The Diary an English Teacher Did Not Keep

Abstract

Let me begin with a disclaimer. I am not very sure whether disclaimers are permitted in a volume of scholarly papers. And yet, disclaimers have a way of getting into the lived experience of some academicians, especially those who teach language and literature.  We get to listen to unspoken disclaimers from students in the English language classroom, for example, when we ask questions.  The unspoken has a particular narrative force for it puts our question under erasure.  The disclaimer is written over in the language teacher’s classroom. There are different kinds of disclaimers like the one I make when I say that I am not an ELT specialist. It is quite possible to explain the potential of disclaimers and invest them with meaning. I build my disclaimer on the claim that I am not a language specialist in that sense and I do not have any formal training in the teaching and learning of English.  My disclaimer that I am not an English Language Teaching specialist rests, perhaps paradoxically, on the claim that I am an English teacher.  Disclaimers sometimes are followed by confessions.  I never studied ELT or even ESP for that matter. I am aware of the possibility that my disclaimer could find some space alongside the disquisitions of those colleagues trained in ELT and ESP.