Category: EFL Industry

The development of technology, not least since the pandemic, has made online lessons a more acceptable and reputable form of English teaching, and education has certainly gone on leaps and bounds. However, there is much to still learn as this is a relatively new field of language education, and many language teachers still need to develop the skills necessary to be able to deliver quality online lessons. However, how do we go about it?

When I was starting out as an English Language Teacher, there was a table of Teacher’s Core Competencies which Cambridge English had developed back in the early-2010s but nowadays I believe it is now renamed as the Cambridge English Teaching Framework. Not much has changed but it offered in-class teachers the opportunity to reflect and review their own teaching practices as language educators. Nowadays, Cambridge English envisage the Teaching Framework to:

• help teachers to identify where they are in their professional career
• help teachers and their employers to think about where to go next and identify development activities to get there.

Cambridge English, Aim of Framework (2024)

Essentially there are five categories that attempt to connect with all elements of English teaching:

• Learning and the Learner
• Teaching, Learning and Assessment
• Language Ability
• Language Knowledge and Awareness for Teaching
• Professional Development and Values

However, despite the five key components, which are incredibly thorough and well thought through, it appears to not have been updated to include aspects of online language teaching – not least after COVID-19. The core values and breakdown of the categories is available on the Cambridge English website to download, and you can also find out more information about how and why the categories were created.

The current competencies shared by Cambridge English do not necessarily include an aspect of online language teaching, as it can be obviously viewed rather differently compared to face-to-face language teaching. Looking at the Teaching Framework Summary linked above, common words related to online teaching have not been included (i.e., ‘technology’, ‘online’, ‘remote’, etc.). Therefore, I would suggest that the Teaching Framework should have been updated to include the already growing presence of online education and the many successful platforms that are now being used by reputable organisations such as the British Council.

On the one hand we have many institutions embracing online education, while on the other hand a perceived lack of professional standing for online education. It is perhaps about time that Cambridge update and modernise their Teaching Framework to accommodate the well-established online teaching industry to help fledging English teachers broaden their knowledge and awareness, rather than keeping things as they were pre-pandemic. This would aid the professionalism of the online teaching industry, draw interest from stakeholders curious about the teaching of English online, and potentially connect the online CELTA course to the main tenets of remote simultaneous education.

There are a few questions to ponder while continuing this conversation:

• What are your thoughts and ideas about the acceptance of online language teaching post-pandemic?
• To what extent is there a two tier policy between face-to-face and online English teaching?
• How much is it a fallacy to disregard an already established online teaching industry?
• Do you believe that there should be an improvement with the Teaching Framework to incorporate online English teaching?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.