A distinction is sometimes made between learning in a “foreign language” setting (learning a language that is not generally spoken in the surrounding community) and a “second language” setting (learning a language that is spoken in the surrounding community). That is, Japanese students in an English class in Japan are learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and, if those same students were in an English class in the USA, they would be learning English as a second language (ESL). In either case, they are simply trying to learn another language, so the expression second language learning is used more generally to describe both situations.