Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for English as a Lingua Franca 9783110335965, 9783110322972

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Yasemin Bayyurt and Sumru Akcan (Eds.) Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for English as a Lingua Franca

Developments in English as a Lingua Franca

Editors Jennifer Jenkins Will Baker

Volume 6

Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for English as a Lingua Franca Edited by Yasemin Bayyurt and Sumru Akcan

ISBN 978-3-11-032297-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-033596-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039540-2 ISSN 2192-8177 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston Typesetting: PTP-Berlin Protago-TEX-Production GmbH, Berlin Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Cem Alptekin, whose intellect, scholarly pursuits, and dynamic personality continue to inspire so many in our profession.

Contents Yasemin Bayyurt & Sumru Akcan Current perspectives on pedagogy for ELF | 1

Part I: Teaching and Learning Lynne J. Flowerdew Chapter 1  Adjusting pedagogically to an ELF world: An ESP perspective | 13 Nobuyuki Hino and Setsuko Oda Chapter 2  Integrated practice in teaching English as an international language (IPTEIL): A classroom ELF pedagogy in Japan | 35 Kurt Kohn Chapter 3  A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom | 51 Lucilla Lopriore Chapter 4  ELF and early language learning: Multiliteracies, language policies and teacher education | 69

Part II: Teacher Education Andrew Blair Chapter 5  Evolving a post-native, multilingual model for ELF-aware teacher education | 89 Luísa Azuaga & Lili Cavalheiro Chapter 6  Bringing new ELT policies and ELF to teacher training courses | 103

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Martin Dewey Chapter 7  Time to wake up some dogs! Shifting the culture of language in ELT | 121 Dilek İnal and Esra Özdemir Chapter 8  Re/considering the English language teacher education programs in Turkey from an ELF standpoint: what do the academia, pre-service and in-service teachers think? | 135 Areti-Maria Sougari & Roxani Faltzi Chapter 9  Drawing upon Greek pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ELF-related issues | 153 Elisabeth Weber Chapter 10  Can we change the subject, please? A pedagogic perspective on EFL | 171

Part III: Assessment Kimberly Chopin Chapter 11  Reconceptualizing norms for language testing: Assessing English language proficiency from within an ELF framework | 193 David Newbold Chapter 12  Engaging with ELF in an entrance test for European university students | 205

Part IV: Teaching Materials Telma Gimenez, Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo, Michele Salles El Kadri Chapter 13  Beyond Madonna: Teaching materials as windows into pre-service teachers’ understandings of ELF | 225

Contents   

Domingos Sávio Pimentel Siqueira Chapter 14  English As A Lingua Franca And ELT Materials: Is The “Plastic World” Really Melting? | 239 Subject index | 259

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Current perspectives on pedagogy for ELF 1 Introduction Thanks to technological advances and economic developments around the globe, English has become the language most widely used in international discourse (Crystal 2001, 2013; Graddol 2006; Mauranen 2009). This widespread use of English has necessitated intense academic discussion of the ELF paradigm in local and international contexts (Bayyurt and Sifakis, in print). Earlier examination of ELF focused mainly on the linguistic properties of English as spoken by non-native speakers (Cogo and Dewey 2012; Firth 1996; Pitzl 2012); on collections of spoken interactions among non-native speakers, as in the VOICE, ACE, and ELFA corpora (Kirkpatrick 2010; Mauranen, 2012; Seidlhofer, 2012); and on the attitudes of teachers (Bayyurt 2006; Llurda 2004, 2009; Sifakis and Sougari 2005) and learners (Devrim and Bayyurt 2010; Lasagabaster and Sierra 2009; Timmis 2002) towards the ELF paradigm in related academic work (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011). However, before we examine the pedagogy of ELF, we will look at how English as a Lingua Franca has become such a popular area of enquiry over the past few decades. Scholars like Jennifer Jenkins (2006a, 2006b, 2012) and Barbara Seidlhofer (2001, 2004, 2011) have been tracing the development of the ELF paradigm since the early 2000s. As Jenkins (2012: 486) indicates, ELF was “virtually unknown even in applied linguistics/sociolinguistics/World Englishes” when she published her first article on the ELF paradigm in English Language Teaching Journal (1998). As the linguistic properties of ELF are clarified, there is no consensus concerning the implications for ELF pedagogy. As one of the first to paint a picture of what ELF pedagogy might look like, Jenkins (2000, 2002) proposed a model curriculum to address the communication needs of non-native speakers of English. About a decade later, Walker (2010) expanded this model into a comprehensive handbook for English language teachers, which illustrates how ELF instruction and assessment can be integrated into English language teaching. This handbook also explains the changing role of English in the world and the inevitable effect of change on teaching practice. In addition to these, there are various other works on the pedagogical implications of ELF, EIL, or World Englishes (McKay and Bokhorst-Heng 2008; Sifakis 2009); the cultural aspects of ELF, EIL and World Englishes (Baker 2009, 2011; Bayyurt 2006; Bayyurt and Erçetin 2009); teaching materials (Bayyurt and Altınmakas 2012; Vettorel 2010, 2012); language testing (Elder and Davies 2006; Jenkins 2006b; McNamara 2012), and teacher educa-

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tion (Bayyurt and Sifakis 2013, in print; Dewey 2012; Sifakis 2007). However, comprehensive proposals for ELF classroom practice, ELF language testing, and ELF teacher education have yet to be developed in workable detail and offered to practitioners in the field. Educators have been cautious in discussions about the incursion of ELF into the ESOL classroom. Seidlhofer (2004), for example, has stated that at the present time any attempt to teach ELF in the context of ESOL would be premature. More recently, Jenkins (2011) has offered some suggestions about how to implement some ELF-related instruction. However, she is reluctant to tell teachers what to do. She believes that teachers themselves should decide how to integrate an ELF approach in their teaching context. In the past, literature on teaching about ELF suggested ways of showing how English was viewed as the static language of a fixed native-speaker group (either British or American). All language teaching and testing materials were designed accordingly. In more recent literature, scholars have just started to explore ways in which an ELF-aware approach can be implemented in the classroom (Bayyurt and Sifakis 2013, in print; Blair, this volume; Dewey 2012, this volume; Sifakis and Bayyurt, in print). Clearly, the teaching and learning of an international language, a lingua franca, should set out to achieve learning outcomes that are different from those pertaining to EFL and ESL instruction (Matsuda 2002, 2012). Teachers, teacher educators, learners, and program administrators should be prepared to see and accept the difference. In his recent work on teacher education, Dewey (2012) outlines the basis for evaluating existing teacher education and certification programmes. He suggests that these programmes need to integrate a realistic picture of ELF into their specifications for teacher training, aiming to change teachers’ perspectives of language accuracy, correctness, context, and teacher/ learner autonomy. According to Sifakis (2007), this necessitates a transformation of mind-set. Along these lines, Bayyurt and Sifakis (2013, in print), in an ELFaware teacher-education project, base their pedagogical model on a transformative framework (originally proposed by Sifakis in 2007). Their project for in-service EFL or ESL teachers (ELF-TED) helps participants to integrate an ELF-aware approach into current English language teaching methodology. Findings from the pilot phase of the project show that teachers who have been unaware of the current state of ELF can quickly accommodate new insights into their teaching. Similarly, in another project, Hall et al. (2013) have implemented ELF-informed online teacher-training aimed at raising the awareness of English language teachers towards (i) the “plurilithic” nature of ELF communications; (ii) the need to adopt “individually and locally appropriate” learning objectives; and (iii) the importance of developing and sharing ELF-related teaching strategies with one

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another. As Blair (in this volume) and Sifakis (2007, 2014) emphasize, any kind of change will take time. It is unrealistic to expect large numbers of EFL teachers to become ELF-aware in the near future. However, teacher education is a likely starting point for the development of an ELF pedagogy, which in turn would affect the design of language teaching materials and the criteria used for evaluating achievement in language learning. This collection of essays, which examines how theories and principles underlying studies of English as a Lingua Franca contribute to research on present pedagogical practices in ELF contexts, should add substantially to the literature concerning ELF pedagogy. The goals of this edited volume are: 1. to raise awareness of macro-perspectives of ELF pedagogy and examples of ELF instruction in various local contexts; 2. to expand the pedagogical knowledge base of English educators concerning ELF and ELF-related policies; 3. to disseminate knowledge of the ELF pedagogy-policy relationship while calling for further action.

2 Overview This book is divided into four sections. The first, “Teaching and Learning”, investigates the ways in which an ELF-informed pedagogy can be integrated into the teaching of English. The topics addressed in this section include an overview of research in university contexts in Hong Kong and Japan, implementation of an ELF pedagogical approach in secondary schools in Germany, and implementation in primary schools in Italy. The second section, “Teacher Education”, addresses ELF-awareness in teacher education, English language teaching policies, and challenges in teacher education. The third section, “Assessment”, presents ways in which an ELF perspective can be integrated into assessment of English language proficiency in ELF contexts. The fourth section, “Language Teaching Materials”, evaluates English language teaching materials currently on the market and offers suggestions for the design of ELF teaching materials at the university level. “Teaching and Learning” begins with two chapters focusing on ELF-related research in universities in Hong Kong and Japan, where the use of English as an international lingua franca has become a necessity. The third and fourth chapters examine ELF pedagogy in secondary and primary school contexts in Europe, providing insiders’ views of classrooms in Germany and Italy, where a mono-model of English language teaching has been more welcome than an ELF-informed diverse model (Jenkins 2012; Matsuda 2012; Seidlhofer 2011).

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In Chapter  1, Flowerdew presents an “exploratory corpus-based” account showing how ELF has begun to influence the teaching of academic and professional writing in science and engineering. Her project examines “a course for training PhD engineering students at a university in Hong Kong to write small grant-funded proposals”. She highlights the value of using corpora in ELF research, which can also play a significant role in pedagogy. Within the framework of corpus-driven exercises, she explains how she encourages her students to employ the rhetorical strategies of expert writers. She also makes a case for sensitising students to “real-world” academia in which ELF has to be acknowledged in this era of globalisation and intercultural communication. Finally, she draws the attention of the academic audience to the fact that ESP research must face the implications of ELF in specific academic contexts, considering the needs of the students, the design of syllabi and materials, and teacher education. In Chapter 2, Hino and Oda detail the implementation of a method for familiarizing students with the real-life use of English in the world. They help students in a Japanese university to see that they belong to an English-as-an-InternationalLanguage (EIL) community. They use a methodology known as Integrated Practice in Teaching English as an International Language (IPTEIL), earlier developed and implemented by Hino (2012). The students watch, read, and discuss real-time news coming from across the world via satellite TV and the Internet. Through these authentic tasks, IPTEIL puts learners in the real-life community of ELF users while exposing them to the linguistic and cultural diversity of ELF. In other words, while developing literacy in ELF, IPTEIL also informs students about diverse world cultures. However, the authors also explain the difficulty of implementing such an approach when the use of English in some world contexts might be intra-national rather than international. They conclude by stating that classroom teaching is crucial in the process of turning the ideal of ELF-usage into reality. In Chapter 3, Kohn focuses on the pedagogical implications of ELF and ELF research for English language teaching. He gives special attention to English language teaching at the secondary level in Germany. He argues in favour of a pedagogical approach that combines a Standard English (SE) orientation with pedagogical space for ELF development. With reference to bilingual classroom teaching (CLIL) and the potential of e-learning for enhancing spoken and written production, he describes learning activities that focus on learners’ own ELF-specific creativity within an SE orientation. He claims that this approach increases learners’ self-satisfaction and sense of ownership of the language. In Chapter 4, Lopriore describes the research project Early Language Learning in Europe (ELLiE), which explores ELF in the primary classroom from a transnational longitudinal perspective. The study was conducted in primary class-

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rooms at seven European schools, where in most cases English is de facto a lingua franca. Lopriore explores how far this approach in the foreign language (FL) classroom sustains the development of meaningful communication among NNSs. She discusses the characterising features of emerging ELF communication in the primary English classroom; samples of young learners’ oral production and aural comprehension; learners’ attitudes; and teachers’ self-perceptions as language users. In conclusion, she considers the pedagogical implications of ELF for curricula and teacher education from a theoretical and empirical point of view. “Teacher Education”, the second section, addresses such issues as ELFawareness in teacher education, English language teaching policies, challenges in ELF teacher education, and teacher awareness of ELF in various European and world contexts. In Chapter 5, “Evolving a Post-native, Multilingual Model for ELFaware Teacher Education”, Blair considers how best to teach a language used locally and globally as a lingua franca. He makes proposals for change based on a recent study of teachers who have taught and received part of their professional training in the UK. These teachers represent a redefined paradigm for ELT. However, they also express some uncertainty regarding linguistic and pedagogical goals. Azuaga and Cavalheiro in Chapter 6 propose to bring ELF and new ELT policies to teacher training courses in Portugal. They examine the way Portuguese non-native English speaking pre-service teachers view their own English use and how their perceptions may influence their future behaviour when teaching language skills in state schools. A case study was carried out in five Portuguese universities during the 2011–2012 academic year, targeting first- and second-year students enrolled in graduate-level teacher training courses. The results of the research are discussed in relation to the teacher candidates’ use of English and their expectations of future students. Dewey in Chapter 7 explores how ELF can be introduced in teacher education programmes by describing an ongoing project aimed at refocusing the concerns of teachers as they move beyond a traditional norm-focused orientation. His discussion draws on findings gathered from studies of teachers actively involved in teacher development programmes. He also discusses how teachers can be shown the limitations of English when conceived as a fixed set of language forms, and by contrast, the rich communicative potential of the language when it is untethered from these forms and approached, instead, from an ELF perspective. İnal and Özdemir in Chapter  8 explore the perceptions of instructors of teacher training/practicum courses in the ELT departments of Turkish universities, and the perceptions of pre- and in-service English language teachers. They emphasize the need to include ELF in English language teacher education programs in Turkey. They conclude their chapter with the two-pronged need to raise

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the ELF-awareness of teachers, teacher educators, and academics and then to revise the ELT curriculum accordingly. In Chapter 9, Sougari and Faltzi examine the extent to which ELF awareness and teaching practices are influenced by the teachers’ own intercultural experiences and their experiences as language learners. Suggestions for future research include consideration of an ELF awareness-raising course prior to the teaching internship. In Chapter  10, Weber argues that experienced users of ELF are more likely to support the learning of new users than are teachers with little or no experience in ELF communication. She proposes that the current “assistant” program should be replaced by an exchange of pre- or in- service teachers of English from different lingua-cultural backgrounds. The ELF perspective provided by such an exchange program would contribute to a more realistic and relevant approach to the teaching of the language and would probably also enhance the motivation of learners. “Assessment”, the third section, includes two chapters on the integration of an ELF perspective into proficiency assessments in ELF contexts. Chopin in Chapter 11 seeks preliminary answers to the question of what norms are applicable to the use of English in ELF situations. She argues that what is needed is a model of language-in-use on which a workable test can be based. To clarify this view of assessment, she provides examples of ELF use in Denmark. In Chapter  12, Newbold argues that testers can no longer afford to ignore the emerging realties of ELF, particularly in the context of European academic life. A minimum entrance level requirement (usually B1 or B2 of the CEFR) for all incoming university students has become the norm, reflecting the need for English across a range of courses and curricula. Real-life tasks have influenced the construct of an online entrance test currently being developed. It was not designed to be a “test of ELF”, but an ELF element was considered essential for reasons of validity. In the final section of the book, there are two chapters on ELF and English language teaching materials. Chapter 13, “Beyond Madonna: Teaching Materials as Windows into Pre-service Teachers’ Understandings of ELF”, analyses teaching materials produced by prospective English language teachers in ELF contexts in Brazil. Gimenez et al. discuss the prospective teachers’ interpretations of ELF, which included ELF-awareness and global issues in the practice of language education. The results of the study show that in English language teaching materials it is possible to disengage ELT from native varieties and to reflect a more global orientation. In Chapter  14, Siqueira examines the contents of ELT textbooks for global audiences and analyses whether they are really being developed to melt the

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“plastic world” or are still being designed towards English-hegemonic centres and cultures. The study leads to the conclusion that despite the use of English as the world’s lingua franca, typical ELT materials have yet to be seriously challenged to portray a multicultural and multifaceted world which more and more is becoming “glocally” interconnected through language.

3 Conclusion In sum, this volume presents what we as teachers, teacher educators, program developers, and scholars need to consider in the education of future users of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). In particular, the chapters in this volume highlight decisions we must make and approaches we might take in recognition of the ways in which English is already being used throughout the world. As Matsuda (2012) states, it is not possible to find a common way of teaching English that is suitable in all contexts; however, seeing the ways in which English is taught in different places helps us to appreciate the differences and find the commonalities. Each chapter presents creative solutions to the problems of teaching English in a changing world, the challenge of training future teachers, assessing new proficiencies, and developing new materials, all orientated to the current realities of ELF. As Bayyurt and Sifakis (in print) suggest, raising pre- and in-service teachers’ awareness of ELF-related issues helps them to reflect, not only on changing the way they teach, but also on the overall effectiveness of their teaching practice. This volume aimed to disseminate suggested new ways of approaching teaching, learning, and assessing English proficiency in ELF contexts. Perhaps it will also inspire action that results in more learners who are not only able to cope but also able to contribute in a global, multicultural society.

References Baker, Will. 2009. The cultures of English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly 43(4). 567–592. Baker, Will. 2011. Intercultural awareness: Modelling an understanding of cultures in intercultural communication through English as a lingua franca. Language and Intercultural Communication 11. 197–214. Bayyurt, Yasemin. 2006. Non-native English language teachers’ perspective on culture in English as a Foreign Language classrooms. Teacher Development 10(2). 233–247. Bayyurt, Yasemin & Derya Altınmakas. 2012. A World Englishes course at a foundation university in Turkey. In Aya Matsuda (ed.), Teaching English as an international language: Principles and practices, 169–182. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

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Bayyurt, Yasemin & Nicos Sifakis. 2013. Transforming into an ELF-aware teacher: insights from a self-education program. Paper presented at the “New frontiers in teaching and learning English” Conference, Verona University, 15 February. (URL: http://prin-confs-2013.dlls. univr.it/prin/newFrontiers.html). Bayyurt, Yasemin & Nicos Sifakis. in print. Transforming into an ELF-aware teacher. In Paola Vettorel (ed.), New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning English. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Blair, Andrew. This volume. Evolving a post-native, multilingual model for ELF-aware teacher education. Cogo, Alessia & Martin Dewey. 2012. Analysing English as a lingua franca. London: Continuum. Crystal, David. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Devrim, Devo Yılmaz & Yasemin Bayyurt. 2010. Students’ understandings and preferences of the role and place of ‘culture’ in English Language Teaching: A Focus in an EFL context. TESOL Journal 2. 4–24. Dewey, Martin. 2012. Towards a post-normative approach: Learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1). 141–170. Firth, Alan. 1996. The discursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 26. 237–59. Graddol, David. 2006. English Next. London: British Council. Hall, C. J., Wicaksono, R., Liu, S., Qian, Y. & Xiaoqing, X. 2013. English reconceived: Raising teachers’ awareness of English as a ‘plurilithic’ resource through an online course. London: British Council. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2002. A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics 23. 83–103. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006a. Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca. TESOL Quarterly 40. 157–181. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006b. The spread of EIL: A testing time for testers. ELT Journal 60. 42–50. Jenkins, Jennifer, Alessia Cogo & Martin Dewey. 2011. State-of-the-art article: Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching 44 (3). 281–315. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2012. English as a Lingua Franca from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Journal, 66. 486–494. Johnson, Karen, E. & Paula R. Golombek. 2011. The transformative power of narrative in second language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly 45(3). 486–509. Kirkpatrick, Andy. 2010. English as a lingua franca in ASEAN. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lasagabaster, David & Juan Manuel Sierra. 2009. Language Attitudes in CLIL and Traditional EFL classes. International CLIL Research Journal 1(2). 4–17. Llurda, Enric. 2004. Non-native-speaker teachers and English as an International Language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 14 (3). 314–323. Mauranen, Anna. 2009. Introduction. In Anna Mauranen, & Elina Ranta (eds.), English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings, 1–9. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Matsuda, Aya. 2002. Representation of users and uses of English in beginning Japanese EFL textbooks. JALT Journal 24(2). 80–98. Matsuda, Aya. (Ed.). 2012. Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. McKay, Sandra L. & Wendy. D. Bokhorst-Heng. 2008. International English in its sociolinguistic contexts: Towards a socially sensitive EIL pedagogy. London: Routledge. Pitzl, Marie-Luise. 2012. Creativity meets convention: Idiom variation and re-metaphorization in ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1). 27–55. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2001. Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11. 133–158. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2004. Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24. 209–39. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2012. Corpora and English as a lingua franca. In Ken Hyland, Meng Huat Chau, & Michael Handford (eds.), Corpus applications in applied linguistics, 135–149. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Sifakis, Nicos C. 2007. The education of the teachers of English as a lingua franca: a transformative perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17. 355–375. Sifakis, Nicos C. 2009. Challenges in teaching ELF in the periphery: The Greek context. ELT Journal 63. 230–237. Sifakis, N. C. 2014. ELF awareness s an opportunity for change: a transformative perspective for ESOL teacher education. Journal of Englsh as a Lingua Franca, 3(2): 315–333. Sifakis, N. C. & Bayyurt, Y. in print. Educating the ELF-aware teacher: Insights from ELF and World Englishes in teacher training To appear in World Englishes. Sifakis, Nicos C. & Areti-Maria Sougari. 2005. Pronunciation issues and EIL pedagogy in the periphery: A survey of Greek state school teachers’ beliefs. TESOL Quarterly 39. 467–488. Timmis, Ivor. 2002. Native-speaker norms and international English: A classroom view. ELT Journal 56. 240–249. Vettorel Paola. 2010. EIL/ELF and representation of culture in textbooks: Only food, fairs, folklore and facts? In Cesare Gagliardi & Alan Maley (eds.), EIL, ELF, global English: Teaching and learning issues, 154–185. Bern: Peter Lang. Vettorel, Paola. 2012. Blogging ELFers In Geraldine Ludbrook and David Newbold (eds.). English lingua franca: Contexts, strategies and international relations. Papers from a conference held at Ca’Foscari University of Venice, 67–78. Venice: Cafoscarina. Walker, Robin. 2010. Teaching the pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part I: Teaching and Learning

Lynne J. Flowerdew

Chapter 1  Adjusting pedagogically to an ELF world: An ESP perspective 1 Introduction The aim of this paper is to take an exploratory corpus-based view of how English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is coming to impact the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), with a specific focus on writing for academic/professional purposes in the sciences and engineering. The field of ESP has been a thriving endeavor for the past fifty years and continues to be so with the increasing internationalisation of universities where English is the medium of instruction. There are also more reports in the literature of “writing for publication” courses offered to both staff and junior researchers (see Lillis and Curry 2010; Hyland 2009). This state of affairs is not surprising given the pressure on academic staff and their postgraduate students to publish research in prestigious high impact journals, for which, by necessity, English is the language for dissemination of research findings to a global readership. As a point of interest, Hyland (2013) notes that English language publications make up 95% of all publications in the Science Citation Index. And, more importantly, submissions are increasing from countries where English is not the native language (Hyland 2006). Coupled with this is the fact that with science and engineering disciplines making use of web-enabled linked data facilitating online discussions and blog postings, and offering open access to publications, the nature of English for global communication and collaborations is changing, and changing fast, motivating a great deal of discussion and research. In fact, serious debate on the role of English for international communication was instigated with the publication of two influential volumes in the early 1990s by Phillipson (1992) and Pennycook (1994), questioning the status of English as an ideologically-free, neutral language and its role in propagating linguistic hegemony. Around the same time, other leading applied linguists (cf. Widdowson 1994; Graddol 1999) made the important observation that the “native speaker” could no longer be seen as the arbiter of what kind of English to teach given the increasing numbers of proficient users of the language with different L1 backgrounds. These debates were also taken up by ESP researchers/practitioners. Swales (1997), one of the leading figures in ESP research and pedagogy, questioned the hegemonic spread of English at the expense of linguistic diversity and called for further research into academic registers of languages other than

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English, stressing the value of local-language scholarly publications. Meanwhile, Mauranen (1993) based on her textlinguistic research highlighting different rhetorical practices between English and Finnish academics in writing journal articles, advocated cultural sensitivity and greater acceptance of diversity in academic discourse. Mauranen’s research paradigm has gained increasing currency in recent years with renewed interest in the field of intercultural rhetoric, motivating a number of corpus-based ESP studies (see Connor 2011, 2013 for details of other studies). For example, Mur Dueñas (2009) investigated the use of metadiscoursal markers (additive, contrastive, consecutive) in L1 research articles in Spanish and English and L2 RAs in English from the discipline of business management, putting forward the case for a “critical pedagogies” approach to take account of cultural differences in writing. Another movement of relevance for ELF is that of World Englishes, WE, (cf. Kachru 1986; Bolton and Kachru 2006), which refers to nativized varieties of English from Inner and Outer Circles of countries, with Inner Circles representing native English-speaking countries (e.g. UK, Australia) and Outer Circles referring to former colonies (e.g. India, Kenya, Sri Lanka) which have developed nativised varieties of English. WE also encompasses countries in the Expanding Circle (e.g. Spain, China, Sweden), where English has no official status but is used as a lingua franca and is the Circle early initiatives in ELF were mostly aligned with. As in the field of intercultural rhetoric mentioned above, corpus linguistic techniques have also been instrumental in analyses of WE, proving useful for the codification of several different varieties (see Flowerdew 2012 for an overview). However, at the same time corpus studies have brought to light the ever-changing dynamics of Inner and Outer Circle varieties. For example, the results of research by Hundt and Biewer (2007) on variation between the present perfect and past tense in a South Pacific and East Asian Corpus (SPEAC) of newspapers collected from the web suggest that Inner and Outer varieties are being redefined by language contact, for whatever reason. One important observation for ESP is that while intercultural rhetoric has had considerable impact on the field of ESP, WE has made few inroads in spite of Bhatia’s (1997) plea for ESP research and pedagogy, based on the Swalesian tradition of genre analysis, to adopt a more dynamic view of English. A glance at the index of a recently-published international handbook on ESP (Paltridge and Starfield 2013) reveals that while there are several references to English as a lingua franca and also intercultural rhetoric, WE is not mentioned. Why this might be so is made clear in Diane Belcher’s concluding chapter on the future of ESP research when she cites Paltridge’s (2009: 1) Editorial for an issue of the journal English for Specific Purposes. Paltridge remarked that for those engaged in ESP research “there is no Inner Circle” and that English is “the property of its

