaker groups.

31. Focusing questions
● Do you think people who go to live in another country
should either learn the majority language and forget
their own or adopt the majority language for some
everyday purposes, or try to keep both the majority
language and their L1 going?
● What goals do you or your students have for their
second language outside their own country? Careers?
Education? Access to information? Travel?

32. Keywords
assimilationist teaching: teaching that expects people to give up their
native languages and to become speakers of the majority central language
of the country
transitional L2 teaching: teaching that allows people to function in a
central language, without necessarily losing or devaluing the first language
language maintenance and bilingual language teaching: teaching to
maintain or extend the minority local language within its own group
submersion teaching: extreme sink-or-swim form of assimilationist
teaching in which minority language children are put in majority language
classes

33. What does this diversity of functions and group
memberships mean for L2 learning and teaching?
We can make a broad division between central goals
which foster the second language within the country,
international goals which foster it for use outside the
country and individual goals which aim at developing
the potential of the individual learner.

34. Central goals foster a second language within
a society.
● Assimilationist language teaching: minority speakers learn
the majority central language and relinquish their first language.
● Transitional language teaching: minority speakers learn to
function in the majority central language for some purposes,
without giving up the first language.
● Language maintenance and bilingual language teaching:
minority speakers learn to function in both languages.

35. International goals foster a second
language for use outside the society.
● Careers that require a second language.
● Higher education.
● Access to research and information.
● Travel.

36. Individual goals develop qualities in the learner
rather than language per se.
● Understanding of foreign cultures.
● Understanding language itself.
● Cognitive training.
● General educational values.
● Learning the second language as an academic
subject.