As I perhaps didn’t point out clearly enough in my post on the 100 Most Influential Publications in TEFL (although I thought I had, perhaps it is online skimming and scanning that was to blame…), this list is humbly given as a starting point which I hope will prompt the contributions of people who know much more than me.
My own motivation to carry on with these lists is to get more ideas for my timeline of TEFL history – and I certainly need plenty more help! I might also do profiles of the most important organisations for the TEFL.net reference section. I’m not sure what other people’s motivation would be to read or contribute, but I hope you can find one. If you don’t want to offend (by inclusion or exclusion), how about sticking to people and institutions that are from far back in the mists of TEFL time – that means more than two years ago for most CELTA graduates :)
Suggestions for suggestions: Schools, publishers, teachers’ organisations, training organisations, Yahoo and other online groups, exam boards, accreditation organisations, groups that give awards, university departments, research organisations, Facebook groups, Linked In groups, wholesalers, importers, franchises, magazines, journals, agents, recruiters, unions
In alphabetical order:
ARELS (Association of Recognised English Language Schools)
BAAL (British Association of Applied Linguistics)
BBC
Bell International
Berlitz
Birmingham University
British Council – Including ELTONs, LearnEnglish, LearnEnglishKids, TeachingEnglish site, involvement in IELTS
Cactus TEFL
Cambridge ESOL
Children’s Television Workshop (for TEFL tie-ins, but more for the number of our students who watch Sesame Street in English)
Collins
CUP
Dave’s ESL Café
Delta Publishing
Disney (for new Disney schools in China, product tie-ins, Playtime Disney TV channel)
Dogme Yahoo group
ECC (biggest chain in Thailand, big CELTA course provider, and ones of the largest chains in Japan- especially now the others are going bankrupt!)
EF
ELS (for TOEIC and TOEFL, unfortunately)
English UK
EPIK
Express Publishing
GEOS (big Japanese language school chain)
Guardian TEFL/ Guardian Weekly TEFL section – For the old TEFL jobs section on Tuesdays,
Heinemann –
Heinle & Heinle/ Cengage Heinle Learning/ Cengage – Including now being distributor of Delta books
Helbling Publishing
i to i TEFL – For being huge, using tacky marketing efforts like discount vouchers for TEFL courses, and helping drive the movement towards weekend and online courses being the new standard (unfortunately)
IATEFL (including BESIG and other SIGs)
International House
International Phonetic Association (IPA)
JET (scheme to import thousands of graduates into Japan as Assistant Language Teachers, influencing later schemes such as Korea’s EPIK)
Keyways Publishing (owners of both English Teaching Professional and Modern English Teacher)
Linguaphone
London University (for the Institute of Education, UCL, and SOAS)
Longman/ Longmans, Green/ Pearson/ Pearson Longman (For content from FT and Economist in Business English courses, Pearson Academic test, Wall Street schools in China)
Macmillan (including Onestopenglish)
McGraw Hill
Nova – By far the biggest chain in Japan only a few years ago, it shook the industry up with its marketing (especially), flexible lessons, small class sizes, and rapid expansion, probably contributing to the collapse of most of the chains of quality schools along the way and attracting a whole generation of teachers with no qualifications who had never considered TEFL before. It then affected the whole industry with its collapse, leading to a mass exodus of students from conversation schools and probably to the later collapse of another big boy, GEOS.
OISE – Rapidly expanding group of language schools with big Corporate English section
OUP (including ELTJ)
Oxford House – Big TEFL course provider in London and regular teachers’ workshops
Pagoda – Biggest chain of cram schools in Korea??
Penguin (for graded readers, Peter Watcyn-Jones books)
Pilgrims (for The Teacher Trainer, books, hltmag.co.uk)
RSA (Royal Society of the Arts) – For early and long involvement in TEFL certificates
Saxoncourt/ Shane English Schools – Big recruiter for foreign schools from London, first big chain of schools specialising in kids in Japan, substantial and early foreign presence in China, one of the bigger chains of schools in Taiwan
SMOE
Some online TEFL course providers (unfortunately)
St Giles International (For teacher training and generally being successful by maintaining standards, and for hosting the KELTIC bookshop in London)
TEFL International (for being one of the biggest and fastest expanding TEFL course providers, starting things like affiliate marketing – unfortunately – and being the subject of the biggest online rows in TEFL history)
TESOL (US-based organisation for teachers, including EVO)
The Council of Europe (for the CEFR)
The Consultants-E
The first and/ or most popular TEFL Youtube channel
The first popular online TEFL course provider
The most successful online language exchange site
Time Taylor International – For dodgy uses of the name “TESOL”, dodgy claims of a free TEFL course and the TEFL Law website
Times Educational Supplement – For the (now defunct) TEFL jobs section
Trinity College London –
University of Edinburgh – For the School of Applied Linguistics – the first??
