ABSTRACT
As a preliminary way of exploring the job of English language teaching (ELT), as well as to illustrate the motivation of the book, the chapter begins with a short autobiographical account of the author’s time working in the commercial ELT industry. Following this is an overview of many of the issues affecting teachers in the ELT industry globally, with reference to commercial language teaching in the US, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Japan, and Canada, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter then argues that some of the details many would consider fundamental in the discussion of work (wages, length of working time, and benefits among others) are seldom addressed rigorously in scholarly work which deals with the job of English language teaching. The chapter concludes with a summary of the aims of the book which are to shed light on: how language education and profit interrelate; how language teachers are valued; and what such findings can offer further work which takes up matters of political economy and language, and/or language teaching in contexts across the globe.
