Welcome to your new vacation (ooops - sorry, I meant to type vocation) as an English language teacher.
One of the first things you may have noticed in this new career is the abundance of confusing acronyms, which you should know is basically one way long term practitioners have attempted to make language teaching more hip and yet more scientific/technical.
Hence, I thought I should do my small bit and offer some assistance to those new teachers out there trying to sort out their ELFs from their EFLs, and all that jazz. This list is not exhaustive, but I hope it forms a useful starting point for you!
EFL - English as a Forced Language
ELF - English for Leprechauns who are Frank
ESL - English as a Steamy Language
ELL - English Language Labourers
EAL - English as an Additional Laugh
ESP - English for Spanish People
EAP - English for Academic Pretense
IATEFL - International Association of Travelers to England for Lunch
CELTA - the Cost of English Language Teaching is Alarming
DELTA - Discarded English Language Teachers Association
CLT - Canned Language Teaching
GTM - Gloriously Tedious Method
ALM - Automatic Lips Method
CALL - now synonymous with Skype
CLIL - Clicky Language Instruction Lark
ZPD - Zipped Pseudo Dithering
CB - Coarse Book
WB - Wink Book (while glancing at publishing profit-loss balance sheet)
i+1 - Income + more income (or Coarse Book with Wink Book attached)
TG - Tour Guide
IWB - Infectious Weapon against Boredom
PRESET - Pre-Service Expensive Tricks
INSET - In-Service Entertainment and Time-wasting
TTT - Tall Tales and occasionally True
STT - Socially Transmitted Tentativeness
TOEFL - Test Of English as a Fabricated Language
TOEIC - Test of English from an Introverted Corporation
IELTS - International English Language Torture Service
PTE - Pear-shaped Test of English
So there you have it - as I said, by no means a complete list, but I hope it gives you something to toss about the staff room and show your colleagues how informed and groovy you are.
:-)
