Teaching English As A Foreign Language To Foreigners

Teaching English as a foreign language requires very different approaches if we consider the recipients of the didactic process. Concerning the practical aspects of the primary task of a language instructor, namely teaching, skills of all sorts are required in order to be able to use best methods and most appropriate resources and up to date materials and devices. Moreover, to teach students of your own mother tongue is one very distinct thing from teaching foreigners. These two categories, namely students of the same mother tongue as their teacher and foreigners, have two things in common, namely: first, they are the subjects on whom the activity of teaching English is to be applied and second, this language is not their native tongue. These facts can thus be reduced to one idea: addressing to recipients of EFL teaching. Still, there is a big difference between teaching the first category mentioned, those who have the same mother tongue as the teacher and teaching the second category, foreigners, to whom not even the vaguest hints can be provided in other language than English. There comes a new challenge, an extra endeavour for an even more special approach. This study undertakes to present some of the distinctions entailed at the level of teaching methods and to parallel the diverse methodological approaches for the two situations presented. Are the four skills that language acquisition assumes to be taught distinctly and shall the approaches in each particular situation differ from one case to the other or not too much? It takes some distinct features to be or, better saying, to become a teacher of languages; and to teach English as foreign language to foreigners is a new development within this typology, a diverse dimension. New levels of character traits are instinctively reached by instructors in order to better cope, unconsciously, psychologically and emotionally, with the ‘upgraded’ challenges.