A Critical Analysis of the Selection Criteria of Expert Teachers in ELT

So far, in the early years of the twenty-first century, expertise studies have been undertaken in a large number of domains. Applied linguistics is relatively a newcomer to the list which makes any study aiming to cast light on some aspect of expertise in this domain worth considering. Currently, English language expert teachers are selected according to a set of common general criteria of expertise and/or national standards. The present study casts a critical look at the most commonly used selection criteria of expert teachers including years of working experience, social/professional recognition, rewards and recommendations from school, learners' achievement, normative-or criterion-based performance indicators. It also critically addresses the perceivably most comprehensive national standards of teaching English including those of England and the U.S. Subsequently, it draws attention to the need for providing a reliable and comprehensive operational definition for teacher expertise in the realm of English Language Teaching (ELT) and discusses its possibility and quality of design.