TESL Canada's Six Principles Position Paper and an Optimal Time for ESL Training

Abstract

The position paper of TESL Canada's Action Committee, The Provision of ESL Training to Adults: Six Principles Toward a National Policy (1982), recommends early access to English language training, and this paper looks for linguistic justification for it in the theories of Schumann (1974, 1976), Brown (1980), and Krashen (1976, 1977, 1982). Considered together, these theories may complement one another in pointing toward a theory that there is an optimal time for immigrants to learn a language. They may help to explain the phenomenon of certain language errors (fossilized errors) which seen to become immune to correction after a certain period of time. While the TESL paper stresses the practical necessity of learning English for employment and social adaptation, these theories and some recent research may suggest that the time when immigrants learn English is critical for satisfactory progress. Tollefson's (1981) paper on the role of planning in second language acquisition is also examined to see if it has relevance for immigrants learning English.