ABSTRACT
The development and deepening of engagement with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), has a short history in Ireland. Five overlapping shifts in attitude can be clearly identified as part of this process of engagement with ESOL: a historical ambivalence towards English, a deficit approach to English language learning, migration to Ireland, social tensions and, finally, the promise of a rights-based approach to ESOL. Early ESOL efforts, which related to refugees and asylum seekers, developed from a deficit model of language learning and teaching. Sixteen Education Training Boards (ETBs) were set up in the place of the former Vocational Education Committees (VECs). An ethnically and linguistically diverse society requires language policy to address the complexities of English language learning, whether by adult migrants or their children. Finally, it concludes, the Expert Group preparing the Language Education Policy Profile on Ireland stated that the topic of English was hardly dealt with, except as far as immigrants was concerned.