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users, native and non-native speakers alike”. ELF has thus come of age for ESP research and pedagogy, as witnessed by very recent accounts in the literature. In fact, Paltridge’s viewpoint echoes the various critiques of Kachru’s 3 circles models, questioning the exclusive use of “native” to describe Inner Circle varieties. A case in point in Graddol’s (2006) revision of Kachru’s model in which no distinction of any kind is made between NSs and NNSs, or, for that matter, between different kinds of NNSs. Graddol’s reconceptualised Inner Circle is made up of both NS and NNSs who have “functional nativeness”, with speakers moving from highly proficient to less proficient as they move towards the circumference (see Jenkins 2009a for further details). However, before taking a closer look at the ELF / ESP interface, it is pertinent to take stock briefly of the various interpretations of ELF and how this phenomenon relates to WE, learner corpus research and intercultural communication. A good starting point for overviews of interpretations of ELF is with Seidlhofer (2004) and Jenkins (2009b). An early definition of ELF by Firth (1996: 240) is cited in Seidlhofer (2004: 211): “[ELF] is a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication”. However, as noted by Seidlhofer (2004), this definition restricts ELF to interactions among interlocutors from the Expanding Circle, while, in reality, ELF interactions cut across Outer/Expanding Circle distinctions, and may also involve Inner Circle speakers, as recognized in more recent interpretations: “It [ELF] is not a language or variety as such but a linguistic resource, which is drawn on as a common means of communication chosen by speakers from different linguacultural backgrounds. Those who use it include speakers of English as a native language (ENL) as well, as these obviously also take part in ELF interactions across linguistic boundaries…” (Seidlhofer 2012a: 137). In a similar vein, House (2012: 188) comments thus: “A major characteristic of ELF is its multiplicity of voices. ELF is a language for communication, a medium that can be given substance with many different national, regional, local, and individual cultural identities”. ELF can thus be seen to differ from WE in that it blurs the boundaries of the 3 circles. ELF also differs from WE with respect to the issue of codification. Early initiatives on ELF research sought to establish regularities across surface level features, e.g. the zero marking of 3rd person singular – s in present tense verbs (Seidlhofer 2004; Breiteneder 2009), in the spirit of WE research for identifying different varieties. However, this line of enquiry has now shifted to embrace a more fluid and flexible paradigm, one which is “concerned more with communicative practices and interactive processes” (Cogo and Dewey 2012: 167), to account for the dynamic, complex nature and still-emerging construct of ELF (see Jenkins 2014). In this respect, Mauranen’s (2012: 29) concept of “similect” is

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important. As Mauranen explains, similects do not develop in the same way that dialects and languages in communities do for the reason that “similects originate in cross-linguistic influence” and thus “comprise a renewable resource for the mix that ELF is made of”. However, in other respects, the two paradigms, i.e. ELF and WE, have much in common, as noted by Jenkins (2009b) and Seidlhofer (2009). In brief, as pointed out by Seidlhofer (2009), what is central to WE and ELF research is that both recognize the pluricentric nature of English in that all who use it have ownership and that both are concerned with language contact, variation and change as well as sociolinguistic considerations. This then brings us to the question of how the evolving construct of ELF might square with existing Outer Circle WE varieties, such as Singaporean English. Pakir (2009: 232) seeks to reconcile this tension she perceives by putting forward the possibility of English playing a dual role, having the status of both an international and a national lingua franca, i.e. “one that is internationally oriented but locally appropriate”, thus raising another important avenue for further reflection and investigation. ELF can also usefully be discussed in relation to learner corpus research. Learner corpus studies show that recognizable features in learner spoken and written language can be attributable to L1 transfer of students with the same language backgrounds (see papers in Granger, Gilquin and Meunier 2013). Interlanguage features revealed through learner corpus research, though, are quite different from the conceptualization of ELF as a hybridity of languages in contact, i.e. similects, in which no one community of similect speakers can be identified, or even different branches of ELF, as commented by Granger “…a Romance ELF will probably turn out to be quite different from a Germanic ELF, which in turn will be quite different from an Asian or South African ELF” (Granger 2009: 25). While Granger does not elaborate on this point, Jenkins (2014: 36) states that a case could be made for a “Japanese ELF” in certain situations. For example, in an intercultural setting, Japanese speakers, while sharing similar Japanese influences, would also be “subject to the influence of the other similects with which its speakers come into contact within (but not necessarily beyond) the context of any specific interaction”. The Asian Corpus of English (ACE) project, targeted to compile a million-word corpus of naturally occurring spoken interactive English used as a lingua franca in Asia (see Kirkpatrick 2010) would fit the category of an “Asian ELF” in the sense intended by Jenkins. The field of intercultural rhetoric has already been flagged as being of increasing importance for ESP studies. However, as yet, it has not been widely informed by, or, informed, studies of ELF, which Connor & Rozycki (2013: 440–441) underscore as meriting future research: “As English increasingly becomes the lingua franca of business and academic communication, variation from standards and norms will need to be addressed by ESP practitioners. Intercultural rhetoric is

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well situated to address this growing area of inquiry”. Needless to say, at the heart of this inquiry lie pragmatic and communicative effectiveness, aspects emphasized by Seidlhofer (2009, 2010) and others. The brief review above has considered key interpretations of ELF. It has also revealed that while the status of ELF has been widely debated in relation to that of WE, its relationship to the field of intercultural rhetoric and learner corpus research, important considerations for ESP studies, has received little attention. In the following sections I first examine studies straddling the ELF / ESP interface. I then suggest how the writing of expert, multilingual writers in a particular academic genre could be put to good pedagogic use, thereby also taking into account the intercultural rhetoric factor.

2 ELF and ESP interface Although ELF research has now come of age for ESP, its influence has overwhelmingly been in the area of spoken interactions. Moreover, these studies mainly relate to the professional business workplace with only a few accounts of ELF of academic English (see Nickerson 2013 for an overview of these studies). One large-scale corpus study on academic spoken English, the ELFA project, has been conducted under the direction of Prof. Anna Mauranen at the University of Helsinki (see Mauranen, Hynninen and Ranta 2012; Mauranen 2012). But what about ELF vis-à-vis writing in the academy? As far as general academic writing is concerned, van Rij-Heligers (2007) advocates treating EAP as a lingua franca to convey the sense that academic genres are dynamic entities continually being shaped and negotiated by participants rather than prescriptive, fixed artifacts. Her EAP corpora were built using web sources, which, she argues, are an ideal resource for compilation of ELF corpora as they reflect the changing nature of English. Moreover, echoing Phillipson (1992), van Rij-Heligers (2007: 105) states that written corpora compiled from purely NS sources “may contain the hidden message that the native speaker knows best, hence representing elements of linguistic imperialism”. In a similar vein, Horner (2011) challenges the reification of EAP writing instruction, in particular, US college composition courses representing strict adherence to NS norms, and calls for a more tolerant and accommodationist perspective to diversity in writing, suggesting that those strategies of accommodation and meaning negotiation associated with ELF spoken discourse should also be applied to EAP writing. Horner comments thus: “…if students are to move beyond conceiving of specific genres as static and discrete sets of forms and practices with fixed meanings, then attention to variety across genres

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will need to be supplemented by attention to variety within genres” (p. 305, my italics). In fact, the above accounts by van Rij-Heligers (2007) and Horner (2011) can be framed within a wider discussion of accommodating to ELF in the university, as expounded in Jenkins (2011) and Mauranen (2012). Let us now turn to studies which discuss the role of English in ESP, which, for the most part, concentrate on multilingual scholars’ attitude towards English for publishing in the science and engineering fields (see Jenkins (2007) for a discussion of how attitudes are closely linked to social differentiation and identity construction). Most of these empirical studies report on the self-perceived challenges that these scholars have, who tend to consider themselves to be linguistically disadvantaged relative to native-speaker academics (see Uzuner (2008) for a very useful review of 39 empirical studies in this area). But a recent study by Ferguson, Pérez-Llantada and Plo (2011) on the attitudes of Spanish scholars shows the picture to be more multifaceted and nuanced than previous studies suggest. These researchers report that a majority (62%) of their 300 respondents felt personally more advantaged than disadvantaged by the dominance of English in science with about half, mainly those of higher proficiency, rejecting the idea that English unfairly privileges native-speaker academics. Two other publications broach the role of ELF in science from a socio-cultural linguistic perspective; Pérez-Llantada (2012), taking up Pennycook’s (2007) concept of “transcultural flows” in the era of globalisation, devotes a whole chapter to the increasingly important role of ELF in the postmodern age. Mauranen, Pérez-Llantada and Swales (2010) discuss cross-cultural variation in academic English and its relationship to ELF, noting the lack of quantitative studies on written ELF: “there is no written database of English as a lingua franca as yet” (p. 640). However, this situation has now changed with the very welcome compilation of the one-million-word WrELFA corpus (Corpus of Written English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings) initiated in 2011 by Mauranen. This project is targeted to collect and analyse ELF texts covering high-stakes genres in different fields, both published and unpublished, of authors from over 28 different L1 backgrounds. The initial texts focus on two text types: research blogs in which published scientific literature is discussed and preliminary examiners’ statements for PhD theses. More details on this project can be found at www.helsinki.fi/englanti/elfa/wrelf. One important type of high-stakes genre is that of proposal writing. In the following section I recount how I adapted my teaching of this genre to post-graduate students of science and engineering in light of the input material I used and also the two freely available corpora both I and the students consulted, namely the Michigan Corpus of Upper-student Papers (2009) and the Hong Kong PolyU Corpus of Research Articles (Lin and Evans 2012).

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3 Positioning and re-positioning a proposal writing module This 20-hour proposal writing module, also including a 10-minute individual presentation, for post-graduate science and engineering students at a university in Hong Kong requires students to write a 400-word proposal abstract envisaged to be submitted for an internal “Direct Allocation Grant” (DAG), small grants which junior researchers are encouraged to apply for. Importantly, the pedagogic activities are inspired by corpus-based research findings and at the same time also involve students in hands-on concordancing activities, and can thus been seen as grounded in both “indirect” and “direct” uses of corpus applications. The task is generally perceived by students to be useful as on completing their PhD those staying in academia would be expected to apply for a research grant.

3.1 Positioning the proposal writing module The in-house produced textbook takes a Swalesian genre-based approach to text analysis requiring students to analyse the proposal abstract in terms of rhetorical move structures (Swales 1990, 2004). However, only one exemplar from the local context is provided. To get a greater understanding of this genre and avoid “reification” when introducing it to students, I consulted three studies in the ESP literature on proposal writing (Connor and Mauranen 1999; Connor and Upton 2004; Tardy 2011). All three studies are grounded in the Swalesian tradition of genre and underscore the promotional nature of this genre (Bhatia 1993), which also has some affinity to the genre of research articles (Swales 1990, 2004). Connor and Mauranen (1999) discuss their linguistic analysis of a corpus of 34 proposals from European Union research grant applications written mainly by Finnish-led research teams of scientists. Another study by Connor and Upton (2004) analysing 68 fundraising proposals, a sub-component of the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) corpus, draws on the same rhetorical move structure framework as that used in Connor and Mauranen (1999). The third study by Tardy (2011) analyses a corpus of 40 proposal abstracts for National Science Foundation grants in applied mathematics and linguistics. While all studies found the move structure sequencing to vary, nevertheless “describing the context”, which usually involves some type of “gap” statement and “identifying outcomes” of the project, i.e. expected results and also “project outcomes” were found to be obligatory moves for proposals. As the in-house materials were rather sketchy, I decided to supplement them with the more detailed set of rhetorical moves based on a

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synthesis of frameworks described in the afore-mentioned studies, but mainly using the metalanguage from the Connor and Upton (2004) study as this mirrored the rubrics students were already familiar with from the textbook. My slightly adapted framework of the rhetorical moves of grant-funded proposals is given in Figure 1 below. Territory: establishes the situation in which the research is placed or physically located. There are two types of territory: (1) that of the “real world”, the world outside the research field; and (2) that of the field of research in which the proposal itself takes place. Gap: indicates that there is a gap in knowledge or a problem in the territory, whether in the “real world” (for example, environmental, commercial, financial), or in the research field (for example, pointing out that something is not shown or certain). This move serves to explain the motivation of the study. Goal: is the statement of the aim, or general objective of the study. In other words, it explains what it is the researcher wants to get done. Means: includes the methods, procedures, and plans of action that the proposal specifies as leading to the goal. Achievements: describes the anticipated results, findings, or outcomes of the study. Benefits: explains the intended or projected outcomes of the study which could be considered useful to the “real world” outside the study itself, or even outside the research field. Importance claim: presents the proposal, its objectives, anticipated outcomes, or the territory as particularly important or topical, much needed, or urgent with respect to either the “real world” or to the research itself.

Figure 1: Rhetorical moves of grant proposals (adapted from Connor and Upton 2004: 240)

In order to emphasise the rhetorical effectiveness of the individual move structures above, as an additional in-class activity I extracted 12 of the text segments provided for various move structures given in the Connor and Mauranen article and asked students (1) to match the text segment with the move structure, and (2) note any phrases/lexis providing linguistic clues to identify the move structure, termed “indicative expressions” by Connor and Mauranen (p. 52). Thus, as is the practice in much ESP pedagogy, the activities are clearly positioned within a Swalesian genre-based approach, with the main objective of familiarizing students with the overall communicative purpose of the genre as a whole, and the rhetorical effectiveness of the prototypical individual move structures constituting this genre. Four of the twelve text segments that I gave to students are given below.

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Text segment 1 Goal/Benefit The prenormative design will facilitate design of appropriate environmental policy and management for reducing the fluxes of harmful elements and thus reduce the environmental and socio-economic risks caused by accelerated release of harmful elements. Text segment 2 Goal The proposed research program will be directed towards filling this knowledge gap. Text segment 3 Means This project seeks to redress the gaps in our current knowledge through three systematic approaches: (i)

Multidataset analysis of Regional Geoscience and Land Use datasets obtained from satellite and ground truth scores

(ii)

Small scale studies in Streams, Estuaries, Marine Sinks

(iii) Historical studies in Lakes Text segment 4 Territory (research) Within CEN\TC161\WG3 study group, a debate is in progress concerning the inclusion of a combination of methods A and B1 in the CEN guidelines with a steel plate as surface and glycerine as a lubricant. In the four text segments above indicative phrases for particular move structures are highlighted in bold. The short sections underlined, often overlapping with the indicative phrases, relate to unanticipated queries students had regarding various language points, which to them “sounded a bit strange”. Student queries are noted in Figure 2 below. While students were able to identify the “indicative expressions” for the various move structures, and very much appreciated this activity, what I hadn’t expected were the above queries on various language expressions, as my main

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Text segment 1: Shouldn’t there be an article before “design”? Text segment 2: Isn’t it better to just say “gap” without “knowledge” before it? Text segment 3: Doesn’t “redress” go with another noun, and not “gap”? Text segment 4: “A debate is in progress” doesn’t seem to be a very common expression.

Figure 2: Student queries on text segments

aim in this task was to focus on the overall rhetorical effectiveness of successful proposals. As one can see from the underlined phrases in the text segments above, the student queries focus on ELF-type phrases which would be considered by some as unidiomatic and not quite adhering to standard norms. But, this would be from a native-speaker perspective. ELF researchers such as Pitzl (2009) have discussed this issue of idiomaticity in relation to Sinclair’s well-known “open-choice” and “idiom” principle, the latter referring to the fact that “a language user has available to him or her a large number of semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single phrases” (Sinclair 1991: 110). Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2007: 365), cited in Pitzl (2009), suggest that ELF users “construct what they have to say more atomistically, in a bottom-up fashion”, thereby relying to a greater extent on the open-choice principle. These “potentially more open” categories ascribed to English as a lingua franca have also been remarked on by Connor and Mauranen (1999: 52): Clearly many of the indicative expressions were unidiomatic English. This is of course a normal state of affairs in international contexts where most of the communication uses English as a lingua franca, which rarely is the native language of any of the parties involved. The consequence of this for linguistic analysis is that fixed expressions and closed categories must be treated as potentially more open than they would be in a strictly native-speaker context, with standard language norms prevailing.

4 Consulting academic corpora for students’ queries As mentioned previously, the students’ queries took me somewhat by surprise as my main objective in using the above material was to focus on the rhetorical strategies for writing successful proposal abstracts, an objective which I again conveyed to students. I then decided that consulting two freely-available corpora of academic written English, the Michigan Corpus of Upper-student Papers (MICUSP)

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and the Hong Kong PolyU Corpus of Research Articles (CRA), might help shed some light on the issue (see J. Flowerdew (2012), who advocates the use of such corpora for teaching academic English from the perspective of English as an international language). Although the best option would be to compile an in-house corpus of the very same proposals of DAG grants that the students are themselves applying for this was not available to me at the time. A brief overview of the two corpora I used is given below. MICUSP consists of 829 papers (around 2.6 million words) written by University of Michigan students in their final undergraduate year or in their first three years of graduate education. The papers come from sixteen disciplines and cover a range of different text types, e.g. lab reports, research papers. Two key points to note about this corpus are that it contains only distinction-level writing and that 148 of the papers, 17.9  percent, which is not an inconsiderable number, are produced by non-native speakers, i.e. international students (Römer, Brook and O’Donnell 2011). Interestingly, when the corpus was initially compiled it did not overtly distinguish between the writing of the native and non-native speakers; the search category “Nativeness” was added at a later stage at the request of the academic writing teachers at Michigan (Römer 2010). MICUSP is also marked up with various author attributes including age range, sex and native-language. The Corpus of Research Articles consists of 5,609,407 words from 39 different disciplines from two broad fields: Engineering and Applied Sciences and Humanities and Social Sciences. The webpage states the compilation procedures as follows (http://www.emgl.polyu.edu.hk /RCPCE/): A total of 20 articles have been selected for each discipline. In each discipline, 20 active and popular journals with high impact ratios [my italics] were identified. Impact rations were derived from Journal Citation Reports published by the Institute for Scientific Communication. The first article from the first issue of the year 2007 of each identified journal was selected for inclusion in the corpus. The corpus currently contains 780 articles and no two articles were written by the same author.

Of note, is that there is no mention whatsoever of the background of the authors; the main criterion for compilation is that the articles appear in “high impact journals”. It is important to note that ELF includes both native and nonnative speakers. While MICUSP and the CRA comprise native and nonnative writing, neither of these corpora would qualify as an ELF corpus in the strictest sense of the term as native speaker writing makes up the majority of the texts, around 83 percent in the case of MICUSP. In this regard, Seidlhofer (2011) and Mauranen (2012) point out respectively that VOICE and ELFA only include situations where EFL speakers are

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in the majority, as the prime aim of their analyses was to uncover ELF interaction. Nevertheless, the two corpora do reflect naturally-occurring, attested language from the international arena of academia, so by virtue of this fact can be considered as containing successful ELF writing. As we shall see from the discussion below on students’ queries, when applying corpora to pedagogy it is of utmost importance to be familiar with the composition of a corpus, crucial aspects for interpretation of some of the corpus data. Widdowson (2003) has pointed out that corpus data are divorced from their original context of use and that the data have to be recontextualised for pedagogic applications. This viewpoint would seem of particular importance with respect to ELF as students would need to be made aware of the original communicative context to recognize the rhetorical effectiveness of ELF features in the overall discourse. Let us now return to the student queries listed in Figure  2 in the previous section. One student noted the lack of an article before design of… , as noted in Text segment 1. We checked this point in MICUSP and found that although an article was used in most cases, in a couple of instances it was not, and, moreover, that this happened to be when the text was written by a non-native speaker. This observation prompted a student to exclaim “What more non-native language!” So, again, I did my best to impress upon students that this was distinction-level writing. Writing scholars working in intercultural rhetoric, for instance, Mur Dueñas (2007, 2009) in Spanish/English and McKenny and Bennett (2009) in Portuguese/English, have underscored the value of corpus findings for revealing cultural differences: “… corpus studies may have a part to play in raising awareness of hitherto-unperceived cultural differences, thereby encouraging a greater acceptance of alternative ways of construing knowledge” (McKenny and Bennett 2011: 259). A similar sentiment is embodied in the work of van Rij-Heligers (2007) and Horner (2011) with respect to ELF, illustrating the growing interest in a critical pedagogies approach to ESP. Another student queried whether it was correct to say filling this knowledge gap, as indicated in Text segment 2. A search in MICUSP revealed that while gap was used in this sense, there were no instances of it preceded by knowledge. But it did occur in the pattern ‘fill + knowledge + gap’ in the CRA. It should be added here that the search engine interface for the CRA uses ConcGram (Greaves 2009), which allows searches up to a span of five words and also not only accommodates constituency, but also positional variation, as illustrated by the concordance output in Figure 3 below. Closer examination of the data reveals that the phrase in line 1 gap of knowledge could be considered as ELF and may well be a consequence of the writer’s creative mining of their phraseological database and their familiarity with the phrase lack of knowledge, as illustrated in line 4.

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1 strategy researchers. The article addresses a crucial

gap

of knowledge because previous discussions of dummy var

2 rature is theoretically based and there is a knowledge

gap

in empirical confirmatory testing of the validity of p

3 ality attributes on performance. There is a knowledge

gap

in empirical testing to confirm the validity of perform

4 perational improvement, we have identified a research

gap

concerning the lack of knowledge on the types of oper

5 ations of pre-teenage children. This is a significant

gap

in our knowledge and one that has important implicatio

6 statements in Australia, this paper fills some of that

gap

in our knowledge. Australia Generally Accepted Accou

7 ent has been subjected to quantitative scrutiny, this

gap

in knowledge is surprising. Part of its explanation und

Figure 3: Concordance output for gap + knowledge in the CRA

The phrase redress the gaps in Text segment 3, a somewhat non-harmonic collocation in English as a native language but nevertheless comprehensible, was found to occur, as one would expect, with balance in the CRA. Again, some students were quite bemused to find such ELF-type language in what I had held up to them as exemplars of successful proposal writing by expert writers. The phrase in Text segment 4 is more nuanced, though. A student queried the fact that A debate is in progress concerning… didn’t seem to be a very common phrase and asked in what other types of lexico-grammatical patterning debate could occur. A search in the CRA revealed three common types of patterning: there has been much debate on… and the collocations current debate and debate concerns. This entailed the following question “Does that mean that the expression ‘a debate is in progress concerning’ is wrong because it’s not in the corpus?” To which my reply was, “Well it may be a bit of an unusual expression, but remember that this is writing from prestigious, high impact journals”. Before I discuss how I repositioned the module to take account of these ELF features, I would like to make some general observations on how the above examples would seem to confirm empirical findings on spoken ELF from the existing literature. Also, but I hasten to add this is a preliminary conjecture as the L1 background of the writers of the articles in the CRA is unknown and the dataset is small, there may be more similarities than differences between ELF speaking and writing. For example, early work by Seidlhofer (2004), since attested by other

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empirical research on ELF (cf. Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011), underscores omission of indefinite and definite articles where obligatory, and redundant or different prepositions, which is the case we have in Text segment 1 and line 1 of the concordance output in Figure 3. Mauranen (2011: 107) commenting on academic ELF notes thus: “Among the commonest non-standard features are articles and prepositions”. The phrase in Text segment 4 a debate is in progress concerning would seem to be an ELF-type expression given its “wordiness”, another feature identified in the literature (a shorter version would be a current debate concerns…). Explicitness is also in evidence in the concordance lines in Figure 3, which functions as metadiscoursal features signalling the rhetorical move to the reader (see Mauranen 2012, ch. 6). Now, whether this is a feature more akin to ELF writing remains to be seen, but does point to an avenue for further exploration.

4.1 Repositioning the proposal writing module The first time I taught the module on writing proposal abstracts, although familiar with the concept of ELF, I had not really considered its impact on pedagogy, gradually becoming aware of its significance as the course progressed. It is to be noted that it was Jenkins’ experience teaching ELT in the 1980s in London to students from a range of L1s that provided the impetus for the development of a research agenda and theoretical discussions of ELF (see Jenkins 2012). I am thus drawing on this theoretical base for pedagogic applications in ESP. How did I reposition the module the second and third time round to take account of the phenomenon of ELF? A return to the ESP literature in the 1990s when the somewhat hegemonic nature of English began to be questioned reveals some enlightening points made by Swales (1997: 381), very prescient of the debates in action now: At least for my sophisticated senior graduate students, equally resourceful or resourcerich are discussions of anglophonicity and its insidious spread; of the causes and effects of being members of small and large academic discourse communities… I would like to suggest that the approach is a kind of liberation theology, especially if it frees my students from the overarching dominance of anglophone native-speakerism…

My starting point for the module was to commence from a more “real-world” awareness-raising perspective, in fact, from the perspective of World Englishes. I did this because I have had two students from Sri Lanka in subsequent classes, whom the other students considered to be non-native speakers. This is a similar situation to that encountered by Bayyurt and Altinmakas (2012: 175) who note with respect to students at a Turkish university that “[i]n the beginning of the

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term, it was observed that students had almost no awareness or knowledge about varieties of English in countries in the Outer and Expanding Circles, let alone any awareness that there are different varieties and dialects of English in the Inner Circle countries”. I have also found from my students that several would be accompanying their supervisors to present papers at international conferences, and for this very reason, should be made aware of the status of English internationally. I have also found students to be more receptive to ELF when provided with some facts and figures on the number of English speakers across the globe. For example, Crystal’s (2011) estimate of there being 2  billion speakers, 400  million of whom are native speakers with the remaining 1.6  billion using English as some sort of official language, gives students pause for thought. From this repositioned starting point, I would say that students are far more accommodating and accepting towards ELF and have come to realize that getting a paper published in an international journal or a proposal accepted requires more than just strict adherence to native speaker norms but resides in the quality of the study and how well the writer can fulfill the communicative purposes of a particular genre through more top-down rhetorical strategies, where function would override formal considerations for successful communication (Seidlhofer 2010).

