In all likelihood, they have also acquired certain patterns of English, if only at the subconscious level. EFL students, on the other hand, have not acquired anything from the target language at any level of consciousness.
And then there is bilingualism. Are bilinguals Second Language learners? Should they not be slotted as ESL students? Again, we encounter lexical confusion--probably because there is conceptual as well as linguistic confusion. "Bilingualism actually refers to differential ability in the productive skills, speaking and writing, and in the receptive skills, listening and reading, associated with two languages" (Cohen, 1985:168). Isn't this the goal of ESL and EFL? Cohen then tries to close in on a definition: "Bilingual education is not merely instruction in a second language (e.g. ESL) or in a foreign language (e.g. foreign language in the elementary school, FLES). In ESL and FLES programs, learning the language is often an end in itself" (1985:170). Bilingual education is instruction, education, and acculturation in the native or host-country language. Pedagogically thinking, however, we see that language learning--even when an end unto itself--cannot be dissociated from acculturation, and that the best way to learn a language would seem to be through the study of a subject the learner likes or needs to master--such as biology or geography. Is this bilingualism or ESL? Once more, then, the semantic lines of demarcation among all these terms are fluid, if not nebulous, thereby confusing the issue of appropriate didactics.
For operational purposes, we shall dichotomize between ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language). Clearly, English is a "foreign" language to anyone who does not know the "target" language. Yet, there are people who live in territories where English is the vehicular and often statutory medium for widespread communication, though it is not the "first" language. S...