University of Michigan – For the English Language Institute
Voice of America
Wall Street – For its huge chain of schools, selling off the whole brand in a country-wide franchise scheme, cutting down on staff costs with the use of computers, marketing)
Windsor TEFL/ Windsor English – For showing that TEFL conmen will get their comeuppance
Webheads in Action Yahoo group
63 so far, so more suggestions needed:
TEFLtastic 
The now defunct David English House, for their role in fostering professional development (sometimes the good guys finish last ). They were U. of Birmingham and Sheffield reps and they also became the Japan office for some leading ELT journals.
SIT TESOL , for an honest attempt at a CELTA equivalent
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Thank you for listing The Consultants E here, Alex, most flattering! If you’re looking for something to put in parenthesis next our name, you could always try (cutting edge ICT online training for teachers) :-)
Nicky Hockly (The Consultants-E)
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One problem is the ‘anglo-centric’ skew, since most of these organizations don’t have much impact on real-world TEFL in countries that have their own educational systems and English isn’t the language of communications. Still it’s a nice overview.
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You’re absolutely right about that. When Alex was making his list of publications, I nominated Alastair Pennycook for his work with Critical Applied Linguistics. And now that we are discussing organizations it’s shameful that nothing springs to mind; it says a lot about the ‘business of EFL”. Perhaps Sarah H could jump in and offer a few suggestions if she’s reading?
Maybe the U.S. Peace Corps and the VSO deserve a place on Alex’s list, too? (although, it certainly could be argued that they might have their on motives in mind…)
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OTOH, he does list some cram schools, which are major providers of employment in the ‘true’ EFL world, e.g. in Korea and Japan. In terms of teacher training, Fanselow and the Columbia teacher college come to mind. For better or worse, yes, in terms of sheer impact PC and VSO are huge. Do many outside of Japan know how influential on ELT publishers like Kinseido, Taishuukan, Kenkyuusha and Seibido are?
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All good suggestions, apart from maybe the Japanese publishers. Nova had an impact outside Japan, if only for the number of “teachers” it added to the profession. The Japanese publishers generally do not.
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Thanks for the mention, Alex! Much appreciated.
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Hi Alex. I wasn’t suggesting you add those Japanese publishers to the list but merely meant those as examples of how much the TEFL world is really outside the Anglophone one.
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A fair point. If a Chinese company managed to corner their local market they’d probably make it onto the list just for their influence in that one country. So far, though, I think the big four publishers and EF have quite a lot of influence there.
I did include Express Publishing, which is Greek (though they try to hide that) and Richmond, which is Spanish and big in Latin America
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Charles Jannuzi gets close, and TEFLista mentions a defunct chain of schools in Japan, but misses JALT, the second largest TEFL organization in the world, and the one with the largest conference (attendance, presentations, and largest publisher display area) in Asia each year.
Other influential organizations might be FEELTA in Russia, ETAROC in Taiwan, and KOTESOL in Korea.
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You only have to look at English learning and teaching in Japan to realise that JALT has little influence even on what happens there. The Japanese Ministry of Education, NHK (“The Japanese BBC”) and the kinds of publishers that Charles mentioned have much more influence, and none of those have any international influence at all. You could once have argued for the Japanese Ministry of Education having an international influence (and this is supposed to be a historical survey)
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Could maybe include Cideb publishing, for Black Cat graded readers. Also the makers of Rosetta Stone. This is supposed to be about TEFL rather than EFL though
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I see Kevin’s suggestions as already being covered by TESOL Inc. and IATEFL, as they are actually affiliates of the larger organizations.
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Here are a few suggestions from Australia:
NEAS
Industry body that accredits Australian Language schools. It’s a non-profit rather than a government agency but they work very closely with government nonetheless. They also organise a fabulous DoS conference every year!
English Australia (EA)
Peak body group and professional association for language schools in Oz. Not all schools are members, but most of the good ones are. They also do a lot of lobbying work on behalf of their members, provide a tuition assurance scheme and did a lot of great work coordinating schools and finding places for students when GEOS went bankrupt. Also run several fantastic conferences every year.
