​Teaching More Than Just (sic.) English​ – Rakesh Bhanot | ELT Summit 2020

When you teach students, they learn not ‘more-or-less’ what you teach them, but ‘more’ AND ‘less’. (Henry Widdowson) Language teachers are much more than mere purveyors of lexical items and the rules of grammar. For example, in addition to playing roles such as surrogate parents, social workers, administrators, walking encyclopedias et al, they (wittingly or otherwise) help to shape the ideas and opinions of their students by either confirming or challenging their views. Moreover, (the English) language itself can be charged with being ‘prejudiced’; in other words, guilty of being racist, sexist, classist, etc. (Cf. The English Language is my Enemy by Ossie Davis, 1967; Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates, 2014; or, even, a simple sentence such as “she was poor but honest”.) Language teachers have to decide whether they actively address such issues in the classroom, or, somehow, pretend to be neutral, and dedicated followers of the PARSNIP principle, by ignoring taboo subjects in ELT. In this presentation, I would like to share a variety of activities that I have used in ELT classes over many years in order to address ‘sensitive’ issues in a non-threatening and pedagogically effective way. Language teaching is not (and can never be) neutral. Indeed, it is ‘not an innocent business’ (Harold Rosen, personal communication). Both through ‘o-mission’ and ‘co-mission’, language teachers can, and do, influence what happens in the classroom in order to bring about social justice, as well as to develop the much-vaunted skill of ‘critical thinking’ in their students.​