Acronyming Our Way to Understanding

CELTA used to stand for something else but now we know it's a combination of several approaches to teaching English. CELTA just avoids too much concentration on culture.

ESL, I finally see, has to do with teaching folks who come to the US or Britain or an English-speaking country and want to make English his/her second language. English as a Second Language now makes sense as a perfectly acceptable acronym.

EFL, we're told, is for the English speakers who simply need to use English with non-English speakers who don't speak the same language as they do. For instance, an Ethiopian in Egypt wants to buy products from an Italian company. They might take EFL classes for those for whom English is simply a foreign language but won't become their second adopted language, get it?

Cool, huh?

As for the TP, the PPP, the ICP and all the other alphabet soup particles flying through the classroom's verbal airspace, well, one day at a time seems to be a great adage.