5 Discussion and implications for future corpus-based research and practice in ESP ELF researchers make the point unambiguously on a number of occasions that ELF is certainly not a case of “anything goes” (Jenkins 2009; Seidlhofer 2012b). Moreover, Dewey (2007) and Dewey and Jenkins (2010) underscore the principle that there still needs to be a certain level of stability and common ground in terms of lexis and grammar among ELF users to facilitate mutual intelligibility, while at the same time allowing for dynamic variation. This position would seem to be in line with a social constructivist view of genre (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995) in which genres are seen as a form of “social action”, dynamic artifacts, which shape and are shaped by the ways we interact, and for this reason are continually fluid and evolving, even more so now in this era of “transcultural flows” and the “ever-changing negotiated spaces of current language use” (Pennycook 2009, cited in Jenkins 2011: 931). It may well be that ELF writers in the sciences are now shaping not only the more unconventional online genres such as blogs and online discussions, but also the more conventional written ones such as the RA, not only at the level of lexico-grammatical patterning, but also at a more top-down level in terms

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of move structure patterning, necessitating a reconsideration of the concept of “genre ownership” (cf. Bhatia 1997, 2008), and a renegotiation of the established concepts of disciplinary communities of practice and culture (see Baker 2009 for a detailed discussion on the role of culture, language and ELF). Thus, as Widdowson (2012: 21) notes “…what we see in ELF is an entirely natural, and indeed inevitable, process of linguistic evolution [my italics], consistent with the Halliday dictum that the form a language takes is a reflection of the functions it has evolved to serve (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004)”. Some reflections on ways to address the phenomenon of ELF in written ESP research and practice are provided below. The criteria for corpus design and compilation in terms of balance, size and representativeness have been a prime focus of discussion in the corpus linguistics literature, as well as the question of “external” vs. “internal” criteria for compilation (Flowerdew 2004, 2012). Mauranen (2011: 101) makes the important point that, to date, ELFA compilation criteria have generally been drawn up on “external” grounds, that is, identification of the prominent genres of the discourse community on a social, not language-internal basis [my italics], which would imply selection based on linguistic features. And, indeed, it is clear that MICUSP and the use initials, CRA follows external parameters. Subsequent analysis could be enhanced by tagging the corpus for moves with the intention of correlating these with lexico-grammatical patterns, along the lines of the discourse-based tagging system described in Flowerdew (2008). In the longer term, diachronic corpora would aid in capturing the dynamic, ongoing variations in ELF in ESP, for, as Firth (2009) observes, a key characteristic of ELF is its inherent variability and dynamism. Yet, at the same time, EFL empirical research has indicated some defining features. Based on my somewhat, admittedly small dataset of examples, a tentative hypothesis would be that successful ELF writers are familiar with key lexis, e.g. gap, debate, which they use in what could be considered creative lexicogrammatical patterns. A means to validate this suggestion would be to generate a keyword list of an ESP corpus (keywords are words of unusually high frequency when benchmarked against a larger-scale general corpus (see Scott and Tribble 2006; Bondi and Scott 2010), and then to investigate their lexico-grammatical patterns. It may turn out that keywords are fairly stable and constant with variability residing in the lexico-grammar of the keyword. Another issue, which is of relevance for ESP, concerns a “cline of acceptability” in ELF interactions, a notion first put forward by Jenkins (2006) and reviewed in Ferguson (2009). Citing Jenkins (2006: 141), Ferguson comments that progress along ELF clines is still “largely an empirical matter”, noting the utility value of corpora in this respect. He also makes the observation that the “ELF end-point” cannot be straightforwardly “read-off” from corpus data “as ultimately some evaluative, even ideological, judgment as to what the ELF community would deem

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definitive of an expert speaker is required” (p. 127). As noted previously, caution is indeed necessary in interpretation of corpus data with respect to ELF. But as to whether an “end-point” can be designated is open to question in this era of “transcultural flows”. This issue is further complicated in the case of the ELF-ESP interface as an expert speaker/writer could also be taken to refer to a “specialist informant” in the discipline concerned. To take the case of prepositions, which, as noted previously, are a common spoken ELF feature, I have tentatively flagged gap of knowledge as ELF writing. But a professor of computer science/computational linguistics recently pointed out to me that in certain instances it is imperative to use specific prepositions as it marks an academic out as a member of a particular discourse community conversant with its discursive practices. The professor gave the example of “test the model against the data” saying that it was a necessity to use the preposition against as using “on” would convey a lack of disciplinary knowledge and identity. Thus, what is deemed acceptable ELF lexico-grammar in ESP may largely be concerned with what is referred to as subtechnical lexis, items such as problem, recommendation which have a discourseorganising role. As far as pedagogy is concerned, I have illustrated the ELF-type features which surfaced in hands-on concordancing using corpora compiled of successful academic writing, in part consisting of texts from writers whose L1 is not necessarily English. Many pedagogic applications using corpora with international doctoral students report on initiatives to have students compile their own corpora, usually from research articles in their field as these are readily available (cf. Lee and Swales 2006). However, Charles (2012) aptly conveys the challenges ESP teachers may face with respect to students’ self-compilation of specialised corpora: …one unexpected issue that arose for several students was the reliability of the English in certain papers. Thus one student noted that “the quality of English language is not always up to standard even in good articles”, which again raises the issue of suitability for inclusion in a corpus. While it may be argued that the English of published research can be considered ‘good enough’, it is also true the even work appearing in journals of high standing is published primarily on the merits of the research, rather than on the standard of the language. Thus, as this student maintained, it may fall short of the level that advanced learners writers want and demand. Although students can be recommended to choose RAs with at least one native-speaker author, this is clearly difficult to ascertain and does not necessarily address the problem satisfactorily. Supervisors can also be asked for their recommendations but again, not all would be willing or able to provide lists of well-written papers. This remains, then, a difficult issue to resolve, particularly for students working in fields where the majority of research is written by authors with English as an additional language. (Charles 2012: 100)

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In light of the internationalization of academic institutions and the rapidly growing number of published expert academic writers with different L1 backgrounds, it would seem that ESP research and pedagogy would by necessity have to acknowledge the debates on ELF, which would also have implications for needs analysis, a cornerstone of syllabus and materials design for ESP courses (Flowerdew 2013), not forgetting teacher education (Dewey 2012). As Widdowson eloquently expounds (2012), the time has now come to review concepts and epistemologies that have become conventionally established in the description and teaching of English, for which ELF is the catalyst for change. However, to what extent different stakeholders such as journal editors in the wider ESP “communities of practice” show a willingness in “Accommodating to ELF in the international university” (Jenkins 2011) remains to be seen. Key researchers in Business English and intercultural rhetoric have signaled the increasing acceptance and importance of ELF in these fields. It is hoped that it may just be a question of time for ELF to gain more currency both as a legitimate object of investigation and also of use in academic written English, as explored in this article.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer and editors whose valuable comments have improved the clarity and sharpened the discussion of theoretical and methodological issues.

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Bolton, Kingsley & Braj Kachru (eds.). 2006. World Englishes. Critical concepts in linguistics. London: Routledge. Bondi, Marina & Mike Scott (eds.). 2010. Keyness in texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Breiteneder, Angelika. 2009. English as a lingua franca in Europe: an empirical perspective. World Englishes 28 (2). 256–269. Charles, Maggie. 2012. ‘Proper vocabulary and juicy collocations’: EAP students evaluate do-ityourself corpus building. English for Specific Purposes 31. 93–102. Cogo, Alessia & Martin Dewey. 2012. Analysing English as a lingua franca. A corpus-driven investigation. London: Continuum. Connor, Ulla. 2011. Intercultural rhetoric in the writing classroom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Connor, Ulla & Anna Mauranen. 1999. Linguistic analysis of grant proposals: European Union grant proposals. English for Specific Purposes 18. 47–62. Connor, Ulla & William Rozycki. 2013. ESP and intercultural rhetoric. In Brian Paltridge & Sue Starfield (eds.). The handbook of English for Specific Purposes, 427–443. London: WileyBlackwell. Connor, Ulla & Thomas Upton. 2004. The genre of grant proposals: A corpus linguistic analysis. In Ulla Connor & Thomas Upton (eds.). Discourse in the professions. Perspectives from corpus linguistics, 235–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Crystal, David. 2011. English: a status report. Spotlight, 28–33. Dewey, Martin. 2007. English as a lingua franca and globalization: an interconnected perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17 (3). 332–354. Dewey, Martin. 2012. Beyond labels and categories in English language teaching. In Constant Leung & Brian V. Street (eds.), English. A changing medium for education, 129–149. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Dewey, Martin & Jennifer Jenkins. 2010. English as a lingua franca in the global context: interconnectedness, variation and change. In Mukul Saxena & Tope Omoniyi (eds.). Contending with globalization in World Englishes (Critical Language and Literacy Studies), 72–92. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ferguson, Gibson. 2009. Issues in researching English as a lingua franca: a conceptual enquiry. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 19 (2). 117–135. Ferguson, Gibson, Carmen Pérez-Llantada & Ramón Plo. 2011. English as an international language of scientific publication: a study of attitudes. World Englishes 30 (1). 41–59. Firth, Alan. 1996. The discursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 26. 237–259. Flowerdew, John. 2012. Corpora in language teaching from the perspective of English as an international language. In Lubna Alsagoff, Sandra Lee McKay, Guangwei Hu & Willy A. Renandya (eds.). Principles and practices for teaching English as an international language, 226–243. New York & London: Routledge. Flowerdew, Lynne. 2004. The argument for using English specialised corpora to understand academic and professional language. In Ulla Connor & Thomas Upton (eds.). Discourse in the professions: perspectives from corpus linguistics, 11–33. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Flowerdew, Lynne. 2008. Determining discourse-based moves in professional reports. In Annelie Ädel & Randi Reppen (eds.). Corpora and discourse: the challenges of different settings, 117–134. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Flowerdew, Lynne. 2012. Corpora and language education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Kirkpatrick, Andy. 2010. English as a lingua franca in ASEAN. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lee, David, & John Swales. 2006. A corpus-based EAP course for NNS doctoral students: moving from available specialised corpora to self-compiled corpora. English for Specific Purposes 25 (1). 56–75. Lillis, Theresa, & Mary Jane Curry. 2010. Academic writing in a global context. The politics and practices of publishing in English. London & New York: Routledge. Lin, Ling & Stephen Evans. 2012. Structural patterns in empirical research articles. English for Specific Purposes 31. 150–160. Mauranen, Anna. 1993. Cultural differences in academic rhetoric. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Mauranen, Anna. 2011. English as the lingua franca of the academic world. In Diane Belcher, Ann M. Johns & Brian Paltridge (eds.). New directions in English for Specific Purposes research, 94–117. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF. Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, Anna, Niina Hynninen & Elina Ranta. 2010a. English as an academic lingua franca: The ELFA project. English for Specific Purposes. 29. 183–190. Mauranen, Anna, Carmen Pérez-Llantada & John M. Swales. 2010b. Academic Englishes: a standardized knowledge? In Andy Kirkpatrick (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes, 634–652. New York & London: Routledge. McKenny, John & Karen Bennett. 2011. Polishing papers for publication: palimpsests or procrustean beds? In Ana Frankenberg-Garcia, Lynne Flowerdew & Guy Aston (eds.). New trends in corpora and language learning, 247–262. London: Continuum. Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers. 2009. Ann Arbor, MI: The Regents of the University of Michigan. Mur Dueñas, Pilar. 2007. “I/We focus on…”: a cross-cultural analysis of self-mentions in business managememt research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6 (2). 143–162. Mur Dueñas, Pilar. 2009. Logical markers in L1 (Spanish and English) and L2 (English) business research articles. English Text Construction 2 (2). 246–264. Nickerson, Catherine. 2013. English for Specific Purposes and English as a lingua franca. In Brian Paltridge & Sue Starfield (eds.). 445–460. The handbook of English for Specific Purposes. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Pakir, Anne. 2009. English as a lingua franca: analyzing research frameworks in international English: world Englishes, and ELF. World Englishes 28 (2). 224–235. Paltridge, Brian. 2009. Editorial. English for Specific Purposes 28. 1–3. Paltridge, Brian & Sue Starfield (eds.). 2013. The handbook of English for Specific Purposes. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Pennycook, Alistair. 1994. The cultural politics of English as an international language. Harlow, UK: Longman. Pennycook, Alistair. 2007. Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge. Pérez-Llantada, Carmen. 2012. Scientific discourse and the rhetoric of globalization. The impact of culture and language. London: Continuum. Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pitzl, Marie-Luise. 2009. “We should not wake up any dogs”: idiom and metaphor in ELF. In Anna Mauranen & Elina Ranta (eds.) English as a lingua franca. Studies and findings, 298–322. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Nobuyuki Hino and Setsuko Oda

Chapter 2  Integrated practice in teaching English as an international language (IPTEIL): A classroom ELF pedagogy in Japan 1 Introduction This paper discusses a pedagogy for ELF or English as a Lingua Franca (Jenkins 2007; Mauranen and Ranta 2009; Kirkpatrick 2010; Seidlhofer 2011) developed by the first author at Osaka University, Japan, which is known as IPTEIL (Integrated Practice in Teaching English as an International Language). Classroom practice with this teaching methodology was recognized with the Best Teacher Award, formally called Osaka University Award for Outstanding Contributions to General Education, for 12 consecutive semesters from Spring 2006 to Fall 2011. In IPTEIL classes, held in CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) rooms, students watch, read, and discuss real-time news across the world obtained via satellite TV and the Internet. Through these authentic tasks, IPTEIL allows the learners to participate in the real-life community of ELF users, whereby exposing them to the linguistic and cultural diversity of ELF. IPTEIL, as the name shows, also incorporates multiple educational concepts into the teaching of ELF, including Critical Literacy, Media Literacy Education, and Global Education. This is made possible by comparing and contrasting different news media with their varied standpoints, which is a classroom activity designed to help the students acquire intercultural skills needed for ELF communication. In this paper, the term EIL, or English as an International Language (Smith 1983; Hino 2001), is often used almost interchangeably with ELF. However, some subtle differences between these two concepts or schools of thought are also mentioned later in the present paper, as they point to some weak aspects of the current form of IPTEIL when viewed from ELF perspectives. In the following, several approaches to the teaching of EIL are briefly introduced first, accompanied by presentation of IPTEIL as a methodology combining a few of those approaches, before going on to discussions of its significance, limitations, and prospects for future teaching practice in ELF.

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2 Five ways of teaching EIL By reorganizing the taxonomy by Hino (2010) that classified existing EIL pedagogies into seven categories, methodologies for teaching EIL may be divided into the five approaches below, which would also be largely applicable to ELF education. Examples are provided for each method without setting a boundary between EIL and ELF. (1) Teaching “about” EIL (e.g. Honna, Kirkpatrick, and Gilbert 2001; Murata and Sugimoto 2009; D’Angelo 2012; Bayyurt and Altinmakas 2012; Baker 2012; Galloway 2013): The teacher provides the students with knowledge of EIL, such as the global spread of English today. (2) Role-plays in EIL interactions (e.g. Via and Smith 1983; Shiozawa 1999): Drama techniques are exploited in order to allow the students to practice oral communication in EIL through simulated exercises. (3) Exposure to the diversity of EIL (e.g. Nishinoh, Yamamoto, and Taguchi 1994; Hino 1989–1990, 2003, 2012b, 2014; Galloway 2013; Galloway and Rose 2013): Students are given opportunities to be accustomed to the linguistic and cultural varieties of EIL. (4) Content-based approach to EIL (e.g. Hino 2003, 2012b, 2014; Takagaki and Tanabe 2007; Baker 2012; Galloway 2013; Galloway and Rose 2013): EIL is taught by way of concrete content or subject matters. (5) Participation in the community of EIL users (e.g. Hino 2003, 2012b; 2013, 2014; Ueda et  al. 2005; D’Angelo 2012; Galloway and Rose 2013): Students learn EIL via “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” (Lave and Wenger 1991) in the “Community of Practice in EIL” (Hino 2003, p.67), that is, learn EIL through authentic experiences in EIL communication with appropriate support. Reflecting the recent trend in educational philosophy toward constructivism, there seems to be a move in EIL pedagogy from simulated exercises such as (2) above to real-life experiences typically represented in (5), whether they take place inside or outside of traditional classrooms. Holistic methodologies with an emphasis on “learning-in-doing,” such as (4) and (5), are also often realistic approaches for EIL education – As models for EIL are generally not clearly specified at least thus far, it is rather difficult for teachers anyway to employ more dis-

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crete approaches with minutely prescribed details. IPTEIL, the method discussed in this paper, is a combination of (3), (4), and (5).

3 Description of IPTEIL 3.1 ELT curriculum at Osaka University IPTEIL has grown out of teaching practice by the first author of the present paper in undergraduate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes at Osaka University, Japan. Although efforts have been under way to diffuse this method to other pedagogical contexts, discussions in this paper are chiefly based on classrooms at Osaka University. Like in many other universities in Japan, EFL classes at Osaka University are compulsory for all first-year and second-year undergraduates regardless of their major subjects of study. Each class consists of 40 to 55 students, and meets once a week for 90 minutes, with the total of 15 sessions. Materials and methodologies are largely left to each teacher. Internet-connectable CALL rooms are available, and they are where IPTEIL classes take place. The classes consist mostly of Japanese students, with a limited number of international students. IPTEIL is practiced usually in reading classes.

3.2 Goals of IPTEIL As enumerated in Hino (2012b), main goals of IPTEIL are summarized with the following five objectives. By taking IPTEIL classes, students are expected to: 1. acquire identity as EIL users 2. become familiar with linguistic and cultural diversity of EIL 3. gain cross-cultural awareness needed for communication in EIL 4. establish their own thinking to cope with the varieties of values in EIL 5. acquire reading (and some listening) skills in EIL

3.3 Teaching procedure for IPTEIL While the traditional mode of English language teaching in Japan relies heavily on the use of Japanese as the native language to the extent that translation is regarded as an integral part of the class (Hino 1992), English is primarily the lan-

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guage of instruction for IPTEIL, with occasional recourse to Japanese to aid the students’ understanding. Although some use of the learners’ native language itself might be favorably viewed for ELF education as a reaction to monolingual orientation in dominant Anglo-American pedagogies, caution should be taken in the case of Japan in regard to the long-standing tendency to overuse the Japanese language in ELT. The basic procedure for IPTEIL, in an Internet-connected CALL room, is as follows, though with various modifications depending on each specific class situation: STEP 1: The class watches the latest English video news on the Web or English TV news recorded on DVD in the early morning STEP 2: The teacher asks the students questions in English on the content of the news, which are also to be answered in English. STEP 3: The class reads a latest English article on the Web on the same news topic above. STEP 4: The teacher asks the students questions in English on the content of the article, which are to be answered in English. STEP 5: The class reads other Web newspapers with different and/or similar cultural values on the same news topic above. STEP 6: The teacher asks questions in English to guide the students’ attention toward cultural differences and/or similarities between the news media.

3.4 Materials for IPTEIL Teaching materials for IPTEIL are authentic real-time news on the Web, coupled with satellite TV news recorded on DVD in the early morning of the day of the class. The use of recorded TV news is carefully restricted and minimized due to copyright considerations. A wide variety of Internet English news media across the world, some of which come with videos in addition to written articles, are used in IPTEIL classes, such as Channel NewsAsia (Singapore), Bangkok Post (Thailand), The Korea Herald (Korea), The Standard (Hong Kong), People’s Daily (China), Philippine Daily Inquirer (Philippines), Dawn (Pakistan), The Jerusalem Post (Israel), Al Jazeera (Qatar), Hurriyet (Turkey), Tehran Times (Iran), The Standard (Kenya), NHK World (Japan), CNN (U.S.A.), and BBC (U.K.), among many others. TV English news used in IPTEIL classes include, with some overlap with the Internet media above, Channel News Asia (Singapore), ATV (Hong Kong), ABS-CBN (Philippines), NDTV (India), CNN (U.S.A.), and BBC (U.K.).

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3.5 Features of IPTEIL Main features of IPTEIL may be identified with three points, which are Legitimate Peripheral Participation in the community of EIL users, materials spoken or written in a diversity of World Englishes, and the integration of multiple pedagogical concepts relevant to EIL. Each of these is briefly discussed in the following sections.

3.5.1 Legitimate Peripheral Participation in the community of EIL users The central idea here is that one type of effective learning occurs when a learner engages in authentic tasks with appropriate support in real-life environment. Drawing upon the concept of “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” (Lave and Wenger 1991), Hino (2003) claimed that teachers should help their students participate in the “community of practice in EIL,” which is an essential element of IPTEIL. It is for the above reason that real-time news is employed as teaching materials for IPTEIL. Watching, reading, and talking about daily news are common core tasks for all EIL users in the real world regardless of their background. The news watched and/or read in class also should be provided in their latest versions rather than ones the day before or a week ago. In real life, when we watch TV news or read newspapers, we normally do not go back to their past editions unless we have some special motives to do so. For everyone including the students, obtaining information from real-time news is a meaningful activity. In IPTEIL classes, students deal with the latest news in English, often when those news items are not yet covered in Japanese media. This is a situation where there is genuine necessity to absorb information from international English language media. An important point with IPTEIL is that students perform these tasks, not simply because their teachers tell them to do so, but because it is just natural to try to get information from the newest news. In other words, watching, reading, and talking about news in IPTEIL classes is not an act of mere simulation as in traditional classes, but is that of engaging in real-life use of EIL. This way, Legitimate Peripheral Participation in the community of EIL users is made possible even in classroom situations. This form of learning is “legitimate” in terms of the authenticity of its materials and activities, and also “peripheral” in the sense that no serious results are brought about even when students make mistakes in this environment.

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3.5.2 Materials in a diversity of World Englishes Real-time news across the world, the materials for IPTEIL, are spoken or written in World Englishes with their diversity of linguistic norms and cultural values. For example, Islamic values are reflected in Al Jazeera coverage of daily news, when traditional Jewish cultures are evident in the Jerusalem Post articles. Thai patterns of thinking are reflected in Bangkok Post reports, while the Korea Herald expresses how Koreans view this world. Though grammatical variations may be relatively limited, these media also embody a variety of phonological, lexical, discoursal, sociolinguistic, and non-verbal features. For instance, NHK World airs English spoken with pronunciation of Japanese English. Lexical items in Pakistani English are found in Dawn. And ABS-CBN, in their TV news programs, exhibits discourse patterns of Filipino English. It is true that ELF is at times interpreted as if it were a monolithic entity, but leading ELF scholars have repeatedly made it clear that ELF entails diversity, not uniformity (e.g. Jenkins 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009; Seidlhofer 2006). It is also the authors’ position that ELF should be viewed as a representation of linguistic and cultural diversity, where mutual communication is still possible by way of “negotiation of meaning”(Seidlhofer 2009). Although efficient ELF users are always ready to accommodate their English to make it comprehensible for their interlocutors (Jenkins 2000, 2007), the English of their own as a medium of their cultural identities is still retained. IPTEIL provides students with opportunities to become familiar with this rich diversity of ELF and to gain intercultural understanding needed for ELF communication. Some TV news programs or Web news videos serve as especially valuable illustrations for authentic ELF communication. For example, Channel NewsAsia often presents interactions between Singaporean anchors and local reporters from various parts of Asia such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Japan.

3.5.3 Integration of pedagogical concepts relevant to EIL Multiple educational concepts are put into classroom practice in an integrated manner in IPTEIL, including Media Literacy Education, Global Education, Content-Based Language Instruction, Legitimate Peripheral Participation in a Community of Practice, and Computer-Assisted Language Learning. For example, IPTEIL exploits the latest world news as materials with meaningful content, rather than some traditional textbooks geared towards the learning of linguistic forms, with advantages of Content-Based Language Instruction. Global Education is also naturally incorporated into IPTEIL, as the class goes

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through various world news, covering topics such as war and peace, environmental protection, human rights, religious and ethnic conflicts, world economy, and international politics. The significance of media literacy or critical literacy, in combination with critical thinking, is particularly emphasized in IPTEIL as an important element of EIL education. The class compares and contrasts news articles with varied viewpoints in order to help the students establish their own thinking so that they will not be lost in the world of EIL users with an enormous diversity of values. The following are some examples of news articles taken up real-time in IPTEIL classes at Osaka University. The Jerusalem Post, a conservative Israeli newspaper, reports on the bombing of a bus with Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in July 2012, blaming the case on Iran: ….What Netanyahu did was take the horrific attack and hold it up to the world as an example of Iranian behavior. This, he said in so many words, is how Tehran acts now. Imagine how it will act if it gets nuclear weapons…. (The Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2012)

On the other hand, IRNA, the national news agency of Iran, criticizes the Israeli reaction to this incident on the same day: Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, strongly rejected the recent allegations by Zionist regime’s officials on attributing the explosion of a bus carrying Israeli tourists in a Bulgarian airport…. The diplomat pointed out that the Zionist regime that has a direct role in terror of Iran’s nuclear scientists engages in lodging baseless accusations against other countries in order to distract the attention of the international community from its terrorist activities being carried out throughout the world. (IRNA, July 20, 2012)

The act of reading these news articles itself constitutes a form of EIL/ELF communication. These news media from the non-Anglo-American world sends messages to the international community in English, which are in the present case received by Japanese users of English from another part of “the Expanding Circle” (in World Englishes terminology). Comparing articles like the above two enables the students to see how one and the same event could be pictured in opposite ways, depending on the stance of the writers. An important point for the teacher is to lead the students not to accept the messages as they are, but to think critically to come up with their own interpretations of what is really happening. Below is another example  – differing reports on a meeting of the International Whaling Commission. Though IPTEIL puts a considerable emphasis on non-native varieties of English, native speaking English (English in an Australian

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media in this example) is also included, as native speakers are also members of the discourse community of EIL/ELF: Japan and other pro-whaling nations have walked out of a meeting of the International Whaling Commission to protest a proposal for a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic. Delegates from Japan, Iceland and a number of Caribbean and Africa nations walked out when the issue came up on Thursday at the IWC’s annual talks in Jersey, throwing the meeting into disarray. (The Sydney Morning Herald, July 15, 2011)

According to this representative Australian newspaper, pro-whaling nations such as Japan and Iceland are the ones who are responsible for the turmoil of this meeting. It gives the readers the impression that a selfish act by the pro-whaling nations is the cause of the confusion. On the other hand, a public Japanese news media, NHK World, provides a different account of the event. With the following report, the readers would gain the impression that anti-whaling nations such as Brazil and Argentina are the troublemakers: The meeting highlighted the deadlock after Brazil and Argentina proposed a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic. The meeting was disrupted for hours over a vote for the adoption. (NHK World, July 15, 2011)

As a major news media from Australia, one of the countries strongly opposed to whale hunt, anti-whaling philosophy is reflected in the coverage by The Sydney Morning Herald, while the traditional whaling cultures of Japan underlies the NHK World article. This is an example of intercultural differences that ELF users must deal with. It should be highly useful for learners of ELF to be exposed to instances like these to be prepared to overcome cultural barriers to achieve successful communication.

3.5.4 Indigenized production models of EIL In IPTEIL classes, as illustrated above, students are exposed to a linguistic and cultural diversity of English transcending the conventional Anglo-American framework. While students are certainly free to choose any of these varieties as their production model, it is also teachers’ job, especially when they share linguistic and cultural background with their students, to demonstrate their own versions of English as sample production models for their students. Hino (2012a, 2012c) argues for the pedagogical need to design original production models for Japanese learners of English that are required to be capable

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of expressing Japanese values as well as internationally communicative, based on available research results and experiences in EIL communication. Suggested production models for IPTEIL practiced in Japan is, in this respect, “Japanese English” in the positive sense of the term (Hino 2009). This stance presents a sharp contrast with the view of models within the traditional World Englishes paradigm, where the chance for local models is seen to be limited to postcolonial varieties in the Outer Circle such as Indian English (Kachru 1976, 1985).

4 Reception of IPTEIL Despite some limitations with this method of teaching, IPTEIL at Osaka University has been receiving highly positive evaluation both from students and the university administration. Osaka University Award for Outstanding Contributions to General Education, or the Best Teacher Award, was given to the first author’s classroom practice with IPTEIL for 12 consecutive semesters from Spring 2006 to Fall 2011, amounting to the total of 14 times since Fall 2002. Some of the reasons for the award, cited by the university on its official website¹, are as follows: Received high evaluation from many students with comments such as “This class gave us opportunities to listen not only to Anglo-American English but also to other varieties of English such as those of Asia,” “By dealing with news from all over the world, this class enabled me to acquire global ways of thinking,” and “This class was rich both in its form and content.” (Spring Semester, 2009, in Japanese)

Gained recommendation from an overwhelmingly large number of students, by introducing them to the diversity of English and leading them to analyze news from multiple perspectives, with activities such as comparing views of various news media real-time. (Fall Semester, 2006, in Japanese)

Several concepts that may be viewed as keywords of ELF communication appear in the above evaluation of IPTEIL, including “varieties of English,” “global ways of thinking,” “diversity of English,” and “multiple perspectives.” IPTEIL seems to be basically worth practicing as a method for producing effective communicators in ELF.

1 http://www.cep.osaka-u.ac.jp/ourwork/prize/ (Retrieved on January 13, 2013).