Navitas and Kaplan
Two large operarators who have successfully expanded into the Australian market in the last few years. Navitas bought ACE (Australian College of English) and Kaplan acquired most of the Australian International House schools.
DEEWR (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations)
Government department responsible for overseeing language schools in Oz. They also maintain the CRICOS register of schools allowed to take students holding student visas. Small changes in the terms of visas or the application process can have huge, profound effects on the ELT sector.
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I’d forgotten about Kaplan, but they should probably make it onto the list (unfortunately), e.g. for their exam prep materials and unashamedly breaking EU employment law with their summer school teacher contracts. The others were new to me. Australia used to have a positive effect on the industry (along with Canada) by being a beacon of good working conditions and academic standards for teachers in London to look enviously at. I hear that both places have been dragged down to our level though…
IELTS is probably worth an entry of its own, as it is an organisation as well as an exam.
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This is very small American publisher of resource books for teachers in America, but they have some interesting titles…have you ever heard of ProLingua Associates?
http://www.prolinguaassociates.com/
I am not sure that they qualify as the most influential, but they’ve been around for 30 years and have some interesting publications (I love ‘More Index Card Games’)
Delpha
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Although I’m not a huge fan of mega-publishing companies, it seems like Pearson-Longman should be on the list too. Not only do publish huge amounts of EFL material, they seem to have an ambitious agenda.
While it’s far too early to tell if their new Pearson Test of English (PTE) Academic will rival IELTS or TOEFL, their decision to align it with the Council of Europe standards could give it real legs.
Of course, I also realize that many EFL and ELT authors have had very mixed, sometimes quite negative experience with Pearson/Longman as authors. Yet influence and virtue seem to quite different categories.
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I’d have to agree about Pearson-Longman. They are a HUGE presence in the US textbook and testing ‘markets’ now. They also spun off MET and ETP (already listed), which ended up at Keyways Publishing.
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Agreed. In fact, they’ve been there in the list all along:
“Longman/ Longmans, Green/ Pearson/ Pearson Longman (For content from FT and Economist in Business English courses, Pearson Academic test, Wall Street schools in China)”
Don’t think they’ve ever owned ETP or MET, though. They were two seperate companies until both were bought by Peter Collin of Peter Collin Publishing, after he’d sold that company. He then sold out to Keyways, who later sold out to Pavilion (mainly for titles related to Social Work)
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Isn’t PEARSON the holding company of it all? Not sure. I’m almost completely positive that MET was held by Pearson for a while. So perhaps Peter Collin Pub. bought MET and bought out ETP about the same time, because when MET was at Pearson, it seemed to have no affiliation with ETP (at the time ETP came out, I thought it might be redundant–too much like MET, but perhaps since TESOL Q and ELT J don’t really cover pedagogy as such, there was enough space for both).
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The reason I’d list it PEARSON first and foremost is it also includes other ELT-related publishers and lines–e.g., Prentice-Hall. I think at one time some of its holdings were owned by Paramount, which also controlled COCA-COLA! At the same time all those cheeky western capitalists were over here in Asia telling the Asians that companies needed to focus on their core competencies!
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Pearson owns Penguin too.
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Pearson PLC is the holding companies, and counts Pearson, Prentice-Hall, Heinemann and Penguin among its collection. Sorry for all the posts.
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I’ve been a bit inconsistent with naming, but in this case I went for Longman first to emphasize that the list is supposed to be historical as well as focussed on the present
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Pearson HE has a lot of lines under it now, but I’m wondering if the ELT-related lines are separate.
>>Welcome to Pearson Higher Education
Welcome! Pearson is one of the world’s great publishers. We publish more books than any other company and we reach millions of people every day, in print and online. Our higher education publishing brands — Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Longman, Merrill, and Prentice Hall — have earned the trust of educators and students because of their commitment to accuracy, integrity, and independence of thought. Please choose your customer type below to explore our site.<<
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Pagoda? Haha. I worked for them from 2000-2003. I’m surprised to see you list them. Did you work there too?
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About JALT. Don’t get me wrong. I hate the organization. Too much work, too little thanks, and at one long period of time, too many alcoholics running the organization. However, because it stands it relation to both TESOL and IATEFL, I believe it transcends narrow affiliate status. Plus it links strongly with JACET in Japan, as well as other organizations in Asia. It is the main conduit through which non-Japanese publishers try to sell in the textbook market. So I could see including them on the list. However, I could also see your reasoning not to as well.
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