Applied Linguistics and Exhausting Buzzword Labyrinths: Call for ELT Charter

Applied Linguistics and Exhausting Buzzword Labyrinths: Call for ELT Charter

English language teaching has grown into both an ever-expanding field of research and a multi-million dollar enterprise. The thrust to professionalize, the tendency to establish more specificity and technicality, and the attempt to define new borders for new discourse communities, however, seem to have led to the ‘creeping’ of potentially ill-defined, unformulated and even gratuitous terminologies and buzzwords. The paper focuses primarily on the undesirable consequences of such unhealthy buzzword mushrooming by discussing the following issues along with examples: problems in definition, poor classroom practice, problems in material development, recurring bandwagonisms, unappreciative look to the past and ripe context for chaos. It is argued that the proliferation of some of these quasi-technical terms, labels and buzzwords in ELT might bring about inadvertent confusions, misinterpretations and controversies and, as a result, exhaust ELT people in buzzword labyrinths. It is also maintained that the development of a grand ELT charter can provide a common denominator which can help ELT citizens not get swept along the tides and currents of terms, labels and buzzwords.

English language teaching has grown into both an ever-expanding field of research and a multi-million dollar enterprise. The thrust to professionalize, the tendency to establish more specificity and technicality, and the attempt to define new borders for new discourse communities, however, seem to have led to the ‘creeping’ of potentially ill-defined, unformulated and even gratuitous terminologies and buzzwords. The paper focuses primarily on the undesirable consequences of such unhealthy buzzword mushrooming by discussing the following issues along with examples: problems in definition, poor classroom practice, problems in material development, recurring bandwagonisms, unappreciative look to the past and ripe context for chaos. It is argued that the proliferation of some of these quasi-technical terms, labels and buzzwords in ELT might bring about inadvertent confusions, misinterpretations and controversies and, as a result, exhaust ELT people in buzzword labyrinths. It is also maintained that the development of a grand ELT charter can provide a common denominator which can help ELT citizens not get swept along the tides and currents of terms, labels and buzzwords.