TEACHING AND LEARNING EFL

English language is considered by many as the international language. Its acquisition can guarantee the availability of opportunities to employment, traveling, higher education, and even better life (Crystal, 1997). Teaching English as a foreign language is a challenging task, as the follwoing conditions should be present in order to fully exploit the proccess:

• Teacher expertise: the professional should have an advanced level of language profiency and the ability to implement age-appropriate methodological skills.
• Sustaining motivation over time: balancing enjoyment with cognitive engagement in the tasks is important to stimulate motivation.
• The role of out-of-school learning: though English is available beyond the classroom increasingly in many contexts worldwide, it should be present that the students are learning so as to communicate effectively with others non-native and native speakers of the language.

It is important that teachers tend to maximize fluency practice, getting the students to use the language as much as possible in class and reducing emphasis on accuracy. To achieve these goals, teachers need to select suitable speaking activities to ensure that students will use English. Activities that lack structure or which fail to generate student interest will lead most students to abandon English. Also, an activity that is interesting but too cognitively challenging to manage in English will cause most students to resort to their native language.

One of the disadvantages of EFL, is that many students lack the opportunity to experience English in their daily lives. They may be required to study English for a test or because it is a compulsory part of the curriculum. In addition, EFL settings often involve large classes and limited contact hours, which makes learning English a challenge for students. And although they may want to learn English for the same reasons as those of ESL students, their motivation level can be low since English is not part of their daily lives and the English course simply does not offer enough exposure to the language. Consequently, the EFL teacher should try his/her best to overcome these challenges and expose students to as much authentic English as possible. In addition, he/she should create real-life situations for students to practice the items of English.