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5 Limitations of IPTEIL from ELF perspectives Although IPTEIL seems to be a considerably successful classroom pedagogy as was shown in 4 above, this practice has limitations from ELF perspectives at least on three counts, which are briefly discussed in this section. These are some of the shortcomings of IPTEIL that should probably be worked out if this method of teaching is to be remodeled as IPTELF (Integrated Practice in Teaching English as a Lingua Franca). One of the limitations is that IPTEIL, under some influence from the World Englishes paradigm, often relies on the conventional nation-state framework in treating linguistic and cultural varieties of English, employing concepts such as Kenyan English, Singaporean English, and Japanese English. Since this issue is too complex and multi-faceted to explore in the present paper, it should suffice to point out at the moment that IPTEIL would ultimately need to go beyond the nation-state framework with respect to ELF ideals. The second problem, which is also somewhat related to the first point above, is that some news media are intra-nationally oriented, especially when they come from the Outer Circle. For example, the intended viewership for ABS-CBN television news primarily seems to be the people of their own country, the Philippines. In fact, code-switching by interviewees in this news program is so frequent without English subtitles, with extensive insertion of the Filipino language commonly known as Taglish. It appears that this news program is basically for domestic viewers who understand both English and Filipino. From this observation, it would be also possible to say that Filipino English used on ABS-CBN probably often has more of the nature of English as an intra-national language, or English as a national language of the Philippines, rather than a version of Filipino English used for international communication. Though it depends on one’s definition of ELF if the English used between fellow nationals with different first language backgrounds is regarded as ELF, this at least would not be a typical situation that ELF education, which is internationally-oriented, is aimed at. In this respect, while programs like ABS-CBN news are certainly valuable sources for World Englishes, which is a concept with an emphasis on intra-national use of English, they may not always be the most appropriate material for the learning of ELF. It should be reminded here that there certainly are news media also in the Outer Circle that can be precisely used for the learning of ELF, such as Channel NewsAsia mentioned earlier, a TV news station from Singapore targeted not only at domestic but also at global audience. On Channel NewsAsia, local reporters from various Asian countries, many of whom are obviously non-native speakers of English, speak to the Singaporean anchors and to international viewers in their

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own varieties of English. This TV program, available also on the Web, provides very useful resources for ELF classes. Lastly, the third limitation with IPTEIL as ELF pedagogy is the paucity of opportunities for learning “accommodation” and “negotiation of meaning”, both of which are of crucial importance in ELF communication (cf. Cogo 2012; Honna 2012). It would often be presumed that these aspects of language learning should be supplemented by introducing some activities that require student-to-student interactions, but it is not always productive in classroom environment in Japan, as exemplified below. At least in the original version of IPTEIL practiced at Osaka University, as is evident in the teaching procedure presented in 3.3 above, little chance is provided for interactions between students. Among several reasons for the lack of peer interactions, in addition to the fact that IPTEIL is usually employed for reading classes, is the student population – The majority of undergraduates at this university are Japanese students, when a great number of international students are enrolled at the graduate level. Most IPTEIL classes, as undergraduate EFL classes, have less than a few international students, which makes peer interactions in English simply unauthentic. Some efforts were made in the past in IPTEIL classes at Osaka University to engage the students in discussions in English among themselves on the news that they watched or read in class, but the students found it rather strange as they perceived no real need to communicate with their fellow nationals in English when no foreigner was participating in the conversation. In fact, with respect to the emphasis on real-life use of English in IPTEIL, imposing such an unnatural task on the students is against the basic idea of this approach. This situation in Japan, as a country in the Expanding Circle, is significantly different, for example, from that of university ESL classes in the U.S., where interactions between students from various countries automatically constitute ELF communication.² In order to solve the third problem above, a major curriculum reform would be required, which would bring authentic ELF interactions into classrooms. One hope with Osaka University in this respect is that a new system called “Senior Teaching Assistant” (STA) is now under construction, with which Ph.D. students participate in substantial educational activities in undergraduate classes. If nonnative English speaking international graduate students are employed as discussion leaders, they would help create authentic ELF environment in IPTEIL classrooms. While native speakers of English should not be excluded from these STAs, 2 It should be noted that those American ESL programs generally fail to take advantage of the valuable ELF environment, as the goal of those classes is literally the learning of ESL (English as a Second Language) or an integration into the community of speakers of American English.

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it would be desirable to have at least one non-native English speaking STA in a classroom in light of the concept of ELF. Galloway and Rose (2013) discuss a bilingual business degree program at a private university in Japan, which hired seven international senior and postgraduate students as teaching assistants. Five of them were non-native speakers of English, while only one of them (from the UK) was a native speaker in the traditional definition of the term, with another native speaker from Singapore. Galloway and Rose point out that those international teaching assistants provided an “opportunity for real life English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) use” (p.229) by “creating an environment for ELF usage in a usually monolingual and monocultural classroom” (p.235). The same effects could be expected at Osaka University if the STA system is tactfully utilized. Thus, employment of international graduate students as teaching assistants may be a possibility if some training in accommodation and negotiation of meaning is to be introduced into IPTEIL classes. However, classroom activities like IPTEIL inevitably have a certain restrictions after all in offering opportunities for accommodation and negotiation. When those aspects are the pedagogical focus, it would certainly be more ideal to allow the students to go out of the traditional classroom environment.³ On Osaka University campus, a program known as English Café, opened twice a week for group discussions, provides such opportunities. Participants at this English Café include non-native English speaking students from various regions such as Europe, Latin America, and Asia (Narita 2012), naturally creating ELF environment where accommodation and negotiation could be learnt through authentic interactions. There are also programs for overseas experience in EIL/ELF. Global Challenge Program (GCP), launched in Hawaii by American EIL pioneer Larry E. Smith (e.g. Smith 1983), is one such attempt. In the summer of 2012, for example, several groups of Japanese university students were enrolled in GCP, in which they were given chances for first-hand interactions in EIL/ELF in the highly international and multicultural environment of Hawaii. Their activities ranged from interviews with international visitors to professional work experiences at places such as hotels, water parks, and child day-care centers (Hino 2013). In the authors’ observation, interactions in the latter professional contexts appeared particularly

3 Exploring further possibilities in classroom situations, Hino (2014) discusses the significance of EMI (English-Medium Instruction) classes in higher education in the Expanding Circle for the training of EIL/ELF skills including accommodation and negotiation. This is a promising area to be investigated, which also concerns another major issue of today, academic ELF (Mauranen 2012, Jenkins 2014).

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useful for learning accommodation and negotiation of meaning because of the sheer authenticity and seriousness of the tasks. On the whole, whatever modifications may be made to IPTEIL, it would surely be desirable, if conditions such as budgetary factors can be met, to supplement this classroom pedagogy with more authentic interactions outside the classroom.

6 Conclusions This paper has reported on classroom methodology for teaching EIL, known as IPTEIL, originally practiced at Osaka University, Japan, followed by discussions of its limitations and future prospects from ELF perspectives. After years of talking about pedagogical “implications” of EIL/ELF research, there has lately been a major surge of interest in actual pedagogical practice in the teaching of EIL/ELF, as is evident in the large number of presentations on this issue in the 5th and subsequently the 6th International Conference on English as a Lingua Franca, leading up to the present volume. Matsuda (2012) is also an effort in this direction, transcending different schools of thought by collecting pioneering classroom practices from the perspectives of EIL, ELF, and World Englishes. However, while many of those pedagogical projects focus on raising the students’ awareness in the diversity of global Englishes, attempts to develop classroom methodologies for teaching practical communication skills in ELF are still relatively scarce. IPTEIL, or IPTELF as its ELF version, is one scheme to fill this gap. One thing is certain – Without concrete classroom practice, the ideal of ELF will remain to be nothing more than a pie in the sky, or “a rice cake in a picture” as expressed in Japanese metaphor. It is an important mission for ELF supporters in the teaching profession to bring the delicious rice cake to reality.

Acknowledgements This research is partially funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) 24520700, 2012–2014.

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References Baker, Will. 2012. Using e-learning to develop intercultural awareness in ELT: A critical evaluation in a Thai higher educational setting. British Council ELT Research Papers. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/B375%20ELTRP%20report%20 -%20Baker%20A4%20ONLINE_V5.pdf. (Retrieved on June 2, 2014) Bayyurt, Yasemin & Altinmakas, Derya. 2012. A WE-based English communication skills course at a Turkish university. In A. Matsuda (Ed.) Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language, 169–182. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cogo, Alessia. 2012. ELF and super-diversity: A case study of ELF multilingual practices from a business context. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(2). 287–313. D’Angelo, James. 2012. WE-informed EIL curriculum at Chukyo: Towards a functional, educated, multilingual outcome. In A. Matsuda (Ed.) Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language, 121–139. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Galloway, Nicola. 2013. Global Englishes and English Language Teaching (ELT): Bridging the gap between theory and practice in a Japanese context. System, 41, 786–803. Galloway, Nicola. & Rose, Heath. 2013. “They envision going to New York, not Jakarta”: The differing attitudes toward ELF of students, teaching assistants, and instructors in an English-medium business program in Japan. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2(2), 229–253. Hino, Nobuyuki. 1989–1990. Let’s Read & Think. English for Millions (Monthly textbook), July 1989-March 1990. Hino, Nobuyuki. 1992. The yakudoku tradition of foreign language literacy in Japan. In F. Dubin & N. A. Kuhlman (eds.). Cross-cultural literacy: Global perspectives on reading and writing, 99–111. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice Hall. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2001. Organizing EIL studies: Toward a paradigm. Asian Englishes 4(1). 34–65. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2003. Teaching EIL in Japan. Proceedings: First conference on World Englishes in the classroom. Chukyo University. 67–78. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2009. The Teaching of English as an International Language in Japan: An answer to the dilemma of indigenous values and global needs in the Expanding Circle. AILA Review 22. 103–119. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2010. EIL in teaching practice: A pedagogical analysis of EIL classrooms in action. In N. Hino (ed.). Gengobunka-kyoiku no aratanaru riron to jissen [New theories and practice in education in language and culture], 1–10. Osaka: Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2012a. Endonormative models of EIL for the Expanding Circle. In A. Matsuda (ed.). Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language, 28–43. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2012b. Participating in the community of EIL users through real-time news: Integrated Practice in Teaching English as an International Language (IPTEIL). In A. Matsuda (ed.). Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language, 183–200. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2012c. Negotiating indigenous values with Anglo-American cultures in ELT in Japan: A case of EIL Philosophy in the Expanding Circle. In A. Kirkpatrick & R. Sussex (eds.). English as an international language in Asia: Implications for language education, 157–173. New York: Springer.

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Hino, Nobuyuki. 2013. Learning EIL through participation in the community of EIL users in Hawaii. In N. Hino (Ed.) Eigokyoiku no atarashii choryu [New currents in English language teaching](pp.1–10). Osaka: Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University. Hino, Nobuyuki. 2014. The learning of EIL in EMI classes in higher education. In N. Hino (Ed.) Eigokyoiku no konnichiteki kadai [Current issues in the teaching of English](pp.1–10). Osaka: Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University. Honna, Nobuyuki. 2012. The pedagogical implications of English as a multicultural lingua franca. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1). 191–197. Honna, Nobuyuki, Andy Kirkpatrick & Sue Gilbert. 2001. English across cultures. Tokyo: Sanshusha. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2003. World Englishes: A resource book for students. London: Routledge. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006. Global intelligibility and local diversity: Possibility or paradox? In R. Rubdy & M. Saraceni (Eds.), English in the world: Global rules, global roles (pp.32–39). London: Continuum. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2007. English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2009. World Englishes: A resource book for students (2nd edition). London: Routledge. Jenkins, J. 2014. English as a lingua franca in the international university: The politics of academic English language policy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Kachru, Braj. B. 1976. Models of English for the Third World: White man’s linguistic burden or language pragmatics. TESOL Quarterly, 10(2), 221–239. Kachru, Braj. B. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the Outer Circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (eds.). English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, Andy. 2010. English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A multilingual model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lave, Jean. & Wenger, Etienne. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matsuda, Aya. (Ed.) 2012. Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Mauranen, A. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, Anna. & Ranta, Elina. (Eds.) 2009. English as a lingua franca: Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Murata, Naoko. & Sugimoto, Kayo. 2009. World Englishes education in high school. Paper presented at the 35th Annual JALT International Conference on Language Teaching and Learning. Granship, Shizuoka, Japan, November 22. Narita, Hajime. 2012. Unyoryoku ga jitsugendekiru eigokyoiku wo mezashite [Toward English language teaching for real communicative abilities]. Handai Now, 132, 26–27. Nishinoh, Haruo., Yamamoto, Tae., & Taguchi, Tetsuya. (Eds.) 1994. From English to Englishes: Drills for listening comprehension. Tokyo: Eihosha. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2006. English as a lingua franca in the Expanding Circle: What it isn’t. In R. Rubdy & M. Saraceni (Eds.), English in the world: Global rules, global roles (pp.40–50). London: Continuum.

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Kurt Kohn

Chapter 3  A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom My contribution focuses on the pedagogical implications of English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication and ELF research for the teaching of English. Special attention is given to English language teaching (ELT) in secondary schools in Germany; the theoretical and pedagogical considerations, however, are intended to apply to ELT and ELF pedagogy in other educational settings as well. Following a brief characterization of educational regulations and ELT practice, I will analyse and discuss the often reserved, even negative reception of ELF-informed suggestions for pedagogical reform by teachers and teacher educators. Diverging perceptions and evaluations of the pedagogical role of Standard English (SE) will be identified as the main cause for the pedagogical divide between ELT and ELF. Based on a social constructivist “my English” conceptualization of foreign/ second language learning (Kohn 2011), I will argue for a reconciliation between ELT and ELF and the implementation of a pedagogical space for ELF-related learning activities that enable pupils to focus on their own ELF-specific creativity within an overall SE orientation.

1 Quo vadis ELT? Success in ELT is largely measured and experienced in terms of compliance with an externally given SE role model; in German schools, for instance, this is commonly British SE or General American. In ELT, pupils and students at school and university are being praised for fulfilling the respective norms. Deviations may be tolerated, but they are not taken as evidence of success. Interestingly enough, according to the educational standards for secondary schools in Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz 2012), students in the final two years (16–18) are also expected to learn to cope with the challenges of English as a lingua franca (p. 21). In the specification of the required target competences, however, this promising objective is not further specified in any detail. Intercultural communicative competence is emphasized as well, but mainly with reference to target language interlocutors and cultural issues such as “College – A New Stage of Life?” (p. 40), “Traditions, Visions and Challenges in the USA Today” (p. 68), “Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee” (p. 103), “Arizona Immigration Law” (p. 247), “The Absolutely True

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Diary of a Part-Time Indian” (p. 269), and “German-American Exchange” (p. 286). Generally, the overall focus is on communicative competence as laid out in the Common European Framework of Reference (2001), which is the communicative competence of native speakers, as is evidenced by the following “Can Do” statements in relation to the B2 level: “Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party” (p. 24), “[Can] sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritating them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker” (p. 35). Communicative language teaching, certainly a major pedagogical innovation in the last decades, thus does not make a principal difference: the pedagogical orientation is towards SE and pupils are evaluated against SE norms; sometimes in stricter, sometimes in more lenient ways – but SE provides the yardstick (Leung 2005; Leung and Lewkowicz 2012; Seidlhofer 2012). In German schools, there is generally little, if any, space for pupils to develop their own “signature” and make English truly their own. A new quality of foreign language learning can be seen in what is known under the acronym CLIL: content and language integrated learning (Coyle, Hood, and Marsh 2010). In German schools, CLIL has become quite popular and successful in its manifestation as bilingual subject teaching. In these “Bili” classrooms, subjects like history or biology are taught in English (or French); pedagogical focus is on subject learning with the foreign language being developed rather incidentally through subject-related communicative interaction and supported by code-switching to the pupils’ native German as need arises. CLIL classrooms clearly require, and indeed practise, a greater tolerance for deviations. This tolerance, however, is hardly ever adequately exploited for initiating and supporting endonormative processes of language development. The ultimate pedagogical endeavour is to comply with native speakers’ SE norms. All in all, reference to ELF and intercultural communication in the educational standards mentioned above remains a merely verbal commitment. At the same time, however, English outside the ELT classroom has undergone profound changes. The expanding use of English around the world as a global lingua franca for real-life communication and interaction has led to new “sociolinguistic realities” not only for second language speakers of English in outer circle countries but more generally for speakers from all Kachruvian circles (Kachru 1985): “In ELF situations, speakers of any kind of English, from EFL, ENL, and ESL contexts, need to adjust to the requirements of intercultural communication” (Seidlhofer 2011: 81). From early on, researchers have emphasized that the increase of non-native speaker communication changes our perception and attitude, and leads to the attribution of ownership to non-native speakers as well (Widdowson 2003: 43).

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A complementary line of research studies has provided rich empirical evidence of ELF communication that proves successful despite deviations from SE (Cogo and Dewey 2006). Communicative success – mainly in the sense of intelligibility and communicative robustness – is generally ensured by a number of interacting strategic processes including accommodation, meaning negotiation, prevention and repair of misunderstandings, and “letting it pass” (Firth 2009; Seidlhofer 2011; Mauranen 2012). The good news thus is what I would like to refer to as the “ELF communication argument”: ELF speakers are able to take care of their communicative needs. And what is more, in the course of their communicative endeavour they exploit, in a collaborative fashion, endonormative processes of ELF development, thereby creating “deviant” phrases and structures as both the result and instrument of successful communication. Quite a comforting position, so it seems, for non-native speakers of English. With reference to empirical evidence from the TELF¹ discussion corpus, Albl-Mikasa (2009, 2013) paints a less positive picture of non-native speakers’ ability to express themselves. Mutually agreed upon comprehension is arguably a major and necessary condition for communicative success; what remains debatable, though, is the somewhat ambivalent role and status attributed to SE in some ELF publications. Dewey’s (2012) article “Towards a post-normative approach: Learning the pedagogy of ELF” illustrates this ambivalence. On the one hand, the ELF communication argument seems to be linked with a negative stance against SE. Dewey (2012: 163) argues that ELF communication is “usually characterized by a high degree of linguacultural diversity, routinely resulting in highly variable and creative use of linguistic resources. This is wholly at odds with the characterization of language in ELT […], in which received wisdom maintains that intelligibility is norm driven (thus privileging grammatical accuracy), and that effective communication is best achieved by conforming to the arbitrarily fixed language norms of Standard varieties […].” The ELFinformed alternative Dewey suggests as a remedy against the shortcomings of traditional ELT approaches thus appears to be based on a two-pronged strategy for pedagogical reform: the rejection of a normative fixation of ELT on a SE orientation combined with an emphasis on the creative and innovative “diversity and plurality of [ELF] communication” (p. 163). As regards teacher education, “more empirical research” (p. 165) about ELF communication is called for to raise teachers’ awareness and thus enable them “to move beyond normativity” (p. 166). On the other hand, however, a post-normative approach is seen as compatible with a SE model, provided such an orientation can be justified by the con1 TELF (“Tübingen English as a Lingua Franca Corpus”): http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de/ telf (accessed 2 February 2013)

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textual conditions and requirements of the respective situations of language use and teaching. According to Dewey (2012), it is thus important to help teachers “develop a more rationalized, informed perspective on the (de)merits of selecting language norms in the classroom” (p. 166). The SE option is even more explicitly acknowledged by Seidlhofer (2011: 198): “I am not advocating that descriptions of ELF should directly and uniquely determine what language is taught in the language classroom. […] So it would, in my view, be just as pedagogically pointless to prescribe a set of ELF forms as a set of ENL forms in dissociation from their function. What really matters is that the language should engage the learners’ reality and activate the learning process. Any kind of language that is taught in order to achieve this effect is appropriate, and this will always be a local decision.” From an ELF perspective, SE thus appears to have a Janus-faced pedagogical quality shifting between a critique of SE and its post-normative acceptance. In an educational context characterized by an explicit orientation towards SE, as the one in German secondary schools, this ambivalence tends to have detrimental effects. In my own experience as teacher educator in both pre-service university education and in-service professional development, many teacherstudents and teachers in Germany, including the ones who are open-minded and innovation-oriented, hesitate to adopt an ELF-informed ELT perspective. The ELF communication argument is often met with scepticism; and what is more, a misunderstanding as articulated in a statement such as “Do you want me to teach incorrect English?” is not uncommon. This negative reaction is not triggered by empirical statements about the diversity, creativity and success of ELF communication; rather, teachers seem to perceive a certain subtext towards dropping their SE orientation. It is hardly surprising that a SE critique does not go down well with English teachers and other ELT professional who are embedded in a socioeducational tradition marked by high esteem for SE in general; it easily triggers an overall rejection of ELF-related pedagogical arguments. The rift between ELT and ELF, fuelled from both ends, has its roots in traditional English as a foreign language approaches with their over-emphasis on compliance with target language norms as a pedagogical value in itself. In the face of the economic, socio-cultural, communicative, and pedagogical challenges of our modern globalized world, this rift is counter-productive and has to be mended. Hostile brothers who keep a wary eye on each other’s views and preferences must shed their suspicion and drop their misgivings to become brothers in arms. How can this be achieved? How can teachers be convinced of the emancipatory value of ELF research? As long as ELT and ELF quarrel and disagree about the status and role of SE in language learning and teaching, they will stay in separate camps and act against each other. The solution lies in a re-conceptualization of the SE issue suitable for providing a viable common ground. A social constructivist

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understanding of communication, language acquisition, and ownership offers a framework for such a re-conceptualization.

2 Making English one’s own The notion of linguistic ownership plays a key role in current debates about ELF development and pedagogy. However, what does it mean for non-native speakers to be “owners” of English with a “licence” to further determine the future development of the language? Does this give them the freedom and right to their own idiosyncratic manifestations of English? Or does it rather restrict them to what is within reach of their capabilities? At an ELF conference several years ago, while listening to the talk of a (native speaker) participant, I experienced the double-edged nature of a non-native speaker’s ownership of English. The clear message was that for a non-native speaker a native-speaker SE orientation was fundamentally wrong and impossible to pursue with any hope of success. The wall just too high to climb; the fruit too sweet and out of reach anyway – just not my sociolinguistic reality. I felt excluded from the enchanted garden, a kind of Faustian creature with two souls: a non-native speaker with a desire for some kind of native-speaker SE orientation – a desire I was told was unrealistic, but which, at the same time, was part of my English self. This was when my personal quest into the nature of non-native speakers’ ownership of English began both as a researcher and as a non-native speaker myself. I found my answer in a social constructivist model of non-native speaker ownership, i.e. the conceptualization of language learning as the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural creation of “my English” (Kohn 2007, 2011). How do people make English their own? The obvious answer is they acquire it. But what does that mean? How do people acquire English compared with, for instance, acquiring a car? A car is handed over to its new owner, a language isn’t. There is only one way of acquiring a language, and that is by creatively constructing your own version of it in your mind, in your heart, and in your behaviour. Your ownership of a language is established through such a process of individual construction, influenced and shaped by what you are exposed to, where you come from, and where you want to go; and all this in social collaboration with the people you (want to) communicate and interact with. It is in this social constructivist sense that the English I acquire and develop is my own; inevitably different from any target language model no matter how strong the orientation. This is what I call the “my English” condition – which in the social constructivist understanding is not an option but rather part of our human nature; also see Grazzi 2011.

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First, creating my English is about creating my own declarative and procedural linguistic-communicative knowledge of lexical and grammatical means of expression. On the one hand, this is knowledge with regard to what I deem possible, appropriate, feasible and probable (Hymes 1972); on the other hand, it is knowledge about how certain linguistic means of expression can be used to fulfil my language and communication related requirements of performance, e.g. comprehensibility, compliance with adopted target norms, and fluency (Kohn 1982, 1990, 2011). Second, creating my English is about developing my profile of performance requirements, either as part of my general psychological make-up or as something more variable and depending on the respective communicative setting. Typical situation-specific requirement variations regarding accuracy, comprehensible expression, or fluency can be observed when speakers switch between ELT and ELF situations of use, or from a more formal business meeting to an informal conversation among colleagues and friends. Last but not least, creating my English concerns creating my individual and social identity orientation. Who or what is my role model? By whom do I want to be accepted? Who do I want to be? Am I comfortable and satisfied with myself? In light of the “my English” condition, communicative competence is thus seen as reaching beyond having command of linguistic means of expression in terms of possibility, appropriateness, feasibility, and probability; it involves more than knowing how to use linguistic means of expression for achieving certain communicative needs and purposes. Communicative competence is essentially about being able to express oneself in keeping with one’s individual and social identity; it is about expressing one’s “self”. Dörnyei’s (2009) theory of the “L2 Motivational Self System” provides further support for this view. In education, communicative success is largely measured in terms of approximation to externally given and applied norms and criteria. In authentic communication, however, success is first and foremost experienced as “perceived success” in the form of speaker satisfaction as resulting from compliance with one’s own requirements of performance. This endonormative feeling of success is not only an “evaluation” of past and ongoing communication; it also provides guidance and motivation for learning and competence development. External norms and criteria can have an influence on perceived success and speaker satisfaction to the extent that they are absorbed and integrated into the speaker’s requirement profile and represented in their requirement-related knowledge and skills.

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3 A non-native speaker’s Standard English orientation Against the backdrop of the SE orientation in the English classroom in German schools, I will now take a closer look at the nature of such an orientation and in particular its compatibility with the possibility of successful ELF communication despite deviations from SE. As regards our conceptualization of a speaker’s SE orientation, the “my English” condition provides a new constructivist perspective. Let us imagine I aim to learn and speak Mid-Atlantic Standard English (MASE). Is this now the same kind of MASE linguists aim to describe, and may have problems with regarding descriptive consistency? No. It is my own cognitive and emotional perception of MASE as a set of language characteristics, more or less consistent and homogeneous, based on manifestations of MASE I am exposed to in communication or teaching contexts and in particular influenced by people whose MASE has a certain attraction for me. It is this perception of MASE which actually shapes my learning. The MASE captured by linguistic description may also have an influence on my learning, but only in so far as it enters my perception, e.g. through its manifestation in linguistically informed teaching material. The point I want to make here is that a learner’s target language orientation, be it MASE, SE, or a remote pidgin, is the result of a constructivist mediation process. This insight allows for a conceptual distinction between a strong and a weak version of a learner’s SE orientation. According to the strong version, learners are required to comply with the SE teaching norms imposed; the closer they get, the better their marks. Such a view is clearly in line with a behaviourist understanding of successful language learning as an imitation-based cloning process; and it is deeply embedded in our everyday ways of talking about language learning and teaching. Thornbury’s (2013) observations about his students’ comments on language learning and teaching show this quite convincingly: “absorbing the language” and “taking in information” are among the metaphorical expressions used to refer to learning; “present” or “convey information” are corresponding metaphors related to teaching. Many teachers and learners thus seem to intuitively subscribe to a behaviourist cloning understanding of learning; and in much of what constitutes current ELT practice a strong SE/NS orientation still appears to be the tacit conceptual engine of teaching, assessment, and learning. When language learners and teachers are criticized for their SE or NS orientation because of the futility of such an endeavour, this criticism addresses a SE/NS orientation as assumed by a behaviourist cloning model of learning and teaching. More often than not, the “strong version”

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view is not adopted explicitly; it rather remains hidden in metaphorical ways of thinking and talking and can even be found in inconsistent coexistence with notions and principles of a more constructivist/communicative nature such as learner autonomy or agency. Professing or demanding a SE/NS orientation in the sense of a behaviourist cloning model, whether tacitly or explicitly, needs to be criticized and rejected since language learning (and learning in general, for that matter) is simply not a cloning process. The behaviourist view is, however, not the only possibility. The strong version of a SE/NS orientation can be, and needs to be, replaced by a weak version according to which learners’ SE/NS orientation does not mark a target to be copied but rather a direction for their social constructivist learning activities. Depending on how ambitious or even strict their SE/NS orientation, and the more effort they invest, the closer they will get to the target; but the language they develop will nevertheless always be their own creation, essentially marked by “deviations” from the target model. It is interesting to note that this constructivist understanding is reminiscent of earlier research on non-standard English by Labov (1970): “In the sociolinguistic study of language learning, we can begin with the fundamental observation that children do not speak like their parents” (p. 33). From a second/foreign language perspective, we can add that learners do not speak like their teachers.

