Book XXII · Language Arts and Added Languages

A learner of English is called different things depending on where she is, how old she is, and who is doing the naming. The names are not synonyms. Each was made to describe a situation. This book starts with the names because the Notice in Chapter 1 depends on confusing them.

Chapters

Chapter 1. Notice to Participants / Aviso aos Participantes · a bilingual satire in the structure of O Alienista
Chapter 2. Facts and Findings / Fatos e Achados · sourced figures behind the satire, with a plain statement of what was not read
Chapter 3. Ulqin · a short story, fiction, about a night-school professor
Chapter 4. Placement / Classificação · a sketch in seven beats, fiction, and the intake form Dr. Fairweather uses (runs in the page; nothing is sent or stored)
Field notes (planned) · real teaching and directing stories, anonymized; not yet written

Preface

Where a learner lives decides the label. A student surrounded by English, who needs it for the bus, the clinic and the school office, is an ESL or ELL student. A student far from English, who studies it as a subject, is an EFL student. A child of an immigrant household who speaks one language at home and another at school belongs to neither box cleanly, and the heritage-language literature exists because of that child. In Brazil the same distinctions run through Português como Língua Adicional (PLA), Estrangeira (PLE), Segunda Língua (PL2), Acolhimento (PLAc) and Herança (PLH).

Each label was made to describe a learner’s situation. The satire in Chapter 1 does the opposite: its Specialist uses them as a verdict on a person’s origin.

Prefácio

O lugar onde o aprendiz vive decide o rótulo. Um aluno cercado de inglês, que precisa dele para o ônibus, a clínica e a secretaria da escola, é um aluno de ESL ou ELL. Um aluno distante do inglês, que o estuda como disciplina, é um aluno de EFL. A criança de uma família imigrante que fala uma língua em casa e outra na escola não cabe direito em nenhuma das duas caixas, e a literatura sobre língua de herança existe por causa dela. No Brasil as mesmas distinções passam por Português como Língua Adicional (PLA), Estrangeira (PLE), Segunda Língua (PL2), Acolhimento (PLAc) e Herança (PLH).

Cada rótulo foi feito para descrever a situação de um aprendiz. A sátira do Capítulo 1 faz o contrário: seu Especialista os usa como veredito sobre a origem de uma pessoa.

Glossary / Glossário

English term	What it means	Portuguese counterpart
ELA	English Language Arts: the school subject for students whose home language is English (reading, writing, literature)	Língua Portuguesa (the school subject)
EFL	English as a Foreign Language: English learned where it is not the everyday language, e.g. a student in Brazil	PLE, Português como Língua Estrangeira
ESL	English as a Second Language: English learned inside an English-speaking country, usually by immigrants and their children	PL2, Português como Segunda Língua; PLAc, Português como Língua de Acolhimento (migrants and refugees arriving in Brazil)
ELL	English Language Learner (also EL, English Learner): the US K-12 label for the student, not the program	No single term; the learner is described through PLA, PL2 or PLAc
EAL	English as an Additional Language: the UK and Australian term for the same learners as ESL; avoids “second” for a child who already speaks several languages	PLA, Português como Língua Adicional (also called PFOL, Português para Falantes de Outras Línguas, especially in university extension projects)
ENL / ELD / ESOL	Local program names: New York’s English as a New Language, California’s English Language Development, English for Speakers of Other Languages	PFOL, Português para Falantes de Outras Línguas (the source gives PFOL as another name for PLA; matching it to ESOL is this book’s own reading)
Heritage speaker	Someone who speaks a family language at home but was schooled in another	PLH, Português como Língua de Herança
(umbrella)	Learning a language that is not one’s mother tongue; no single English label is claimed here	PLNM, Português como Língua Não Materna: the source treats PLE, PLA, PL2, PLH and PLAc as kinds of PLNM
World Languages	The US school label for non-English language classes, formerly “foreign languages”	Língua Adicional (used in some Brazilian curricula)

Status of these definitions

The English-side definitions are standard usage from the author’s own knowledge and are not yet checked against sources. The Portuguese terms (PLE, PLA, PFOL, PL2, PLH, PLAc and the umbrella PLNM) were checked on 2026-10-22 against one article: Rocha & Ribeiro, (Con)Textos Linguísticos 19(42), 2025, p. 163. That article cites Fontana, Camargo and Nunes (2022) for them, so it is only a secondary source; the primary source has not been read. It does not support two claims in the table: that “Língua Adicional” is used in some Brazilian curricula for world languages, and that ELL has no single Portuguese term. Both stay unverified. Before print, check the federal wording of “English learner” in US law and the program names New York and California actually use. Starting points: Reading Horizons on ESL, EFL, ESOL, ELL and ESP; Contextos Linguísticos (UFES).

What this book does not do

It does not claim that accent reduction or name changes help or harm any learner. The Notice is satire, and its Specialist is wrong by design.
It does not report data from any student form. Any use of form answers as data would need informed consent, an ethics review and a pre-registered analysis first.
Real stories in the field notes will carry no names and no identifying details.

What this book suggests you do

Learn, and make mistakes where it is safe to make them: in a classroom, in a second language, in a sketch. A mistake made out loud is how most people find the edge of what they know.
Sketch your teachers, and make fun of them well. The author’s bet, which is an opinion, not a finding, is that the students who can do this best are the kind of comedians a country needs in its highest offices: people who can see an authority clearly enough to laugh at it, and who then have to answer for what they do with the power. The joke is Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and actor who was elected president of Ukraine in 2019 (news report, 2019; only the headline was read). That is a fact about his career, not evidence for the bet, and nothing in this book tests the bet. Chapter 4 is a place to practice.