I sometimes think some of our discussions in ELT have become something more idealistic than practical because we have overlooked the impact of business practices on what we do. No doubt in a lot of circumstances, ELT is a money-making business. What we do is directly linked to profit making, if not, we must help to cut costs. For instance, English teachers are sometimes blamed by the university administrator for using a lot more paper than the other departments because this is not cost effective. For us this is probably inevitable as it is part of our teaching methodology to create different activities and tasks using paper for students to do in class.

To what extent have the 'practices of money-making' influenced what you do at your workplace? How do you cope with that?