4 Changing the mindset The weak, i.e. constructivist version of a SE orientation provides a conceptual ground on which ELT and ELF can comfortably meet to join forces in their pedagogical endeavours. Considering the communicative realities of global ELF communication and the commitment in educational standards for secondary schools (e.g. in Germany) to address the real-life needs of their pupils, a reconciliation of ELT and ELF is of utmost relevance and deserves highest priority. For ELF researchers and ELF-inspired pedagogues the step should be easy enough. All they need to do is to extend their endonormative view to explicitly include a SE orientation as part of an overall constructivist approach. The processes by which learners appropriate a chosen target language (e.g. SE) to their personal and local ELF communication needs (Seidlhofer & Widdowson 2009; Seidlhofer 2011: 198) and the ones they engage in when creatively constructing their own (e.g. SE-based) language are two sides of the same coin. While the concept of appropriation emphasizes the social and communicative dimension of language learning, the constructivist concept focuses on the social psychologi-

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cal nature of the processes involved. Both perspectives need to be considered and combined. For ELT professionals, including teachers, teacher educators, and providers of teaching resources, the challenge is much stronger since adopting a weak SE orientation is more than tolerating deviations. It goes beyond emphasizing communication, as e.g. in communicative teaching approaches or CLIL settings, and allowing certain mistakes that do not interfere with communicative success. Deviations from the target language model need to be seen in an altogether different, i.e. constructivist light. First thoughts in this direction can be traced back to Corder’s (1967) seminal article “The significance of learners’ errors”. In the wake of Chomsky’s mentalist theory of linguistic competence, Corder argues that learners’ systematic errors are evidence of underlying processes of rule formation and as such indispensable for acquisition and acquisition research. Dulay and Burt (1974) carried this insight further, emphasizing the “creative construction” nature of language acquisition. According to this view, a learner’s interlanguage (Selinker 1972) can only be adequately described if all structures and rules, including the ones judged incorrect from the perspective of an external norm, are accounted for in one consistent approach. The interlanguage concept, however, should not be interpreted as an early manifestation of the constructivist model outlined above. An interlanguage is seen as a stage in the learner’s development towards the target norm. Errors are valued as indicators of language learning, but they are also marked as candidates for correction and ultimate deletion. While creative construction in the interlanguage sense is a significant step away from a behaviourist cloning model of language learning, it leaves little room, if at all, for learners to have their own language acknowledged and accepted. The interlanguage type of creative construction is only deemed successful if it eventually results in a “clone” of the respective SE target language; it is thus clearly embedded in a strong SE orientation. It is interesting to note that this narrow focus on SE also shows in the general preference research studies give to errors as empirical indicators of strategic processes such as e.g. avoidance or self-correction. On closer and constructivist inspection, learners who try to avoid or correct a structure they feel is problematic can only resort to their own knowledge of correctness, which, however, might be wrong compared to the external norm (Kohn 1982, 1990). Only what learners feel and think is correct can influence their performance (Kohn 1979). Successful deployment of a strategy of avoidance or self-correction does thus not necessarily reduce the number of errors. The intended effect of avoiding or correcting errors is only achieved if the learner’s knowledge of correctness happens to match the norm.

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In practice and theory, ELT thus appears to be thoroughly committed to a strong SE orientation. Even if language learning is seen as a construction process, only part of its learning outcome is truly valued; the “my English” condition is not fully incorporated. A strong orientation towards SE is also shared by many learners who were educationally socialized in ELT contexts (Saito 2012). Because of the normative good-bad division of their production, the good accepted and the bad rejected, they tend to stay partially alienated from their own creativity and, more often than not, experience frustration, anxiety, even fear. Teaching and learning are focused on achieving correctness; pedagogical suggestions from ELF research are seen as favouring deviations. But this is not what ELF pedagogy is, or should be, about.

5 ELF in the foreign language classroom The implementation of a pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom requires a shift from a strong to a weak SE orientation. The social constructivist re-conceptualization of ELT, and of second language learning and teaching in general, opens up a new pedagogical perspective for a differentiated range of ELF-related learning objectives and activities beyond issues of normativity. In the remaining part of this article, I shall now outline some aspects of ELF pedagogy. Focus is on the English classroom, i.e. on ELF-related language learning and teaching activities. The conceptual framework is given with the social constructivist “my English” condition according to which using English as a lingua franca is first and foremost understood as using one’s own English for lingua franca communication purposes. This changes the emphasis from the commonly used terminological descriptor “teaching ELF” (as if ELF were a “thing”) to “teaching for ELF communication”. Options for an adjustment of ELT to ELF-informed learning requirements will be discussed with regard to the communication-specific dimensions of awareness raising, comprehension, and production. Awareness-raising activities aim to make learners attentive and responsive to lingua franca manifestations of English they might encounter in the natural habitat of ELF communication. This constitutes a first necessary step in processes of “third space” construction (Bhabha 1994: 36–39; Kramsch 2009) in contact situations between speakers from different linguacultural backgrounds. In addition to learning about the characteristics, possibilities, and challenges of ELF, exposure to pedagogically selected manifestations of genuine ELF communication helps foster learners’ linguistic and cultural tolerance – both for others and for themselves. The second pedagogical focus is on helping learners develop

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ELF-specific comprehension skills for coping with e.g. unfamiliar pronunciation, unclear meanings, or weak coherence. Perception and handling of comprehension problems is an essential part of “third space” construction. Just as in the case of awareness-raising, extensive practice should be supported and complemented by “learning about” activities. The third pedagogical focus is on developing ELF-specific production skills. Of particular relevance in this connection is the concept of pragmatic fluency, which emphasizes non-native speakers’ linguistic-pragmatic knowledge and skills for interactional performance in relation to gambits and speech acts, topic management, turn-taking, rate of speech and repairs (House 2002: 162–163). Pragmatic fluency ensures communicative lubrication for collaborative “third space” construction between interlocutors when faced with linguacultural differences. More specifically, it enables speakers to negotiate meaning and to accommodate their ELF performance to the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their interlocutors. Its development requires exposure to a wide variety of ELF interactions and is facilitated by a focus on form with an overall communicative and weak SE orientation. Awareness-raising and the improvement of ELF comprehension and production skills involve strategic processes that are anchored in ordinary communicative competence and behaviour. ELF-related learning and teaching activities should thus be embedded in a pragmatic-cognitive understanding of how people communicate with each other and strive to ensure comprehension and participation through contextual and strategic interaction. There is clearly a need for introducing applied linguistics topics into secondary school curricula. From a pedagogical perspective, it is important to note that the development of communicative competence in ELF situations goes hand in hand with the emergence of requirements learners impose on their own ELF performance. These two dimensions of advancement closely interact with one another, and they need to be seen in their relation to the challenge of enabling learners to generally develop a positive non-native speaker feeling of agency and ownership, of self-confidence and satisfaction. What are the conditions that make this possible? It is interesting to note that some ELT learners who are inhibited in school later manage to lose their inhibitions through communicative participation in authentic speech fellowships and communities of practice. This leads to the pedagogically critical question of how such liberating conditions can be successfully implemented in ELT approaches and practices. A promising perspective is offered by pedagogical approaches that integrate content and language learning (CLIL) or simulate company activities in the foreign language (Practice Enterprise). Primary focus is on the transactional and interactional dimensions of communication under task conditions that favour incidental language learning, comparable to authenticated natural communication outside the classroom. However, to fully profit

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from the language learning opportunities offered by CLIL and Practice Enterprise, a secondary focus on pushed output processing and languaging (Swain 2005, 2006; Matley 2012: 116–119) should be introduced to facilitate noticing, “talking it through”, and solving of language-related problems and shortcomings. While output processing and languaging are generally understood as being geared towards the improvement of grammatical accuracy, the social constructivist “my English” condition and the adoption of a weak SE orientation shift the emphasis from better compliance with an external norm to more speaker/hearer satisfaction. Two questions need to be answered in relation to a given social and communicative context: Are speakers satisfied with their own performance? Are hearers satisfied with their interlocutors’ performance? In natural communication, speaker/hearer satisfaction is a key indicator of communicative success extending to all levels of communicative performance: gestures, pronunciation and fluency, grammar and lexis, thematic coherence and development, situational appropriateness, poignancy of expression, and comprehensibility. External norms, as mentioned above, have their place in this through their manifestation in a speaker’s requirements, knowledge and skills. The social constructivist conceptualization of communicative success in terms of context-sensitive speaker/hearer satisfaction has relevant pedagogical implications. It explicitly acknowledges a common creative force underlying a learner’s language development in its entirety, independent of its evaluation from the point of view of an external norm. Helping learners advance their ELF competence thus essentially involves encouraging and helping them to explore and trust their own creativity. In this sense, implementing a pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom is a significant change towards language learning for real life, thereby adding a new quality to learner autonomy.

6 The potential of e-learning The traditional face-to-face classroom, still the centre-piece of all ELT activities in German secondary schools, clearly has its pedagogical merits and advantages. At the same time, however, it also has its limitations, especially when it comes to teaching and learning languages for real life. To provide sufficiently authentic and relevant learning opportunities, it is necessary to reach out and incorporate tasks and activities beyond the classroom. This is where e-learning has its place. With its wide range of tools of different kinds it has a great pedagogical potential in particular for language learning and teaching (Kohn 2009). An open-source e-learning platform like Moodle is a

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powerful hub for organizing pedagogically integrated blended learning ensembles of classroom and online activities. Moodle offers facilities for designing and administrating courses, exchanging information, storing resources, setting up assignments and assessments, and communicating and interacting in various task formats including e-mail, chat, forum, blog, and wiki. External online resources and more powerful web 2.0 collaboration tools such as Skype, Wikispaces, or Wordpress can be linked in whenever needed. All this provides flexible options for autonomous, authenticated, and collaborative language learning: The multimedia nature of the web allows combining texts, images, sound, and video to facilitate communication-oriented practice activities emphasizing reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The communicative interaction facilities of web 2.0 offer advanced solutions for e.g. CLIL activities or intercultural contact; and what is more, web 2.0 tools are used to form new social environments for collaborative creation, sharing, and exchange – not to mention gaming. Real-life communication has expanded into virtual space with unprecedented possibilities for natural and incidental language learning outside and beyond the traditional classroom. In our own EU projects, we have started exploring the pedagogical potential of e-learning with an emphasis on ELF-related learning and teaching objectives and activities. The EU project BACKBONE (“Corpora for Content and Language and Integrated Learning”) (2009–2011)² created corpora of video-recorded and pedagogically annotated “natural narrative” interviews for CLIL settings in secondary, higher and vocational education (Kohn 2012). In addition to native-speaker interviews in various European languages, the corpora also include European manifestations of English as a lingua franca. These ELF interviews are freely available and can be used for awareness raising and comprehension practice. Learners can watch French, German, Polish, Spanish, and Turkish non-native speakers of English and listen to their narratives from different walks of life and business. This enables them to notice and evaluate characteristics of ELF communication and to develop their comprehension skills. They learn to accept, even appreciate, manifestations of English from beyond the strict borders of ELT norms; most importantly, this includes the possibility for them to eventually make peace with their own English. The EU project icEurope (“Intercultural Foreign Language Communication and Learning”) (2009–2011)³ focused on intercultural web collaboration in English, mainly using Moodle forum activities, between Bulgarian, Hungarian, Italian, and Turkish secondary school pupils in 10th and 11th grade (Kohn and 2 http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de/backbone/moodle (accessed 2 February 2013). 3 http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de/iceurope/moodle (accessed 2 February 2013).

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Warth 2011). The learners negotiated intercultural topics and contents with their peers and thereby managed to raise their awareness and tolerance for linguacultural differences, explore and co-develop their own English, develop communicative-strategic competence, and acquire media literacy. In the EU project PELLIC (“Practice Enterprise for Language Learning and Intercultural Communication”) (2008–2010)⁴, our emphasis was on promoting the development of lingua franca business English through authenticated and collaborative learning activities in a Practice Enterprise virtual learning environment based on Moodle and Google Apps (Glombitza 2012). The tasks used for communication and interaction included sending business letters and emails, making phone calls, conducting virtual meetings, and attending international exhibitions. Piloting was carried out in blended learning settings in tertiary, vocational, and adult education in Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Turkey. A more recent research and development activity concerns our involvement in the EU project TILA (“Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition”) (2013–2015)⁵. The work plan addresses issues of language learning and teaching on secondary school level at the crossroads of telecollaboration, language learning for intercultural understanding, English as a lingua franca, and lingua franca pedagogy.

7 Concluding remark Adopting a social constructivist perspective, I have emphasized the need for ELT to create a pedagogical space for ELF. In this vein, I have argued for ELT to embrace the non-native speakers’ OWN English, guided by their (weak) SE orientation, pushed by their communicative needs and identity aspirations, fuelled by their OWN creativity. With reference to writing classes for non-standard speakers of English, Gilyard (2011: 28) emphasized that his students “were writers and not merely people learning to write, that they already had meaningful things to express, and that those gestures toward meaning had to take priority over the rigid, narrow, formal exercises laid out in many writing classrooms”. Applying this acknowledgment of agency and ownership to ELT, we are invited to conclude that non-native speakers of English are speakers of English as well and not merely learners of English.

4 http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de/pellic (accessed 2 February 2013). 5 http://www.tilaproject.eu (accessed 2 February 2013).

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Acknowledgement I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions.

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Kachru, Braj B. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English in the outer circle. In Randolph Quirk & H.G. Widdowson (eds.). English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kohn, Kurt 1979. Was der Lerner nicht weiß, macht ihn nicht heiß. Linguistische Berichte 64. 82–94. Kohn, Kurt. 1982. Beyond output. The analysis of interlanguage development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 4 (2). 137–152. Kohn, Kurt. 1990. Dimensionen lernersprachlicher Performanz. Theoretische und empirische Untersuchungen zum Zweitsprachenerwerb [Dimensions of interlangage performance. Theoretical an empirical studies on second language acquisition]. Tübingen: Narr Verlag. Kohn Kurt. 2007. Englisch als globale Lingua Franca: Eine Herausforderung für die Schule [English as a global lingua franca]. In Tanja Anstatt (ed.), Mehrsprachigkeit bei Kindern und Erwachsenen [Multilingualism in children and adults], 207–222. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. Kohn, Kurt. 2009. Computer assisted foreign language learning. In Karlfried Knapp & Barbara Seidlhofer (eds.). Handbook of foreign language communication and learning, 573–603. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kohn, Kurt. 2011. English as a lingua franca and the Standard English misunderstanding. In Annick De Hower & Antje Wilton (eds.), English in Europe today. Sociocultural and educational perspectives, 71–94. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kohn, Kurt. 2012. Pedagogic corpora for content and language integrated learning: insights from the BACKBONE project. The Eurocall Review 20 (2). http://www.eurocall-languages. org/review/20_2/index.html (accessed 2 February 2013). Kohn, Kurt & Claudia Warth (eds.). 2011. Web collaboration for intercultural language learning. A guide for language teachers, teacher educators and student teachers. Münster: Monsenstein & Vannerdat. Kramsch, Claire. 2009. Third culture and language education. In: Vivian Cook (ed.). Language teaching and learning, 233–254. London: Continuum. Kultusministerkonferenz. 2012. Bildungsstandards für die fortgeführte Fremdsprache (Englisch/Französisch) für die Allgemeine Hochschulreife. Beschluss der Kultusministerkonferenz vom 18.10.2012. http://www.kmk.org/bildung-schule/ qualitaetssicherung-in-schulen/bildungsstandards/dokumente.html (accessed 15 July 2013). Labov, William. 1970. The study of non-standard English. Champaign, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English. Leung, Constant. 2005. Convivial communication: Recontextualizing communicative competence. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 15 (2). 119–144. Leung, Constant & Jo Lewkowicz. 2012. Language communication and communicative competence: A view from contemporary classrooms. Language and Education. i-First edition http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09500782.2012.707658 (accessed 4 February 2013). Matley, David. 2012. Exploratory grammar learning in a multimedia environment. Marburg: Tectum Verlag. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF. Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Saito, Akihiro. 2012. Is English our lingua franca or the native speaker’s property? The native speaker orientation among middle school students Japan. Journal of Language Teaching and Research 3 (6). 1071–1081. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2012. The challenge of English as a lingua franca. Anglistik. International Journal of English Studies 23 (1). 73–86. Seidlhofer, Barbara & Henry Widdowson. 2009. Conformity and creativity in ELF and learner English. In Michaela Albl-Mikasa, Sabine Braun & Sylvia Kalina (eds.). Dimensionen der Zweitsprachenforschung. Dimensions of second language research (Festschrift for Kurt Kohn), 93–107. Tübingen: Narr Verlag. Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10. 219–231. Swain, Merrill. 2005. The output hypothesis: theory and research. In Eli Hinkel (ed.). Handbook on research in second language teaching and learning, 471–484. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Swain, Merrill. 2006. Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. In Heidi Byrnes (ed.), Advanced language learning: The contributions of Halliday and Vygotsky, 95–108. London: Continuum. Thornbury, Scott. 2013. T is for transmission. In Scott Thornbury, An A-Z of ELT. http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/t-is-for-transmission (accessed 2 February 2013). Widdowson, Henry. 2003. Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lucilla Lopriore

Chapter 4  ELF and early language learning: Multiliteracies, language policies and teacher education 1 Introduction In the last 20 years an unprecedented global trend towards introducing FL learning early in the primary school has characterised the language policies of most countries all over the world and national language curricula have been modified in order to include the study of a FL, usually English, from the first year of primary school and in many cases at pre-school level (Graddol 1997, 2006; Nikolov and Curtain 2000; Gnutzman and Intemann 2005; Berns et al. 2007; Enever and Moon 2010; Enever et al. 2011; Garton, Copland and Burns 2011). Since the first experimental introduction of FL learning at primary level in many countries all over the world, several research studies and reports have been investigating its implementation in different contexts besides Europe (Rixon 1999; Moon and Nikolov 2000; Butler and Lee 2006; Lopriore 2006; Nikolov et al. 2007; Drew and Hasselgren 2008; Garton, Copland and Burns 2011), its impact on young learners’ acquisition (Hasselgren 2000; Nikolov 2009), on their motivation (Lopriore and Mihaljević Djigunović 2011), on the training of young learners’ teachers (Butler 2004; Butler 2009) and on the time allotted to the FL in the national curriculum (Nikolov, Mihaljević Djigunović 2011; Enever 2011; Rixon 2013). While some studies have investigated the rate and order of children’s second language acquisition (Cenoz 2003) and the effects of early language learning on children’s cognitive development, fewer projects have monitored young learners’ FL achievement at specific transition levels or in time through longitudinal studies (Johnstone 2000; Benvenuto & Lopriore 2000; Lopriore 2001; Roessing and Helgie 2009; Hill 2010; Enever 2011; Lopriore 2014a, 2014b) or types of FL classroom activities and of assessment used at primary level (Rixon 1999; Rea-Dickins & Rixon 1999; Johnstone 2000; Rea-Dickins 2000, 2004; McKay 2005, 2006). As David Graddol (2006: 88) highlights in his report on the status of the English language:

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The age at which children start learning English has been lowering across the world. English has moved from the traditional ‘foreign languages’ slot in lower secondary school to primary school – even pre-school. The trend has gathered momentum only very recently and the intention is often to create a bilingual population. The age at which children start learning English has been lowering across the world. English has moved from the traditional ‘foreign languages’ slot in lower secondary school to primary school – even pre-school.

European perceptions of the value of an early start have mostly been related to the possible benefits of plurilingualism since the primary classroom population in Europe is becoming mainly multilingual and multicultural and young learners of English are being taught by a growing number of non-native teachers. As stated in one of the Council of Europe documents, Council of Europe policy attaches particular importance to the development of plurilingualism  – the lifelong enrichment of the individual’s plurilingual repertoire. This repertoire is made up of different languages and language varieties at different levels of proficiency and includes different types of competences. It is dynamic and changes in its composition throughout an individual’s life. The use and development of an individual’s plurilingual competence is possible because different languages are not learned in isolation and can influence each other both in the learning process and communicative use. Education systems need to ensure the harmonious development of learners’ plurilingual competence through a coherent, transversal and integrated approach that takes into account all the languages in learners’ plurilingual repertoire and their respective functions. This includes promoting learners’ consciousness of their existing repertoires and potential to develop and adapt those repertoires to changing circumstances. (Council of Europe: Education and Languages http:// www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Division_en.asp retrieved on 12 December 2013)

The realities of early language learning implementation in Europe widely vary today due to European countries’ different national language policies, children’s out-of-school exposure to the FL, the use of new media, the diverse linguistic landscapes (Shohamy, Ben-Rafael and Barni 2010) or the diffusion of non-dubbed films. The presence of English as the most widely taught FL from the early years of school, mostly by local non-native teachers, the consistent flow of migrants in Europe, and, as a consequence, the growing number of polylingual classrooms, are all features of a new scenario where it is worth investigating children’s literacy development in their mother tongue, in the language of schooling and in English. Furthermore, since the prevailing means for communication and interaction, particularly in multilingual classes, is English, it is worth observing whether there are emerging ELF features in those contexts. This paper is meant to identify the emerging features of ELF in some primary FL classrooms. It first describes the European context, the migration phenomenon, the issues characterising the new school population, and the language policies adopted in terms of the language of instruction, respect of linguistic diversity

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and of learners’ multilingual repertoire. It then investigates how early language learning is implemented in Europe through the findings of a longitudinal transnational study on the acquisition processes activated during the FL classes in primary schools and on the factors affecting FL learning within and outside school. The final part of the paper highlights the emerging features of ELF in the English young learners’ oral exchanges and discusses implications for primary language teacher education and for material development.

2 Migration in Europe: language policies and early language learning The issue of early FL learning in European primary schools is inevitably connected with the continuous flow of migrants: levels of migration, both within and into the EU, have been consistently growing while the migrants’ average age has been consistently lowering. In 2011, almost 10% (48.9  million) of the population resident in the EU-27 was born in another country, one third (16.5 million) were born within the EU,

Figure 1: Citizens of non-member countries resident in the EU 27 by continent of origin. Jan. 2012.

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the remaining 32.4 million were born elsewhere around the world (Vasileva 2012), and the trend is constantly growing widening the large number of migrants from all continents (Fig. 1). The number of young migrant people from a wide spectrum of linguistic and cultural backgrounds – Africa, the Middle East, China, South East Asia, the former Soviet Union countries – coming into Europe varies from country to country, but overall figures provided by the European Commission show that, besides a high level of second generation migrant children, there is a consistent growth of the presence of migrant children at all school levels (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: Age structure of the national and non-national populations EU, 2011.

In Italy, for example, over 800,000 students are not Italian, they are migrant children, very few are Italian citizens, even if over 44% of them were born in Italy (MIUR 2012). European education systems, and schools in particular, are adapting to the significant new presence of migrant pupils while continuing to provide high quality education with equal chances for all. As one of the European policy documents reports in this respect, It needs to be ensured that migrant pupils are given the additional attention they may need to become integrated, successful and productive citizens. At the moment, education systems are having difficulties in meeting such challenges. It is clear from international and national data that there are educational disadvantages for many migrant pupils. What is more, in some countries the second generation of migrant pupils lags behind even more than that of their parents.

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At the same time, adapting to increased numbers of migrant pupils makes it necessary to revise teaching methods and to develop new teaching skills. Also, the presence of large concentrations of migrant pupils can intensify tendencies towards socio-economic or residential segregation. (Europe, Green Paper Summary, 2008)¹.

The recommendations of the European Union are particularly significant when it comes to the primary school where very young children, often illiterate in their own mother tongue/s, enter classrooms where all children are taught through the language of schooling (the country language), where most schoolmates speak different mother tongues at home, and a FL – English – is part of the school curriculum. Migrant children are thus exposed to contexts where in most cases their multilingual competence is not properly enhanced. They are often bound to face unsuccessful results in their school career. “Newly arrived migrant children are more likely to face segregation and end up in schools with fewer resources, according to a new study conducted for the European Commission. This leads to under-performance and a high probability that the children will drop out of school early”, a press release from the European Commission reports.² This lack of support goes against what research on bilingualism has often proved, i.e. that children in using another language, stretch their communicative capability and use their L1, L2, L3 schemata to communicate if engaged in meaningful interactions. The Language Policy Division in Strasbourg, in order to promote social cohesion, launched within the framework of Languages in Education, Languages for Education a special program called The Language of schooling³ for the development of effective skills in the language(s) of instruction which are essential for successful learning across the whole curriculum. Within the wider concept of plurilingualism and respect for linguistic diversity, the program deals with the language(s) of instruction in school, very often the country official language(s) and also the mother tongue of the majority of students., the project aims to elaborate “an instrument to enhance coherence and transparency in decision making on policies and standards,” at both national and at European level. It takes into account the needs of all students in compulsory education, including disadvantaged learners and migrant children. The project specifically focuses “on (i) the language as a school subject; (ii) the language as a medium of teach-

1 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_AGENDA-08-24_en.htm 2 ‘Migrant children more likely to end up in poor schools’. European Commission  – IP/13/323 11/04/2013, retrieved on 12 December 2013 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-323_en.htm 3 http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Schoollang_en.asp

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ing and learning across the curriculum; (iii) possible convergences between the language(s) of school education and modern (‘foreign’) languages in a global or holistic approach to language education policy aimed at promoting coherence in the development of the learner’s plurilingual repertoire” (Figure 3). The chart in Figure  3 “illustrates the different statuses of languages in school and the relations among them: the languages taught are first or second/ foreign languages for learners; they are studied as a specific subject or serve as an instrument of learning in other subjects” http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/ langeduc/le_platformintro_EN.asp. The European program, by highlighting the importance of sustaining plurilingualism and the development of multiliteracies, promotes all those educational initiatives aimed at enhancing effective and successful communication among students with different cultural and language background. These actions thus offer new perspectives for educational linguistics and language teacher education.

Figure 3: The learner and the languages present at school http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/ langeduc/le_platformintro_EN.asp?

The implications of the “language(s) of schooling project” are multifold particularly in primary classrooms where the early introduction of the study of a FL to multilingual children demands a shift in the teaching approach adopted and requires specific attention to the development of children’s literacy in more than one language. Contacts with people of other linguacultures, within and outside the school, may involve encounters with speakers of different first languages; in most cases, the English s used in the primary classroom is a shared lingua

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franca. This type of approach sets new challenges to commonly held assumptions about language, language teaching and language education and it activates learners’ capability “for using, and therefore for further extending, their linguistic resources” (Seidlhofer 2011: 198). The early introduction of the study of a FL, predominantly English, has forced almost all European countries to train non-native teachers, with inevitable implications in terms of language standards to be met, particularly when it comes to English (Preisler 1999; Nikolov and Curtain 2000; Leung 2005; Alptekin 2010; Nikolov and Djigunović 2011; Pitzl et al. 2008).

3 Early English language learning in Europe: a case for ELF Introducing early FL learning from the start of primary school on a national scale has been an important, but costly enterprise for any country: the training of teachers, the new design of the school curriculum and the need to ensure continuity to language learning up until the end of the educational process. The implementation of early language learning has taken place in most European countries, with a few differences as for the starting age, the choice of the FL to be taught (Fig. 4)-English in most cases-and in the choice of the type of teacher to be used for teaching a FL at primary level (Fig. 5): non-native teachers in the majority of the cases.

Figure 4: European country policies: language choice and starting age (ELLiE-Enever 2011)

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Qualified Teacher England

Qualified Primary Teacher

Qualified F.L. Teacher

X

Qualified F.L. Primary Teacher

Preferred National Model Generalist Primary T with some FL fluency

Italy

X

Generalist Primary T with minimum B1 FL fluency

Netherlands

X

Generalist Primary T with FL fluency

Poland

X

Generalist Primary T with minimum B1 FL fluency

Spain

X

Generalist Primary T with minimum B1 FL fluency

Sweden

X

Generalist Primary T with FL fluency

Croatia

X

Generalist Primary T with additional FL fluency

Figure 5: Teacher qualification requirements: non-native primary teachers (ELLiE-Enever 2011)

The majority of European countries introduced English in primary school (Fig.4) and even earlier at kindergarten level in several contexts. Children’s growing exposure to English outside school affects both young learners’ perception of English and their second language acquisition processes. This is bound to affect students’ English learning in time and research is now beginning to show how (Kuppens 2010; Lindgren and Muñoz 2011; Sundqvist and Sylvén 2012; Vettorel 2013; Lopriore 2014). This contribution is based upon some of the emerging results of a longitudinal study carried out on the progression and achievement of young learners of English as a FL in Italy. The study is part of a large-scale transnational 4-year project (2006–2010) investigating Early Language Learning in Europe (ELLiE) (Enever 2011). The innovative features of this study are its unique transnational and longitudinal perspectives and the collection of both closely observed qualitative data and larger scale quantitative data reporting on changes in motivation and language progress over time. The ELLiE findings show that young learners generally start FL learning with very positive attitudes and high motivation. The changes that emerge over time reflect children’s growing awareness of likes and

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dislikes of the various elements of the learning process as the experience of learning accumulates in the years. The data from the ELLiE study have shown how the forms of oral interactions emerging in the English lessons mirror aspects of lingua franca exchanges. These ELF characteristic features are bound to further develop in the following years when children, once in middle or high school, will most probably be more and more exposed to ELF, particularly outside the school. It is thus important to reflect upon implications for English language teaching and language teacher education. Possible pedagogical implications for the school curriculum and for teacher education in terms of teachers’ awareness and understanding of both the theoretical discussion and the empirical findings in ELF research are needed (Jenkins 2000, 2007; Sifakis 2007; Kaur 2009; Klimpfinger 2009; Hülmbauer 2010; Lopriore 2010; Kirkpatrick 2010; Cogo and Dewey 2012). What clearly emerges from the great wealth of the longitudinal data collected over four years of the ELLiE project are also the highly complex interactions of learner characteristics with other factors, especially contextual ones and the amount of out-of-school exposure. These interactions offer a deeper and broader insight into ELL processes and outcomes.

3.1 Factors affecting FL learning within and out-of-school The Report to the European Commission written by Edelenbos et al. (2006: 158) recommends all stakeholders interested in early language learning to focus on the importance of investigating the ‘bigger picture’ of FL learning, that is, of showing how different factors interact in early FL learning in the European context. A broad understanding of what FL learning encompasses becomes particularly pertinent in a time where global mobility is a reality for many people, in education, at work as well as in private life. Globalisation takes place in everyday life as well as in the virtual world, in which people meet each other through various social media (Enever 2011). European users of the Internet represent more than 21 per cent of the world users with a majority of younger and younger people even on a daily basis (Fig.6). In Italy, 58.4% (35.000.000) of the country population (61.261.254) regularly uses the Internet. Increased mobility between countries, for tourism, for work or for social reasons requires the use of a language other than one’s mother tongue. Further, conformity of entertainment and trade, including adverts that are very rarely translated, adds to the need and motivation for knowledge in foreign languages. Thus English is more and more present in everyday lives of most people in Europe and it is used by a majority of NNS. This presence is bound to affect learn-

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ers of foreign languages and research is now beginning to show how. In Sweden, for example, exposure to FL English through the Internet and TV/films had a strong impact on secondary school children’s FL oral proficiency and vocabulary (Lindgren & Muñoz in Enever 2011: 105). However, exposure to the language is not the only out-of-school factor that affects children’s attitudes to and progress in the FL language. Parental influence has been widely recognized, the source of the influence coming from parents’ literacy level, parents’ involvement and attitudes towards the FL, and parents’ proficiency in the FL. The influence of parents’ literacy level is widely recognized by educationalists, much more so than the family’s socio-economic background. The wealth of ELLiE longitudinal data about young FL learners and the contexts in which they were learning the FL indicate that learner characteristics are not stable or independent factors: they develop with time and interact with contextual factors, sketching a very complex picture of ELL (Enever 2011).

Figure 6: Internet users in the world. Source: Internet World Stats. www.internetworldstats. com/stats.html

In the ELLiE Study, the children’s parents responded to a questionnaire about their children’s exposure to the FL outside the school. The results of a subsample of the parents showed that the children spent an average of more than 5  hours per week in activities (watching films, cartoons and/or series on TV, playing video/computer games; listening to music; reading books, magazines, comics, etc.) in which they were exposed to the FL. There was though a con-

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Figure 7: Children’s use of the Internet for FL exposure in each context, according to parents. (Lindgren & Muñoz in Enever 2011: 111)

siderable variation between the seven country contexts since in some countries there was a higher exposure to the FL in terms of non-dubbed films and of the high diffusion of TV channels in English. Parents were asked whether their children used the Internet in relation to the activities mentioned above (watching, playing games, etc.). Figure  7  – percentages per context  – shows that on average, 71.8 % of the children get exposure to the FL through the Internet, though variation between country contexts is large, spanning from 43 % to 100 % of the children using the Internet for various activities (Lindgren and Muñoz in Enever 2011: 112). In the ELLiE study, out-of-school exposure, particularly subtitled television and films, as well as parents’ knowledge and use of the FL professionally has proved to have a significant impact on children’s FL achievement. Children’s everyday contact with multilingual school population as well as their growing exposure to English in out-of-school contexts are thus factors affecting young learners’ perception of English and their second language acquisition processes. While the FL learning processes are influenced by the variety of input children are exposed to at school, in learners’ perception English is gradually shifting from a subject per se to an available and shared tool for communication to be used within as well as beyond the FL classroom.

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4 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the primary classroom As previously mentioned, the primary school population in many European countries is composed by a growing number of migrant children who are in some cases being exposed to English as their third or fourth language besides the language of schooling, ie the country national language. Since English lessons are almost always taught by specialist non-native (NN) teachers and the classroom is often composed by a polylingual population, the English learnt and used to communicate in the classroom is de facto a lingua franca, even if this issue has rarely been investigated upon (Seidlhofer 2004; Vettorel 2010; Lopriore 2012). In many cases children with a minority or migrant background are usually more sensitive to a multilingual and intercultural environment and may be predisposed to language learning. Most of the oral interactions taking place in the FL classrooms are partly led and guided by classroom teachers both in terms of the tasks assigned and of the language elicited from the students. During the FL lesson, besides the children’s responses to the activities they are involved in, there are also instances of communication in English among children and teacher or among children themselves that are neither directly nor indirectly led by teachers, rather they may be triggered by other circumstances, they are exchanges in English taking place during the lesson or outside the classroom. These exchanges are naturally occurring attempts on the part of the learners to use the FL for establishing meaningful interactions and to extend their use of English beyond routine exchanges. Part of the data gathered in the ELLiE study, as for example samples of young learners’ oral interaction in English with peers or with their teachers, their response to aural comprehension tasks and their attitudes towards the FL, were used in a study on the Italian cohort of the ELLiE study (Lopriore, forthcoming) to investigate whether they displayed features of ELF communication. In the following extracts from lesson transcripts (see Table  1), a selected group of 9-year-old learners (36) were individually involved in an interactive task carried out during the English lessons. In the task the children took turns with a NNS interviewer in identifying a character in a coloured picture representing many children doing different things in a classroom and in asking and answering questions (Lopriore 2014b).

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Table 1: Extract from lesson transcripts Child (girl – 9 yrs old) Questions – – – – – –

Which hair …colour he have? Is it …is a girl or a boy? Kk… hm… how… how looks his clothes out? What she doing? what’s he doing? He is the window? Is this qui?

Child (girl – 9 yrs old) Responses – – – – – – – –

A girl Ten penso She have… eh… (vediamo) She has… um… shoes… blue skirt and eh… shirt Brown, brown to red Long She… eh have her hand in the colour and then on the paper Yes

The analyses of young learners’ oral production have shown consistent ELF features in young learners’ classroom talk. Almost all ELF lexicogrammar features are present, even if at different degrees in the children’s interactive activities whether teacher-led or semi-autonomous. In almost all the guided interactive tasks taking place between the children and their teachers⁴, and constituting the corpus of the study, ELF features emerge as consistent characteristics of children’s oral production. These features are usually: the dropping of the third person present tense ‘s’, the omission of definite or indefinite articles when they are obligatory or their insertion when they are not, non-standard word order and question formation, lack of subject-verb agreement, forms of code-switching, and left pre- and post dislocation. The emerging ELF features in early language learners may be attributed to different reasons, one of the most relevant ones being the children’s exposure to NNS teachers who usually avoid intervening on learners’ errors, particularly those that do not compromise effective communication. When interviewed about their learners’ English and their ability to communicate, almost all the teachers of English, responded that their learners’ ability to effectively communicate was much more important for the children’s achievement and relevant for their selfconfidence than correcting the commonly regarded mistakes in FL oral production. They, on the contrary, felt that written production had to be more closely monitored in order to avoid future low school results. If in the interactive activity children’s utterances were partly led by the interviewer and directed by the task, ELF core and non-core features were observed also in other semi-autonomous information-gap activities where children spontaneously asked questions or

4 36 young learners’ short interactions were part of the corpus analysed.

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described pictures in pairs without direct or explicit interventions on the part of the teacher (Lopriore 2014b). The ELLiE teachers, when interviewed about their teacher education background and their perception of their FL mastery, highlighted the importance for them to be continuously exposed to the FL mostly in order to feel more self-confident in their classroom activities. They felt the pressure of societal conditions where parents demand for results and often expect the teachers to be updated and fluent in their use of English. Neither teachers nor parents seem to be aware of the existing varieties of English, besides British and American, and of the emerging and widespread diffusion of ELF.

5 Conclusions The growing diffusion of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as well as the new profile of the European school population determined by most recent flows of migration, are affecting language teacher education and the English classroom practice. The data drawn from the ELLiE study provided the opportunity not only to investigate the presence of ELF features in the English classrooms, but also to gain an insight into possible pedagogical implications for the school curriculum and for teacher education in terms of teachers’ awareness and understanding of both the theoretical discussion and the empirical findings in ELF research (Jenkins 2000, 2007; Sifakis 2004, 2007; Kaur 2009; Klimpfinger 2009; Hülmbauer 2010; Lopriore 2010; Kirkpatrick 2010; Cogo and Dewey 2012). It is not without conflict or tension as to which English to teach, which variety is more ‘correct’ or appropriate and which approach to use in a multilingual, multicultural class where English is usually being taught by non-native teachers and children develop multiple literacies. Teacher educators are introducing materials and activities aimed at providing a reflective approach based upon language awareness and a view of the language as a complex system, where language change is a natural phenomenon, and where learners’ language competence includes their ability to display their identity as members of a community; in short, a view of English as a discursive construct (Widdowson 2003; Leung 2005; Seidlhofer 2007; Alptekin 2010; Cogo and Dewey 2012). The type of approach adopted would allow teachers to develop professionally beyond the course and in a life-long perspective. By adopting a reflective approach and language awareness activities, future non-native as well as native

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teachers of English may be able to offer their students appreciation for cultural and linguistic differences as well as to widen their students’ language choices. Teacher education plays a crucial role in making teachers aware of their non-native assets and in preparing them explicitly to exploit these assets in the development of an appropriate pedagogy. (Seidlhofer 1999: 233)

References Alptekin, Cem. 2010. “Redefining multicompetence for bilingualism and ELF”. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 20(1). 95–110. Benvenuto, Guido & Lucilla Lopriore.2000. La valutazione delle competenze in lingua straniera. Rapporto di ricerca (Research Report on the evaluation of foreign language competencies): Rome: Italian Ministry of Education. Berns, Margie, Kees de Bot & Uwe Hasebrink. (eds). 2007. In the Presence of English: Media and European Youth. New York: Springer. Butler, Yuko. 2004. What level of English proficiency do elementary teachers need to attain to teach EFL? Case studies from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 245–287. Butler, Yuko. 2009. Issues in the assessment and evaluation of English language education at the elementary school level: Implications for policies in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 6(2), 1–31. Butler, Yuko & Jiyoon Lee. 2006. On-task versus off-task self-assessment among Korean elementary school students studying English. The Modern Language Journal . 90(4). 506–518. Cenoz , J.( 2003).The influence of age on the acquisition of English: general proficiency, attitudes and code mixing. In Garcıa Mayo, M.P. & M. L. Garcıa Lecumberri (eds.). Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language: Theoretical Issues and Field Work, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.77–93. Cogo, Alessia & Martin Dewey. 2012. Analysing English as a lingua franca. London/New York: Continuum. Drew, Jon & Angela Hasselgren .2008. Young Language Learner (YLL) Research: An Overview of some International and National Approaches. Acta Didacta Norge. 2, 1. 1–18. Garton, S., Copland, F., Burns, A. (2011). Investigating Global Practices in Teaching English to Young Learners. Aston University. ELT Research papers, 11–01, The British Council. Council of Europe. 2007. Language(s) of Schooling. Strasbourg: Language Policy Division. Edelenbos, Peter, Richard Johnstone & Angelika, Kubanek. 2006. The main pedagogical principles underlying the teaching of languages to very young learners. Languages for the children of Europe: Published research, good practice and main principles. European Commission Report. EAC 89/04. Enever, Janet (ed.). 2011. Early Language Learning in Europe. London: The British Council. Enever, Janet & Jayne Moon. 2010. A global revolution? Teaching English at primary school. London: The British Council. Gnutzmann, Claus & Frank Intemann (eds.). 2005. The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

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Graddol, David. 1997. The Future of English. London: The British Council. Graddol, David. 2006. English Next. London: The British Council. Grzega Joachim & Marion Schöner. 2007. Basic Global English (BGE) as a Way for Children to acquire Global Communicative Competence. Journal for EurolinguistiX 4. 5–18. Hasselgren, Angela. 2000. The assessment of the English ability of young learners in Norwegian schools: An innovative approach. Language Testing, 17(2). 261–277. Hill, K. 2010. Classroom-based assessment: the issue of continuity between primary and secondary school languages program. Australian Federation of Modern Language Teacher Associations, 45:1. Babel Publisher. Hoffmann, Charlotte. 2000. “The spread of English and the growth of multilingualismEurope” in Cenoz Jasone & Jessner Ulrike (eds.). 2000. English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. 1–21. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hülmbauer, Cornelia. 2010. English as a lingua franca: between correctness and effectiveness. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr Müller. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language: New Models, New Norms, New Goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2007. English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnstone, Richard. 2000. Context-sensitive Assessment of Foreign Language in Primary (Elementary) and early Secondary Education: Scotland and the European Experience. Language Testing, 17(2).123–143. Kaur, Jagdish. 2009. English as a Lingua Franca. Co-Constructing Understanding. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag. Kirkpatrick Andy. (ed.). 2010. The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. Oxon: Routledge. Klimpfinger, Theresa. 2009. “She’s mixing the two languages together” – Forms and functions of code-switching in English as a Lingua Franca. In Anna Mauranen & Elina Ranta (eds.). English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings, 348–371. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Kuppens, An H. 2010. “Incidental Foreign Language Acquisition from Media Exposure”, Learning, Media and Technology 35 (1). 65–85. Leung, Constant, 2005. “Convivial communication: recontextualizing communicative competence”. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 15(2). 119–144. Lindgren, Eva & Carmen Munoz. 2011. “Out-of-school factors: the Home”, in J. Enever, (ed), Early Language Learning in Europe, 103–122. London: The British Council. Lopriore, Lucilla. 2001. La valutazione degli apprendimenti delle lingue straniere nella scuola elementare. [Foreign language learning assessment at primary level]. In Gattullo F., La valutazione degli apprendimenti linguistici. Scandicci (FI): La Nuova Italia. 215–244. Lopriore, Lucilla. 2006. The Long and Winding Road: A Profile of Italian EFL Teachers. In McCloskey MaryLou, Orr Janet & Marlene, Dolitsky (eds.) Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Primary School, 59–82. Alexandria, VA: TESOL. Lopriore, Lucilla. 2010. World Englishes and Language Teacher Education in a World in Migration: A Shift in Perspective. In Cesare Gagliardi & Alan Maley (eds.). EIL, ELF, Global English: Teaching and Learning Issues, 69–91. Berna: Peter Lang. Lopriore, Lucilla. 2012. Early Language Learning: Investigating Young Learners’ Achievement in a Longitudinal Perspective. RILA (Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata). Standardized Language Testing and Research. Roma: Bulzoni. 147–166.

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Lopriore, Lucilla. 2014a. Research into early foreign language learning in Italy: looking back, looking forward. In Jozsef Horváth and Peter Medgyes (eds). Studies in Honour of Marianne Nikolov, 100–118. Pécs: Lingua Franca Csopot. Lopriore, Lucilla. 2014b. English as a Lingua Franca in early second and multi-lingual acquisition. In TEXTUS English Studies, 2014/1. 119–135. Lopriore, Lucilla & Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović. 2011. Role of Language Exposure in Early Foreign Language Learning. In Gabor Szabó, Joseph Horváth & Marianne Nikolov (eds.). UPRT 2010. Empirical Studies in English Applied Linguistics, 1–18. Pécs: Lingua Franca Csopot. Lopriore, Lucilla & Serena Ambroso. 2012. L’insegnamento dell’inglese agli allievi non italofoni. In Matteo Santipolo (ed.). Educare i bambini alla lingua inglese. Lecce-Brescia: Pensa MultiMedia. Mauranen, Anna & Elina Ranta (eds.). 2009. English as a lingua franca: studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. McKay, Penny. 2005. Research into the Assessment of School-Age Language Learners. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 25, 243–263. McKay, Penny. 2006. Assessing Young Language Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MIUR. 2012 (2007). Indicazioni per il curricolo per la scuola dell’infanzia e per il primo ciclo dell’istruzione [Curriculum guidelines for pre-primary and the first education cycle]. Roma: Italian Ministry of Education. Moon, Jayne & Marianne Nikolov (eds.). 2000. Research into teaching English to young learners: international perspectives. Pécs: Pécs University Press. Nikolov, Marianne (ed.). 2009. Early Learning of Modern Foreign Languages: processes and outcomes. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Nikolov, Marianne, Mihaljević Djigunović, J., Mattheoudakis, M., Lundberg, G., & Flanagan, T. (Eds.). 2007. Teaching modern languages to young learners: Teachers, curricula and materials. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Nikolov, Marianne & Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović. 2011. All shades of every color: An overview of early teaching and learning of foreign languages. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 31. 95–119. Nikolov, Marianne & Helena Curtain (eds.). 2000. An early Start: Young learners and modern languages in Europe and beyond. Graz: European Center for Modern Languages. Pitzl, Marie Luise, Angelika Breiteneder & Theresa Klimpfinger. 2008. A world of words: Processes of lexical innovation in VOICE. VIEWS 17(2). 21–46. Preisler, Bent. 1999. Functions and Forms of English in a European EFL country. In Tony Bex & Richard J. Watts (eds.). Standard English: the Widening Debate, 239–267. London: Routledge. Rea-Dickins, Pauline. 2000. Assessing Young Language Learners. Language Testing Special Issue. (17)2. Rea-Dickins, Pauline. 2004. Understanding teachers as agents of assessment. Language Testing, 21: 249–258. Rea-Dickins, Pauline & Sheelagh, Rixon. 1999. Assessment of young learners’ English: Reasons and means. In: Rixon, S. (ed.), Young learners of English: Some research perspectives. Harlow, Essex: Longman. 89–101. Rixon, S.(ed.). 1999. Young Learners of English: Some Research Perspectives. London: Longman.

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Rixon, S. (ed.). 2013. British Council Survey of Policy and Practice in Primary English Language Teaching Worldwide. London: The British Council. Roessingh, H., Elgie, S. 2009. Early language and literacy development among young ELL: Preliminary insights from a longitudinal study. TESL Canada Journal 26(2), pp.24–45. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 1999. Double standards: teacher education in the Expanding Circle. World Englishes 18(2). 233–245. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2004. Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24. 209–239. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2007. Common property: English as a lingua franca in Europe. In Jim Cummins & Chris Davidson (eds.). International Handbook of English Language Teaching, 137–153. New York: Springer. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2010. Lingua franca English – The European Context. In Andy Kirkpatrick (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes, 355–371. Oxon: Routledge. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer Barbara, Angelika Breiteneder & Marie Luise Pitzl. 2006. English as a lingua franca in Europe: Challenges for applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26. 3–34. Shohamy, Elana, Eliezer Ben-Rafael & Monica Barni (eds.). 2010. Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sifakis, Nicos. 2004. Teaching EIL – teaching international or intercultural English: what teachers should know. System 32(2). 237–250. Sifakis, Nicos. 2007. The education of teachers of English as a lingua franca: a transformative perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17(3). 355–375. Sundqvist, Pia & Liss Kerstin Sylvén. 2012. Computer-Assisted L2 English Language-Related Activities Among Swedish 10-Year-Olds. Dublin: Research Publishing Net. Vasileva, Katya. 2012. Population and social conditions. EUROSTAT: Statistics in focus 31/ (12). 1–4. Vettorel, Paola. 2010. EIL/ELF and representation of culture in textbooks: only food, fairs, folklore and facts? In Cesare Gagliardi & Alan Maley (eds.). EIL, ELF, Global English: Teaching and Learning Issues, 153–185. Bern: Peter Lang. Vettorel, Paola. 2013. ELF in International School Exchanges: Stepping into the Role of ELF Users. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 2(1). 147–173 Widdowson, Henry. 2003. Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part II: Teacher Education

Andrew Blair

Chapter 5  Evolving a post-native, multilingual model for ELF-aware teacher education 1 Introduction Language is the tool of tools, essential to our identities as individuals and as a species. All living languages change continuously, and people are responsible for that change, primarily to express identity and build relationships (Trask 2010). If we conceive of language as social practice, and see language change as natural and continuous (Aitchison 2001), we need to consider how to teach a language such as English, used locally and globally for lingua franca purposes. We also need to reflect on how to prepare language teachers for these sociolinguistic and pedagogical realities. In much simpler terms, how can we teach and learn a language with around one million words and two billion speakers, even if the precise numbers of both are disputed? A ‘language’ (if we can call it that) with a significant majority of its speakers, teachers, and interactions defined as ‘non-native’. A ‘language’ for which previously-held notions of ‘integrative motivation’ among learners, for instance, have lost their relevance through the processes of globalisation. Instead, individuals may aspire towards a ‘bicultural’ identity, which incorporates an English-speaking globally-involved version of themselves in addition to their local L1-speaking self (Lamb 2004: 3). This chapter discusses what “effective pedagogy” (James and Pollard 2011) might mean in practice if we take these realities on board. Key background issues and questions are reviewed, regarding the nature of competence, lingua franca interaction and pedagogical goals, followed by a brief selection of teacher perspectives, obtained during a broader study of language teacher identity. In particular, the focus is on some of the implications for teacher education, as relevant to my own role in ELT and consequently as an area of potential influence. Suggestions for a redefined model for ‘ELF-aware’ teacher education and practical applications to a specific programme are also outlined below. The training and development of English language teachers can in many respects be seen as a seed bed for future change in practice. Whether such change is characterised as evolution or revolution is open to debate, but the overall direction of travel is surely becoming clearer.

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As a starting point, Tim McNamara’s introductory plenary talk at the ELF5 conference in 2012 highlighted some of the pedagogical implications of the field’s growing understanding of the nature of lingua franca communication: Not only is the competence of the native speaker no longer a relevant benchmark for performance, (…) but the very nature of ELF communication requires us to conceptualize less narrowly the capacities of the speaker likely to make ELF communication more or less successful… At last we have a chance to embrace a richer model of communication underlying teaching and assessment, a chance we must not miss. (McNamara 2012)

It is indeed an opportunity to re-evaluate both the “purpose and process” of English Language Teaching (Widdowson 2003), in the light of the sociolinguistic realities that ELF research has begun to expose. This fundamental rethink of what communicative competence means, when viewed from a lingua franca perspective, takes us back to Hymes (1972) and the notion of “ability for use”. However, it also forces us to consider the more recent impact of ELF-related studies and theorising on pedagogical models and goals (for example, Dewey 2012), and consequent effects upon language teacher development, syllabus design, assessment, materials and all the other practicalities of diverse learning contexts.

2 Multicompetence, ELF and teacher education An ELF perspective on pedagogy necessitates a better understanding by teachers and learners of inherent language variability and diversity (Jenkins et  al. 2011), noted by Aitchison (2001) and others above. This logically suggests a greater focus on process than product, involving central roles for accommodation strategies, intercultural and pragmatic competence, flexibility and tolerance of variation. These conceptions should therefore be reflected within ELT teacher education programmes, moving beyond the ‘native’/‘non-native’ distinction, traditional notions of speech community, proficiency and method, towards a model based on principles of multilingualism and “meta-cultural competence” (Sharifian 2009). The well-documented spread and globalisation of English over the past few decades (for example, in Lamb 2004; above) has in reality been a growth in bi- and multilingualism involving English; that is, a growth in lingua franca and mixed-code communication. Language competence can also be reframed in social terms, as being located somewhere between speakers in communicative interaction (as opposed to solely inside one person’s mind), and this is especially true of lingua franca communication. All this arguably creates the need to rede-

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fine the ‘good communicator’, the ‘good language learner’, and therefore, the ‘ideal language teacher’. The 21st century speaker/user of English, regardless of their first language, can no longer be seen in simplistic, one-dimensional terms based on ‘nativeness’ or idealised notions of linguistic competence: the evermoving pedagogical target can be imagined as ‘beyond-native’ competence, with no ‘final state’ to the acquisition process. Therefore, what is required is a reformulation of “effective pedagogy” (James and Pollard 2011) for our field; one which embraces multicompetence (V. Cook 2002) and an understanding of ‘ELF-aware teaching’ relevant for what can be seen as a ‘post-native’ era. If preparing their students to be ELF users in a wide range of fluid communicative contexts, how should teachers themselves be prepared? In addressing these issues, this chapter presents proposals for change, drawing on a recent study of teachers of English, originating from various parts of Europe, who have taught or received some of their professional training in the UK. These individuals have ‘crossed borders’, in several senses, and represent many aspects of the redefined paradigm for ELT implied above, though they also express paradoxes and uncertainties in their own positions regarding linguistic and pedagogical goals. They are successful L2 users, role models for their learners, and form part of the next generation of practitioners and teacher educators. The long-term future of ‘effective ELF pedagogy’ rests with them, and it is the responsibility of current teacher educators and researchers to inspire them and this (r)evolution in attitudes and practice. Multicompetence (V. Cook 2002), or the knowledge of more than one language in the same mind, can and should be seen as the goal of second language learning. Indeed, as Cogo and Jenkins point out, ELF users are “more effective precisely because they speak other languages and are multicompetent” (2010: 273; original emphasis). Pennycook (2008) argues that globalised English (or ELF) has no native speakers, only multicompetent users. Recent ELF publications (for example, Seidlhofer 2011; Murray 2012) have highlighted pragmatic competence and the productive role of code-switching and mixing in lingua franca communication and language learning, implying a corresponding role for the first language in the classroom (challenging the ‘monolingual principle’ of much Inner Circle ELT practice; see also G. Cook 2010). As a field, as a profession, we need to ask ourselves what we are doing: teaching language or teaching learners (one successful airline used to claim: “we don’t fly planes; we fly people”)? Are we teaching English, or teaching multilingualism with English? Can we really talk about ‘teaching ELF’, or ‘ELF-aware teaching’? ‘Effective communication’, through lingua franca use or otherwise, is surely by definition context-dependent – therefore so is ‘effective pedagogy’.

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Dewey (2012) argues in favour of moving beyond ‘native’ norms towards ‘postnormative’ thinking on language teaching and use. He also illustrates where the problem for ‘ELF-aware’ pedagogy and teacher education may lie: A good deal of what we have learnt about ELF interaction is at variance with current principles and practice as established by the ELT profession. It is therefore paramount that we consider what ELF means with regard to teacher knowledge about language and language teaching methods. (Dewey 2012: 143)

It seems there is a conceptual and attitudinal gap between what some ELF researchers perceive as contemporary sociolinguistic realities, and the practice of English language teaching and teacher development. Dewey refers to teachers’ “fundamental ambivalence about ELF” (2012: 167). Certainly the teacher participants in the study briefly reported below reflected this kind of position, as do many of my own postgraduate student-teachers. Such gaps are difficult to bridge, but it is arguably part of the purpose of the next phase of ELF-related research to attempt to do so, in ways that make sense to language teachers and teacher educators, as well as to the learners themselves. Others have discussed the complex elements comprising teacher preparation and development: in terms of language proficiency and professionalism (Pasternak and Bailey 2004); teacher knowledge (Richards 2011); locality (Holliday 1994; with his BANA/TESEP distinction); and from a transformative ELF perspective (Sifakis 2007). Previous ELF conference papers have also investigated these issues in relation to teacher confidence, competence and identity, and the implications of the majority of English language teachers being successful L2 users themselves (Blair 2011). Terminology counts here, too: rather than ‘non-native’, we have “Multilingual English Teachers” (METS; Kirkpatrick 2007), or “Speakers of Other Languages Teaching English” (SOLTEs; Blair 2010). As noted above, some of these individuals, including those involved in this small-scale study, can be viewed as role models for their students (“the teacher is the target”; Kirkpatrick 2010), and as future teacher educators, who therefore represent a key constituency for attitudinal and practical change. They also share the ambivalence towards ELF, and non-standard pedagogical models, that Dewey (2012) observes, usually as a consequence of their investment in standards and ‘native’ norms, through their own language learning and teacher training experience.

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3 Teachers’ views On university-based ELT teacher education programmes in the UK, the typical student cohort is mixed between those who regard themselves as L1 or L2 users of English, and in terms of varied professional background. This study, as part of a larger project investigating language teacher identity, was framed on naturalistic research principles, positioning “people, and their interpretations, perceptions, meanings and understandings, as the primary data sources” (Mason 2002: 56). Selecting a relevant range of a population is appropriate, rather than aiming for a representative sample; using ‘purposive sampling’ to identify suitable participants (Bryman 2004: 333–334). The study also took elements from the narrative approach, in using semi-structured qualitative interviews, spoken and written interaction with participants as means of creating data (for example, Ricento 2005; Johnson and Golombek 2011). In pursuing this methodological approach, two distinct phases of data were planned. The first comprised face-to-face interviews with 12 teachers, using a semi-structured, responsive format (Rubin and Rubin 2005) with the aim of eliciting and exploring their views in terms of their own lived experience. The second phase involved the follow-up and development of specific themes through an online discussion forum and emails with most of the same group. Following initial analysis, an additional stage was added, targeting two particular teachers currently working and studying in the UK, through a joint interview. The project aimed to address the following related research questions: 1 What does it mean for Speakers of Other Languages Teaching English (SOLTEs) to say: ‘I am an English teacher’? 2 How do these multilingual, multicultural teachers develop their identities and what influences their professional practice and beliefs? 3 What are the implications of the globalisation and lingua franca use of English for the field of English Language Teaching and teacher education? This chapter focuses primarily on the third of these questions. The small sample presented here are all reasonably experienced teachers (ranging from 4 to 22 years of teaching), Europeans from the Expanding Circle, having received some part of their teacher education in the UK, on Postgraduate or short in-service courses, in addition to initial training in their home countries. All are L2 users of English, or ‘METS’/‘SOLTES’, and this is crucial in terms of their identities and their roles within debates on ELF and broader ELT questions. Stake (1995) refers to a process of ‘progressive illumination’ achieved through what might otherwise be viewed as the opportunistic sampling of research participants. The aim therefore was to select teachers likely to have something ‘illuminating’ to say on the issues, and

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this led to a blend of those relatively settled in their professional context in the UK and others there temporarily on courses. These selected snapshots of their views and beliefs are often simply interesting in themselves, but also for what they have to say about teacher education, pedagogical goals and models, and the impact of different perspectives on language, such as ELF, upon ELT practice. The roots of teachers’ current attitudes may be discernible from considering the foundations of their professional development. On typical initial training as a language teacher (in Poland), one complained: I didn’t have any teaching training there; it was just history, Old English, literature, translation. So there was methodology, which was one hour per week, and it was really nothing…

On varieties of English, and the ever-moving target presented by a living, changing language, there is some awareness of the unrealistic nature of ‘native’-driven learning goals. An example from a Spanish participant: You feel that there are so many varieties, and they’re quite different from each other, so the language English doesn’t sound the same all the time, even from native speakers, so how would we expect non-native learners to have only one variety?

On teaching aims for learners (in Sweden), another teacher expressed the hope for multicompetence: I want my students to be users of the English language. I want them to feel secure with switching, you know… so that they are not afraid of speaking and asking for some things.

Developing this theme, there are further examples of growing consciousness among such teachers of what we like to call ELF, but what for others amounts to a richer understanding of what it means to be a multicompetent communicator in the 21st century. This from a German participant: I think that first of all we have to make the learners feel comfortable and confident with their own variety, and being aware of [ELF, local variation etc.], and try more to show them the intelligibility of the language, and not the variety and the accent, that kind of thing…

Further evidence of some kind of transformation in personal attitudes and beliefs, at least among those predisposed towards being receptive to different ideas, can be seen in the following comment on standard pedagogical models: I can see it with my students, and definitely in Poland. Something like English as an International Language doesn’t really exist, it’s either British English or American English, and anything around it is… worse [laughs]. But if it’s British English, it’s obviously RP, and it

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can’t be anything else. So, I think that’s the stereotype that the teachers have to break, and I would be very keen on doing so… I’d love to implement a lot more accents and I just don’t know how to do it, and there are so few resources out there.

The development (and acceptance) of appropriate ‘ELF-aware’ teaching materials is surely another aspect of an evolving pedagogical model requiring our attention. One (Greek) teacher suggested that an awareness of ELF perspectives may be starting to have some professional impact, albeit within limitations: None of my work colleagues see [ELF] as an issue to talk about. I don’t think they’re familiar with what’s around, and I probably wouldn’t be if I wasn’t studying [an MA]. But I think that the sort of division between how people act and how they behave and what’s started appearing in the books, I think that’s quite a big difference here…

Once again, the importance of continuing professional development (for example, on an MA programme, as here) in influencing attitudes is apparent from this type of comment. Another teacher (from Poland) revealed something of her personal ambitions and investment in such postgraduate study, with implications for teacher educators and their responsibilities: And I’ve got this feeling that because I’m not a native speaker, I’ve got to prove more… not to myself I think, more, and if I achieve it, I’ll be very, very pleased. It’s very important for me… I think it’s a huge personal thing, even more than the money or the career, and this is what I’ve wanted to do for the last four years, so… it’s really like a dream come true, that I can actually be here and study, it’s a huge thing for me.

As noted above, the central focus of this study was language teacher identity among multilingual ELT practitioners, in which the impact of the globalisation of English, and by extension ELF-related research and ideas, were relevant factors. These ‘METs’ or ‘SOLTEs’ are central to any potential change process in the field, having ‘crossed borders’, in several senses: from their home country to the UK; from language learner to teacher; in some cases from teacher to trainer or other professional roles. Less tangibly, but no less significantly, they may have crossed that hotly contested line between ‘native’ and ‘non-native’, and become part of the blurring process with regard to that long-accepted distinction. Some rather interesting examples emerged from the data: I feel a lot more confident now, yes… I think it’s the experience, and now I’m trying to think, I will be applying for British citizenship, so I would like to have dual, if possible… and I will be married to an English person, so… does that mean that I become a ‘native speaker’ of English? [laughs] So it’s all so very subjective. So yeah, if my surname doesn’t sound too Polish anymore, so does that make me a native speaker?

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Perhaps this is one way to become a member of what Pavlenko (2003) described as the “reimagined, multicompetent community” of ‘non-native’ teachers; certainly signs here of an emerging ‘post-native’ era. A theme that emerged strongly from the findings was the inadequacy of much of the participants’ initial and in-service training (as illustrated by the first example quoted above), not only concerning the kind of sociolinguistic awareness implicit in a proper understanding of ELF. This sense of deficiency appeared to be brought into sharper relief, at least for several of these teachers, by the various processes of development, awareness-raising and professional maturity that each had experienced more recently. (One commented: “because I’ve reached the level that my students are aiming for, I think I’m actually a better role model”.) Key elements of that development seemed to include their realisation of the complexity of ‘language’ itself; the difficulties inherent in defining ‘effective pedagogy’ in the specific case of English in the contemporary world and in different contexts; and the inappropriate previous (and current) emphasis on simplistic ‘native’ models – both for themselves and their students. Another theme was the potential and actual tensions, paradoxes and uncertainties that these teachers have sensed, regarding specific pedagogical models and goals, for instance concerning phonology, or attitudes towards error correction and feedback in the classroom. For instance, one participant claimed that “I’ve got this feeling that because I’m not a native speaker, I’ve got to prove more”. These tensions can be seen in terms of identity, confidence and competence (Blair 2011), but can also be considered as a product of their own professional development or present reaction to past training influences, particularly for the two teachers now settled in the UK. There is some evidence of recent impact from ELF perspectives and the wider debates on the roles of English and pedagogical implications of a reconceptualization of ‘language’: If somebody said I shouldn’t be teaching English because I’m not English, or British, that would be one of my arguments… that there are more non-native speakers who speak English as a foreign language for communicative reasons.

The consensus among these teachers is that there are limited opportunities to implement change in their local practice (as one teacher noted above “there are so few resources out there”), but also perhaps cause for a degree of optimism that the scent of change is at least in the air.

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4 Practical applications for ELT teacher education Small-scale qualitative studies of the kind partially reported above inevitably have their limitations, and are open to interpretation  – but that is essentially what an interpretivist approach to research entails (for example, see Lincoln and Guba 1985). The key is credibility (as opposed to more positivistic reliability) and transferability (rather than notional generalisability). The implications of this investigation for my own ELT teacher education practice are clear, however: there is a pressing need to move beyond description and discussion of lingua franca English use, towards what I refer to as a ‘post-native’, multilingual model, where ‘beyond-native’ competence is the learning goal, and ‘effective pedagogy’ is focused in this direction. This shift in focus embraces a more overtly sociolinguistic approach to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) study on teacher education programmes, for example, to take account of these new realities, as noted by Dewey (2012) above. A greater emphasis on pragmatics and intercultural competence would also be useful in this respect. Learning a new language, or returning to a previously-studied one, should be an important part of training to be a teacher of English; this particularly applies to (near-) monolingual ‘natives’ – it is a ‘multilingual principle’ we need. As Ellis (2009: 196) proposes, “teachers can benefit from reflecting on their own experience of learning a new language”, as part of an SLA course. Making what can be seen as a crucial point, in terms of this argument, regarding multilingualism and language teacher education, one (German) participant in the study stated that “teacher trainees in the UK do teaching practice, but they don’t do learning practice”. Arguably it is this kind of ‘learning practice’ that can lead to a greater general awareness of what language is, of what learning actually feels like (it is easy to forget), and of how ‘ELF-aware’ pedagogy might be more appropriate than slavish adherence to an idealised ‘native’ goal. Kohn (2011) concurs, arguing that teachers who understand better how languages are acquired tend to understand better the pedagogical implications of ELF communication. The issue of ‘nativeness’ becomes less relevant than other factors of confidence, competence and identity among language learners and teachers: a point forcefully made by some of the participants in this study. On the role of the contemporary English language teacher, one of them put it very succinctly: “Global teachers, we could say we are”. These are precisely the people whom ELF research and ideas must engage. In terms of further applications for designing teacher education programmes, we can include specific ELF/World Englishes-type content or courses, and/or embed ELF perspectives further within the general subject areas – to ensure that ‘ELF-aware’ teacher education is not presented merely as an optional add-on, but

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as central to the “purpose and process” of ELT (Widdowson 2003). On the MA programme I direct, based in the UK, student-teachers come from a very wide range of backgrounds and are being prepared for diverse ELT contexts. Therefore, no single pedagogic model applies – we probably have entered some form of “postmethod era” (Kumaravadivelu 1994, 2006), although the reality of this remains problematic for many teachers. What I am arguing for here, a ‘post-native’ model of language pedagogy that recognises and applies an understanding of lingua franca use and contemporary sociolinguistic realities for English alongside other languages, is perhaps even harder to convey, and more problematic to implement. There is a clear need for teachers to develop their awareness of underlying principles of language and learning, as ever, but arguably these principles themselves are under review, in the process of reconceptualisation – an ever-moving target. This awareness includes not only a recognition of ELF thinking, but also a mutual respect for both L1 and L2 users of English as valid, credible, competent teachers with complementary perspectives (as ‘METs’, Kirkpatrick 2007; or ‘SOLTEs’, Blair 2010). Using the above MA in ELT as a point of reference, examples of how such a teacher education programme can integrate these ‘post-native’ sociolinguistic and ELF positions include: – More prominence given to sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspectives on the Second Language Acquisition module, including lingua franca use as a viable goal for learners. – More focus on pragmatics as an element of the Language Analysis module, in addition to more traditional models of linguistic description. – Language learning: a mandatory short course linked to the SLA module with an assessed reflective learning diary (the contention is that this helps shift attitudes towards language, use and pedagogy in a meaningful and practical way; see Ellis 2009). – ELF/Global Englishes element to the Principles and Practice in ELT module, making clear links to pedagogical goals for the teaching of language skills, grammar, lexis and phonology; exploring what ELF means for teacher knowledge and competence (see Dewey 2012). – Continued emphasis placed throughout on critical evaluation of theory and literature to develop the necessary analytical skills and awareness. – Explicit recognition of the diversity of educational contexts and approaches for the student-teacher group, alongside developing an awareness of how ELF can feature appropriately for legitimate L2 users. – Regular challenging of key constructs and assumptions (for example, language as a system or social practice, teacher knowledge, ‘nativeness’, ‘speech community’, the ‘final state’ in language acquisition; ‘effective pedagogy’).

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‘ELF-aware’ dissertation projects to be encouraged and critically supported where appropriate. Students’ future roles and influence on ELT practice and policy should be more strongly emphasised throughout the programme  – the ‘seed bed of future change in practice’, discussed above.

5 Conclusions, questions and issues Any kind of change, whether social, political, linguistic or professional, takes time. Long-held attitudes and beliefs are at stake, and while some might prefer the impact of a revolutionary approach, perhaps evolution can be more substantial and more enduring. The position presented in this chapter is also based on a set of emergent beliefs. For example, the belief that the ideal teachers of English are well-trained, multilingual, ELF-aware, pragmatically and interculturally competent – regardless of their first language. That new or renewed contact through learning another language raises awareness of many of the issues discussed above, and is central to the proposed ‘post-native’, multilingual model for teacher education. There is a need to bring Inner Circle ELT and teacher development more firmly into the mainstream of language education (in the UK and elsewhere; as noted by Dewey 2012), rather than inhabiting its own ‘EFL industry’ territory, where different rules seem to apply. There are potential and practical challenges to teachers if their knowledge base is seen to be shifting (for example with regard to traditional linguistic expertise), to be replaced by alternative criteria as yet not so clearly defined. These challenges have to be addressed, not dismissed: ELF users and their teachers can be both barriers to and agents of change, and we need to earn their support. The implications of the small-scale study discussed above, and many other recent contributions to ELF-related research, suggest that ELT needs to move away from debates on ‘nativeness’, ‘ownership’ and idealised pedagogical norms, towards notions of ‘beyond-native’ language competence, a ‘multilingual principle’ for teaching and learning, and more appropriate teacher education programmes. Echoing the belief stated at the beginning of this chapter, pedagogical targets for all living languages also change continuously, as do people’s local communicative needs and identity claims, in a globalised world where multicompetent teachers can act as role models for their students. It is important, if we believe that change is necessary – in attitudes, practice, policy or other aspects of our field – that we first attend to those areas where we have real influence, however limited that may be. In my case, this is postgraduate

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ELT teacher education; for others, it might be language testing and assessment, materials or syllabus design, research and analysis. There are many borders to cross. One of the principles of “effective pedagogy” is that it “depends on the learning of all those who support the learning of others” (James and Pollard, 2011: 273). The lesson from my own learning, from investigating teacher identity and beliefs, and from a continually-developing awareness of the complexities of language use and appropriate pedagogy, is that it is our responsibility to make our contribution to this evolution in attitudes and practice in the most effective and inspiring way we can.

References Aitchison, Jean. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? (3rd edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blair, Andrew. 2010. Who do you think you are? Multiple identities for Speakers of Other Languages Teaching English. Paper presented at the 3rd. International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Vienna. Blair, Andrew. 2011. Confidence, competence and identity: Multilingual English Teachers as role models for ELF users. Paper presented at the 4th. International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Hong Kong. Bryman, Alan. 2004. Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cogo, Alessia & Jennifer Jenkins. 2010. English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: a mismatch between policy and practice. European Journal of Language Policy 2 (2). 271–294. Cook, Guy. 2010. Translation in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cook, Vivian. (ed.). 2002. Portraits of the L2 user. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dewey, Martin. 2012. Towards a post-normative approach: learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1). 141–170. Ellis, Rod. 2009. SLA, teacher education and language pedagogy. Language Teaching 43(2). 182–201. Holliday, Adrian. 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hymes, Del. 1972. On Communicative Competence. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (eds.). Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt & Reinhardt. James, Mary & Andrew Pollard. 2011. TLRP’s ten principles for effective pedagogy: rationale, development, evidence, argument and impact. Research Papers in Education 26 (3). 275–328. Jenkins, Jennifer, Alessia Cogo & Martin Dewey. 2011. Review of developments in research into English as a Lingua Franca. Language Teaching 44(3). 281–315. Kirkpatrick, Andy. 2007. World Englishes – Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirkpatrick, Andy. 2010. English as an Asian Lingua Franca: implications for policy and pedagogy. Paper presented at the 3rd. International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Vienna.

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Kohn, Kurt. 2011. English as a lingua franca and the Standard English misunderstanding. In Annick De Houwer & Antje Witton (eds.). English in Europe Today. Sociocultural and Educational Perspectives, 71–94. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Johnson, Karen & Paula Golombek. 2011. The Transformative Power of Narrative in Second Language Teacher Education. TESOL Quarterly 45(3). 486–509. Kumaravadivelu, B. 1994. The Postmethod Condition: (E)merging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly 28(1). 27–48. Kumaravadivelu, B. 2006. Understanding Language Teaching: From Method to Postmethod. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge. Lamb, Martin. 2004. Integrative motivation in a globalizing world. System (32). 3–19. Lincoln, Yvonna & Egon Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Mason, Jennifer. 2002. Qualitative Researching. (2nd edition) London: Sage. McNamara, Tim. 2012. At last: assessment and English as a lingua franca. Plenary talk at the 5th. International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Istanbul. Murray, Neil. 2012. English as a lingua franca and the development of pragmatic competence. ELT Journal 66(3). 318–326. Pasternak, Mindy & Kathleen Bailey. 2004. Preparing nonnative and native English-speaking teachers: Issues of professionalism and proficiency. In L. Kahmi-Stein (ed.). Learning and Teaching from Experience:Perspectives on nonnative English-speaking professionals, 155–175. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Pavlenko, Aneta. 2003. “I never knew I was a bilingual”: Reimagining teacher identities in TESOL. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 2(4). 251–168. Pennycook, Alistair. 2008. Changing Practices in Global ELT. Paper presented at IATEFL, Exeter, UK. Ricento, Thomas. 2005. Considerations of Identity in L2 Learning. In E. Hinkel (ed.). 2005. Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning, 895–910. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Richards, Jack. 2011. Exploring teacher competence in language teaching. The Language Teacher 35(4). 3–7. Rubin, Herbert & Irene Rubin. 2005. Qualitative Interviewing: The art of hearing data. (2nd edition) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharifian, Farzad. (ed.). 2009. English as an International Language: Perspectives and Pedagogical Issues. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sifakis, Nicos. 2007. The education of teachers if English as a lingua franca: a transformative perspective. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 17(3). 355–375. Stake, Robert. 1995. The art of case study research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Trask, R. Larry. 2010. Why Do Languages Change? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, Henry. 2003. Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Chapter 6  Bringing new ELT policies and ELF to teacher training courses 1 Introduction English occupies a unique place both in history and in today’s world. In fact, there has never been a language so extensively used and so firmly established as the dominant lingua franca in such numerous and disparate fields of activity like advertising, business and banking, industry and commerce, international diplomacy, pop music, tourism, transportation and sports, to name a few. Given the extensive spread of the language not only throughout a wide number of domains, but also geographically speaking, it has become clear that users of English no longer include just monolingual native speakers, but increasingly more bilinguals or multilinguals, for whom English is a second or third language, and who unavoidably bring to it many diverse linguistic and cultural influences. These considerable demographic changes in terms of English language users and where they are from have inevitably contributed to the rise of different varieties of English, distinguished in terms of discoursal, lexical, phonological and syntactic features. As a result of this phenomenon, Graddol (2006: 11) argues, “[English is no longer] English as we have known it, and have taught it in the past as a foreign language” but “a new phenomenon” known as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Due to the existence of multiple varieties of English and the relatively recent notion of ELF, several questions in the English Language Teaching (ELT) community have been raised, namely: 1. Which variety should be the model used, and 2. How should other varieties be handled in the classroom? The most obvious answer for nearly all teachers is Standard English, in particular one of the two most celebrated varieties, Standard British English (especially in the case of Europe) or General American English. Standard English as a superposed variety implies stability, which is an especially attractive feature for a language variety that is to be used as a model with pedagogical intentions. However, the ideal of a standard fixed variety does not exist in reality, subsisting only in grammar books with prescriptive rules. In real use, language changes in time and is inherently unstable. This innovative aspect of language

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is a natural process that comes into play not only when it is used in new cultural settings, but also when its users need to develop ways to discuss recent findings, especially when taking into account pioneering technologies, for example. Instead of focusing on achieving a “static standard variety”, characteristic of foreign language teaching approaches, including English as a foreign language (EFL), attention should be given to how the language has been appropriated at a global level, in addition to how native speaker rules should be rethought as references. As Widdowson (2003) claims, rather than centering foreign language teaching on specific details and goals, it is more relevant to develop skills that will contribute to subsequent learning when using a language that is especially employed at an international level: I have argued that setting objectives for learners to achieve must take into account the way the language has been appropriated internationally as a means of communication, and that this should lead us to think again about defining such objectives in reference to nativespeaker norms. I have suggested that rather than seeking to specify goals in terms of projected needs, which for the most part are highly unpredictable, it would be preferable and more practicable, to focus on the development of a more general capability which would serve as an investment for subsequent learning. (Widdowson 2003: 117)

Bearing in mind these current issues, this chapter begins with a description of how ELT has traditionally taken on a foreign language approach in the “expanding circle” (Kachru 1985) and the implications of trying to achieve a native speaker command of the language, especially considering the counter-productiveness of such goals and what Gnutzmann (1999) refers to as the “inferiority complex”. Afterwards, ELF is taken into account as a new pedagogical alternative, despite the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001) continuing to favor native speaker norms as models when learning an additional language within the European context. To conclude, a case study on pre-service teacher trainees in Portugal is presented, focusing particularly on their attitudes towards teaching language skills and culture. It is only by studying how pre-service teacher training courses are structured, as well as their contribution to trainees’ actions and attitudes, that suggestions can be put forth to improve training courses and pre-service teachers’ awareness and perceptions of the transformations English is going through.

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2 Reflections on the “F” in EFL and ELF EFL as a pedagogic subject is still typically learned in schools, where local school authorities and/ or teachers consider the English native speaker as the aim to be achieved, and where the native speaker culture is also encompassed. In view of this, the “F” in EFL may be construed as those who use the language as “foreigners”, as outsiders who wish to belong to a target community they will never entirely be an integrated part of. Having the native speaker model as the ultimate goal therefore generally contributes to a sense of frustration in learners’ (but which may also be applied to some teachers’) inability to “mimic” a language that is not their own, and which may consequently lead to an “inferiority complex” (Gnutzmann 1999: 160). While in the past this was the model traditionally implemented by ELT teachers, nowadays, native speaker competence is considered by many an unrealistic and even counterproductive goal for non-native language learners. Furthermore, it is believed that non-native teachers actually have a larger advantage when compared to their native colleagues, especially regarding the culture shared with their students as well as their common difficulties when learning English, namely, false friends, syntax or vocabulary, among other issues (see Medgyes 1994 for a comprehensive analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of both native and non-native teachers). Contrary to EFL, the “F” in ELF is much more inclusive as a lingua “franca” that embraces “any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option” (Seidlhofer 2011b: 7). On the VOICE Corpus website, it is also mentioned how ELF is a viable path to communicate effectively in English, when it refers to how “ELF is currently the most common use of English world-wide. Millions of speakers from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds use ELF on a daily basis, routinely and successfully, in their professional, academic and personal lives.” The distinction between EFL and ELF is summarized quite efficiently in Gnutzmann (1999: 162–163), where it is argued that the essential paradigms between both perspectives may guide ELT practitioners in terms of communication, culture and models. Much more recently, Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey (2011) also review the differences between ELF and EFL in terms of paradigms, perspectives, metaphor, and code-mixing and code-switching. In addition to this, they explore the implications of ELF research for an ELF-oriented English language teaching approach, as well as the role attitudes in relation to ELF play in encouraging and/ or discouraging ELF-oriented teaching and ELF use outside of school. It may then be concluded that the process of teaching and learning an international language like English is based on a different set of assumptions when

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compared to teaching other second or foreign languages. The main issues to consider are: 1) to challenge the appropriateness of the native speaker model, in order to recognize the linguistic and rhetorical variations in classrooms where English is used as an international language, 2) to reconsider the “inner circle” as no longer providing the only adequate cultural content in language teaching and the need to include materials from one’s own source culture as well as other international cultures, and 3) to critically analyze the cultural content and reflect on one’s own culture in relation to that of others as a crucial exercise. Despite recognizing the importance of taking on an ELF approach in ELT, national and European policies have not quite gone hand in hand with what has been discussed academically in Applied Linguistics. At a European level, for instance, the essential goal of the CEFR¹ is basically for language experts to reflect on their practices so as to situate and co-ordinate their efforts, in order to certify that they meet learners’ real language needs. However, these “real needs” are construed according to native speaker norms, in which the notion of “intelligibility” is by and large interpreted as being intelligible to native speakers, as well as being able to understand them in turn. This is clearly visible in the several descriptors available in the CEFR, in which, for instance, in an informal conversation (among friends) at a B2 level, it is believed that the user “(…) may find it difficult to participate effectively in discussion with several native speakers who do not modify their language in any way” (Council of Europe 2001: 77). Regarding sociolinguistic appropriateness in specific, it can also be read in the following levels: Level B2  – (…) Can sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritating them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker. (…) Level C2 – (…) Appreciates fully the sociolinguistic and sociocultural implications of language used by native speakers and can react accordingly. (Council of Europe 2001: 122)

Emphasis on obtaining native speaker proficiency is here distinctly evident; as it is believed that native speaker linguistic features do not hinder communication

1 Developed in 2001, the Common European Framework presents a common basis in Europe for the elaboration of language syllabuses, curriculum guidelines, examinations, textbooks, among other aspects. Furthermore, it is also known for how it “describes in a comprehensive way what language learners have to learn to do in order to use a language for communication and what knowledge and skills they have to develop so as to be able to act effectively.” (Council of Europe 2001: 1)

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in interactions taking place in the “natural” environment where the language is spoken. Yet, when taking into consideration the global role of English nowadays (it is a well-known fact that most communicative situations take place between interlocutors who have learned English as an additional, international language), it is legitimate to question whether or not it is logical to demand these aims of learners. Being it the lingua franca of our current society, both at a European and global level, should the CEFR not contemplate other descriptors for the English language? Seidlhofer (2011b) pays particular attention to this issue, namely to the difference between other modern foreign languages and English, especially because of their distinctive socio-economic functions. As she puts it, the CEFR fails to acknowledge the role of English as a medium for intercultural interactions, which in realistic terms is nowadays its most common role: The CEF’s lack of differentiation between ‘modern foreign languages’ on the one hand and ‘English’ on the other is puzzling, as the socio-economic roles of these two categories of languages are so obviously different that the objectives for learning cannot be the same. (…) ‘English’ can be studied like other foreign languages such as Italian or Japanese, but for most current learners and users of the language, the role of the language as a medium of intercultural communication, its function as a (global) lingua franca, will be the more relevant one. (Seidlhofer 2011b: 185)

The CEFR, along with traditional approaches to foreign language learning/ teaching, is then essentially worried not with acquisition of the language, but with levels of attainment, its main issue of concern. Rather than focusing on the ends, the main issue to deal with is the means; so as to comprehend the learning process speakers go through in order to achieve their desired goals. As Widdowson (2009) mentions: The essential problem with the linguistic perspective that we have been considering is that it focuses entirely on ends rather than means, and relates to the foreign language subject only in respect to what is taken to be the eventual goal of learning, and not to the learning process that must be followed to get there. (Widdowson 2009: 210)

Bearing in mind what has already been discussed  – the importance of raising awareness to the status of English as a lingua franca, recognizing the magnitude of communicative situations taking place between non-native speakers, as well as the importance of understanding the learning process in itself – there seems to be one place where all these issues can and should be discussed and reflected upon: pre-service teacher training programs at universities. The reason for this

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lies on the fact that it is at universities that pre-service teachers come into contact with both more academic issues in their courses, as well as with practical inclassroom skills at schools; thus, these seem to be the places where change may be implemented, firstly with language teachers, and then with their students. It is only by doing so that trainees can truly grasp the nature of language and its use in order for them to become well-informed and autonomous language educators.

3 Case study: pre-service teacher training programs in Portugal Given that pre-service teacher training programs seem to be the essential link between the academic and practical fields, these programs and the way they shape future English language teachers were here both taken into consideration. It is important to realize and understand how teacher trainees’ opinions evolve throughout their course, so as to afterwards identify whether or not the course syllabi have contributed to any variations in what concerns ELT issues. This study was carried out during the 2011/2012 school year at four public Portuguese universities with a Master’s program in pre-service English language teacher training². With the help of the several course directors, an online questionnaire was sent out to two distinctive groups on two separate occasions: at the beginning of the school year to a group of first year teacher trainees, and at the end of the school year to a group of second year trainees³. Among other issues, teacher trainees were asked to 1) assess their own language skills and the variety of English they think they use, and 2) to evaluate the importance of what should be taught regarding culture, as well as listening, reading, speaking and writing skills.

2 This case study is part of an ongoing PhD project, which in its first phase took into consideration 48 teacher trainees enrolled in the English component of the teaching MA programs at four public universities offering this course that academic year – University of Lisbon, University of Coimbra, University of Porto and the New University of Lisbon 3 In Portugal, teacher training courses are MA programs organized into four semesters. Programs are structured in a way so that students are prepared to teach English plus another foreign language, namely French, Spanish or German. In addition, the MA programs at universities prepare future language educators to teach in lower secondary schools – 3rd cycle – (7th grade to 9th grade) and in upper secondary schools (10th to 12th grade).

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3.1 Trainees’ evaluation of their language skills Regarding the four language skills, listening, reading, speaking and writing, over 70% of trainees evaluated their language level as C1 and C2. It is noteworthy though that the percentage of C1/ C2 levels is higher when referring to a more passive use of the language – especially with reading (100% of trainees in both groups rated themselves at a C2 level), but also with listening (96% of first year trainees and 91% of second year trainees responded C1/ C2). 1st year trainees

2nd year trainees

Figure 1: Trainees’ evaluation of their language skills

As for active language skills (speaking and writing), trainees ranked their proficiency considerably lower, revealing difficulties especially in oral communication with roughly half of the respondents rating their skills as C2, while on the opposite side of the scale, 4% deemed their speaking ability at a B1 level (the only skill in which such a low level was chosen). If knowing how to communicate orally is nowadays considered an essential skill in English language use, the lower one ranks their speaking skills, the likelier it is for them to feel apprehensive when communicating in English, even when in the classroom. This issue may inevitably lead to a sense of frustration, reestablishing once more what Gnutzmann (1999) refers to as the “inferiority complex”; instead of focusing on raising intercultural awareness and developing communication skills, in-classroom activities may take on more textbook oriented exercises, where guidelines of standardized language patterns are followed, with particular emphasis on grammar.

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3.2 Variety of English used When trainees were questioned about the variety of English they believe they use, the majority considered their English to be a mixture of British and American English (52% of first year trainees and 48% of second year trainees), followed by British English, then American English, and only afterwards did they judge the variety they use as a mixture of British and American English with traces of the Portuguese language (12% of first year trainees and 13% of second year trainees). Only a relatively small percentage of respondents acknowledged traces of their mother tongue transposed on to the English they use; being the British and American standards the essential targets aimed at by trainees, future language educators and models for their students. Table 1: Variety of English used

Mixture of British and American English British English or similar American English or similar Mixture of British and American English with traces of Portuguese

1st year

2nd year

52% 20% 16% 12%

48% 26% 13% 13%

Over the years, many non-native speakers in the ELT industry have held the opinion that desirable English is that variety used by native speakers of the language. This belief is now related to a lack in confidence, as both non-native teachers and students may, on the one hand, feel intimidated by native speakers, but on the other, they may also wish to approximate to the norms (Kramsch 1993). Given the complexity and sensitivity of this situation, this is an essential issue that should be touched upon in teacher training programs, especially since pronunciation continues to be regarded “as the area of greatest prejudice and preconception, and the one most resistant to change on all sides” (Jenkins 2000: 4).

3.3 Teaching culture On the subject of culture, respondents were asked to rank from first to sixth place the importance of which cultures ought to be taught in English classes. The two most chosen options distinctly demonstrate the many years in which EFL lessons have been centered on major “inner-circle” cultures  – in first place, the British culture and in second, the American culture. Worth noting

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though, is that second year trainees gave slightly less importance to the British culture when compared to first year trainees, even though both ranked it in first place (70% and 80% respectively). In third place, both groups believed cultures from other “inner-circle” countries (e.g. Australia and Canada) should be taught (40% of first year trainees and 48% of second year trainees), followed only afterwards by the students’ own culture (e.g. in this case, the Portuguese culture) (32% of first year trainees and 22% of second year trainees). It is an interesting and significant development that both groups recognized the importance of their country’s own culture over the importance of other L2 cultures (e.g. India and Singapore), which was ranked in fifth place (48% of first year trainees and 57% of second year trainees). Finally, the least essential cultural aspect considered was other worldwide cultures (e.g. Brazil, China, Germany) (60% of first year trainees and 57% of second year trainees).

Table 2: Cultures ranked according to importance in ELT

1st British culture 2nd American culture 3rd Cultures from other English-speaking countries (e.g. Australia, Canada, etc.) 4th Students’ own culture 5th Cultures from L2 countries (e.g. India, Singapore, etc.) 6th Other worldwide cultures (e.g. Brazil, China, Germany, etc.)

1st year

2nd year

80% 60% 40%

70% 65% 48%

32% 48% 60%

22% 57% 57%

Even though languages are intertwined with their cultural pasts, the idea that English is connected to specific national English-speaking cultures can/ should no longer be perpetuated (Seidlhofer 2011a). The impact today’s highly interactive and global community has on the language contributes to a different kind of use in lingua franca interactions when compared to communication between native speakers. Non-native speakers are influencing the English language and possibly even creating their own ELF cultures; as Hynninen argues, “The culture associated with ELF is not a national one, but rather something that people with various cultural backgrounds construct in the encounter” (Hynninen 2006: 10–11). In this sense, it seems imperative that teachers/ students learn how to adopt a perspective that conveys their own identity and culture efficiently, in addition to also being able to understand, negotiate and respect other world cultures in diverse intercultural situations.

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3.4 Teaching language skills When teaching a foreign language, several approaches may be taken so as to achieve the ultimate goal  – which can be to pass a course, an exam, or to go study or live abroad. However, when learning a language with the dimensions of English, students’ aims within the same classroom may vary widely – needless to say, they may never leave their own country, for instance, and have to use English on a daily basis for professional or academic purposes. For this very reason, it seems that the time has come to reconsider what are the essential objectives to expect from students when teaching “active” language skills, be it writing or speaking, and “passive” skills, listening or reading. In the questionnaire given to trainees, several options were presented concerning each of the language skills separately. Trainees were asked, on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 (ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”), to measure whether or not they agreed with each of the given statements. Focusing first on writing skills, in both groups there was a preference to favor British Standard English over American Standard English. In first year trainees’ responses, 28% “strongly agreed” with British English, compared to only 8% who favored American English. The same goes for second year trainees, 30% preferred British English, while only 13% selected American English. It is worth noting that, when comparing first and second year trainees’ responses, the percentage of those who “disagreed” with British and American English standards increased towards the end of the course (British English increased from 12% to 17%, and American English from 20% to 26%), which may indicate that throughout their MA studies, trainees became more aware of the importance of other central issues. For instance, when regarding writing “without grammar mistakes, even if American and British varieties are used interchangeably”, the proportion of those who “strongly agreed” rose, 36% for first year trainees, and 39% for second year trainees. The same occurs for being a “proficient writer (some mistakes are made, but communication is effective)”, which is the option where the difference between first and second year responses is the largest, 44% “strongly agreed” at the beginning of the course, compared to a remarkable 70% at the end of the course. Finally, the statement “learn to write appropriately according to the context of communication (genre/register)” is the one that received the most consensus from both groups with more than half of the trainees in the two groups “strongly agreeing” that this is essentially the most vital aspect when teaching writing skills (56% in their first year and 74% in their second year).

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Figure 2: Writing skills – percentages of trainees who “strongly agree”

From the results obtained, there seems to be an overall understanding of the importance of conveying written messages efficiently according to genre/register, even if that means not following or being consistent with the accepted standard norms. In other words, this particular group of trainees tended to favor function over form when it came to teaching writing skills. As for speaking skills, respondents were given statements that ranged from issues like native speakers’ accents to developing communicative strategies. For instance, when questioned on whether the most important aspect to focus on is “achieving a native speaker accent or similar”, opinions differed between respondents. Nearly half of first year trainees (48%) “strongly agreed/agreed” with the statement, compared to 61% of second year trainees; however, the number of those who “disagreed/strongly disagreed” is also significant (36% for the first group, and 34% for the second). These responses display once more the delicate issue of pronunciation/accent, and with it also identity, the desire that most users have in obtaining a native speaker-likeness. In the second statement, “being a proficient speaker, even with a Portuguese accent”, the majority of second year trainees considered that, although speakers may have traces of their own mother tongue when they speak English, it does not prevent them from being proficient speakers of the language (92% “strongly agreed/agreed” with the statement, compared to 76% of those at the beginning of the course). The notion of expecting students to achieve native speaker mastery of another language in terms of accent decreased after trainees had in classroom experience, proving how unrealistic this idea is, especially when the essential aim is to get students to communicate and use the language.

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Trainees continued to share this same awareness, when taking into account the status of “being a proficient speaker, even if some mistakes (grammar or pronunciation) are made, but with no hindrance in communication”. There was likewise an increase from 88% in the first year that “strongly agreed/agreed” to 96% in the second year. Given the particular emphasis placed on achieving effective communication, it is only natural that trainees also deemed “developing communicative strategies (e.g. repetition, paraphrasing) to communicate effectively in a wide number of situations” as an imperative part of teaching speaking skills; so, unsurprisingly, over 90% of respondents in both groups “strongly agreed/agreed” with the statement. Similarly, when asked to reflect on the statement “learn how to use language appropriately according to the situations (formal/informal)”, all first year trainees “strongly agreed/agreed”, along with 96% of second year trainees. Once more, this group of teacher trainees indicated a general tendency to favor function over form, giving relative significance to using language accordingly as well as developing accommodation strategies and negotiation of meaning, depending on the situation and the interlocutors in question.

Figure 3: Speaking skills – percentages of trainees who “strongly agree/ agree”

Lastly, trainees were inquired about both passive language skills – listening and reading – in which particular attention was given to the type of teaching materials used to develop these skills (e.g. written texts, audio files and films/documentaries). Once again, preference was primarily manifested in favor of British produced materials, followed then by those developed in the United States. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the tendency for British and American based materials decreased in second year trainees, especially regarding those produced in Britain, which fell by 15%, from 80% to 65%.

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When teacher trainees were questioned about materials produced elsewhere, those strongly in favor of this option never surpassed the 35% mark, which confirms the keen dependency on native produced materials. Although percentages were low for both groups, the number of second year trainees who chose these resources surpassed those attending the first year of the different MA programs, which may indicate their own experience in producing materials for classes, as well as a relative understanding of the importance of achieving effective communication, and the status of English as a lingua franca. The last statement given, “teaching materials produced in non-English speaking countries (e.g. Portugal),” deserves here particular attention, as only 8% of first year and 13% of second year respondents surprisingly “strongly agreed”, followed by 40% and 48% respectively who “agreed”; an unexpectedly 40% (first year) and 35% (second year) who were “undecided”, and lastly, 12% (first year) and 4% (second year) who “disagreed” with the statement. Contrary to what might have been expected, both groups seemed to share riven opinions on materials produced in other non-English speaking countries, which also included resources collated and developed in their own country. This leads to an important question: If the majority of interactions in English take place among non-native speakers, should professional ELT practitioners from other nations not be able to better prepare resources that reflect their own learners’ needs and desires?

Figure 4: Listening and reading skills – percentages of trainees who “strongly agree”

After analyzing this particular group of trainees’ opinions in different areas, it can perhaps be stated that in Portugal there is still a tendency for teachers to be influenced by native speaker models. This is particularly the case when referring to the Anglo-American culture as the central point of reference, as similarly

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happens with language, especially regarding ELT resources aimed at listening and reading skills. Trainees seemed to display, however, a better understanding of function over form in speaking and writing, which may suggest the awareness of their limitations in language production; hence, giving special attention to communication and context of situation. Nevertheless, when considering listening and reading, native speaker materials were preferred over others created elsewhere, possibly due to these being the ultimate models they actually wish to emulate, and possibly also due to a certain skepticism that exists towards other users of English. From the answers obtained in this initial study, it can be suggested that much still needs to be done for an ELF approach to take on a more visible role in preservice teacher education in Portugal, contributing not only to future teachers’ perspectives on language use, but also on language teaching, be it language per se or culture.

4 Final remarks Many non-native English-speaking teachers remain attached to old ideals and hierarchies, by establishing the native speaker as a model and a symbol of perfection in language use (Llurda 2009), mainly due to two reasons: 1) governmental policies imposed on them (as it has already been discussed regarding the CEFR in Europe) and 2) the rich abundance of source materials made available, both published and available online. In Portugal, for instance, even though ELT syllabi for Basic and Secondary Education focus on a wide range of topics (e.g. the media, society, technology, consumerism, etc.), the list of resources provided for teachers is essentially constituted by native speaker materials, be it grammar books, websites, encyclopedias, films or books developed in the United Kingdom or the United States. Furthermore, it is only in the 12th grade, when English is an elective for students in the humanities area that brief reference is made to the existence of other Englishes, as well as to cultures from other English-speaking countries (being this second component the one most focused on). As pre-service teacher education combines more academic perspectives with practical experience, these seem to be the ideal places where dialog may be promoted not only between trainees, practicum supervisors and university professors, but also between the Ministries of Education and those locally in charge of language planning. Some suggestions that may be proposed for pre-service teacher training programs include paying attention to the education of teachers, and not only to their training, so that they could understand “the nature of

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language and its use that underpins their pedagogic practices and that would enhance their status as well informed and self-reliant professionals” (Seidlhofer 2011b: 204). By doing so, such a framework would favor process over form, awareness over certainty, and consider knowledge of language and knowledge about language as equally imperative. Seidlhofer (2011b) puts forth several suggestions at both a macro-level and micro-level, which may contribute to enriching teacher education programs. For example, at a macro-level she refers to more theoretical issues, such as language awareness, investigation on communication strategies, intercultural communication and language variation. At a micro-level, she believes programs can cultivate an understanding in teachers of how the language they are studying, and will be teaching, can be incorporated into a broader framework of communication. Therefore, instead of giving importance to achieving proficiency in language forms, it is preferable to develop an awareness of the nature of language itself and its creative potential. At Dortmund University in Germany, this type of course has already been implemented in teacher education program(s) (Pitzl 2012). The seminar course designed/ organized by Pitzl aimed at: familiarizing students with core concepts (such as ENL/ ESL/ EFL, World Englishes, ELF, language variation, variety); presenting descriptive ELF findings and relating them to local ELT contexts; raising awareness of what an “ELF perspective” might mean for ELT; having students experiment with different cooperative teaching methods; as well as triggering reflective processes (namely, on native speaker models in ELT, their own experiences, their own ideals, standards, discrepancies, among other issues). The course feedback was also rewarding as many trainees came to recognize the importance of mutual intelligibility over correctness, of teaching negotiation and communication strategies, and of focusing on different cultures. This is simply only one example that it is possible to have ELF centered seminar courses within ELT training programs. In addition to this example, in the United Kingdom this type of an approach is already being implemented in many MA programs in ELT and in Applied Linguistics. At Southampton University, for instance, there is even a recent MA program in Global Englishes, which demonstrates the current changing climate regarding how English is perceived. Furthermore, it has also been well established that the English presented in dictionaries, grammars and textbooks, generally Standard British or American English, represents for most ELT practitioners commonly accepted guidelines and certainties about what to teach. To question the authority of these materials without another viable substitute only contributes to teachers’ anxiety; however, when taking on an ELF perspective what counts is not the language content per

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se, but how to make the most of it in the learning process. As Seidlhofer (2011b: 201) puts it, “what is crucial (…) is not what teaching materials are used but how they are used”. The textbooks available do not therefore determine the teaching of language, because if that were to be the case, adapting to changing circumstances would be impossible. Matsuda (2012), for instance, is a recent example of adapting current World Englishes and ELF use to ELT classrooms at both a secondary and university level. In Matsuda, a range of different English as an International Language programs, courses and pedagogical ideas from around the world are put forth, proving that change is actually possible. Bearing in mind what has already been implemented and published elsewhere, in the particular case of the Portuguese scenario, the notion ELF can and should also be introduced into MA pre-service teacher training programs. However, given that trainees in general already come with preconceived ideas of what ELT is and of what it consists in, perhaps the most sensible approach at an initial phase would be to take on a transformative framework (Sifakis 2009), similar to what Pitzl (2012) developed at Dortmund University. Given that a sole seminar course dedicated to ELF studies would imply structural changes in Portuguese university programs, one possibility would be to integrate a module dedicated to this issue within another seminar of their English studies component (e.g. English didactics or English language, when possible). The essential aim of this module would be for these future language practitioners to become aware of the implications of ELF in communication and pedagogy, as well as to confront and change their opinions by providing them with hands-on information and getting them to (a) realize and critically consider their suppositions, (b) explore new terrains by testing new roles, (c) develop a course of action, (d) obtain the knowledge and skills for executing that plan, (e) build self-confidence in their new roles and (f) become reintegrated on the basis of the conditions dictated by their new perspective (Sifakis 2009: 347). In other words, trainees would firstly become familiar with what ELF is by means of wellestablished texts in the field, as well as reflect on and develop a critical awareness towards issues like intercultural competence, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, World Englishes, among other topics. Afterwards, the aim would be to explore the correlation between ELF and language pedagogy, as an alternative to traditional foreign language approaches, followed then by a more practical approach in which trainees could actually develop and experiment with different teaching methods within the classroom and with their colleagues. It is only by testing the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the course that trainees can build the self-confidence necessary to learn how to integrate new alternative pedagogical approaches. Also intimately linked with this issue is the importance of fostering the development of author-based materials centered on learners’ needs, and

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which reflect the global and diverse use of English; contrary to the reality of many published materials centered on native speaker norms and realities. To conclude, change is obviously urgent at several levels  – within ELT in general but also within pre-service teacher training programs in specific, at both a European and national level. Bearing this in mind, in order for new policies to be implemented and a greater awareness to be developed in what concerns ELF in the field of education, Seidlhofer (2011b: 201) argues, change “always has to start somewhere (…) the obvious place to start is in language teacher education”.

References Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 1999. Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Edwards, Corony & Charles Owen. 2005. The impact on teachers of language variation as a course component. In Nat Bartels (ed.), Applied linguistics and language teacher education, 43–58. Boston: Springer. Council of Europe. 2001. Common European framework of reference for languages. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_en.pdf (accessed 14 January 2013). English language program: 3rd ciclo (continuation level), FLI. 1995. Lisbon: Ministry of Education. English language program: years 10, 11 and 12 (continuation level). 2003. Lisbon: Ministry of Education. Gnutzmann, Claus (ed.). 1999. Teaching and learning English as a global language: Native and non-native perspectives. Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag. Graddol, David. 2006. English next. London: The British Council. http://www.britishcouncil.org/ learning-research-english-next.pdf (accessed 20 May 2007). Hülmbauer, Cornelia, Heike Böhringer, & Barbara Seidlhofer. 2008. Introducing English as a lingua franca (ELF): Precursor and partner in intercultural communication. Synergies Europe 3. 25–36. Hynninen, Nina. 2006. Cultural discourses in CEF: How do they relate to ELF? Helsinki: University of Helsinki Pro Gradu thesis. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The phonology of English as an international language: New models, new norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Jennifer, Alessia Cogo & Martin Dewey. 2011. Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language teaching 44 (3). 281–315. Kachru, Braj. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In Randolph Quirk & Henry G. Widdowson (eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kramsch, Claire. 1993. Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Llurda, Enric. (ed.) 2005. Non-native language teachers: perceptions, challenges and contributions to the profession. New York: Springer. Llurda, Enric. 2009. Attitudes towards English as an international language: The pervasiveness of native models among L2 users and teachers. In Farzad Sharifan (ed.), English as an international language: perspectives and pedagogical issues, 119–134. Clevedon: Multingual Matters. Matsuda, Aya. 2012. Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Medgyes, Péter. 1994. The non-native teacher. London: Macmillan. Pitzl, Marie-Luise. 2012. Preparing teachers for an ELF future: What we CAN tell them. Paper presented at the 5th International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca, Boğaziçi University, 24–26 May. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011a. Conceptualizing ‘English’ for a multilingual Europe. In Annick De Houwer & Antje Wilton (eds.), English in Europe today, 133–146. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011b. Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sifakis, Nicos. 2009. Teacher education in the post-modern era: introducing a transformative dimension in the teaching of English as a lingua franca, In Selected papers from the 18th ISTAL, 345–353. Thessaloniki: Monochromia Publishing. VOICE corpus website. www.univie.ac.at/voice (accessed 15 June 2014). Widdowson, Henry G. 2003. Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, Henry G. 2009. The linguistic perspective. In Karlfried Knapp & Barbara Seidlhofer (eds.), Handbook of foreign language communication and learning, 193–218. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Martin Dewey

Chapter 7  Time to wake up some dogs! Shifting the culture of language in ELT 1 Introduction The prevailing principles and practices of English language teaching (ELT) remain underpinned by firm adherence to what can best be described as a ‘norm-centred’ perspective on pedagogy. This is an orientation to language in which competence and proficiency are construed in terms of language learners’ ‘mastery’ of standard NSE (native-speaker English) norms. It is predominantly a perspective that teachers are exposed to and trained to adopt early on in their professional lives. Initial teacher preparation courses and programmes of in-service teacher development widely continue to foster an approach that regards language as autonomous and monolithic (see Dewey 2012 for further discussion). However, this way of thinking about language and communication is largely in conflict with the sociolinguistic realities of most English language learning, teaching and using contexts. In this article, I aim to show to what extent the current conceptualization of and pedagogic orientation towards language become contested when we take account of ELF. As a relatively new paradigm, ELF has already compiled a considerable body of research that provides very detailed accounts of the many transient properties of lingua franca interaction. In particular, much of this work has highlighted the adaptive moves and pragmatic strategies that speakers engage in (see e.g. any number of chapters in Archibald, Cogo & Jenkins 2011, or Mauranen & Ranta 2009). As a result of the empirical findings of ELF researchers we have come to understand that ELF interaction involves a very different kind of English than that typically described in ELT materials and teaching manuals. Continued attachment to NSE norms in both of these, however, allows the status quo to be maintained, and despite overwhelming empirical evidence that this might not be the most suitable way to approach language in second language education. The most durable perception of English in the ELT profession seems to be that “we should not wake up any dogs” (see Pitzl 2009 for discussion of this example of metaphor in ELF). In other words, languages have always been taught in relation to a NS target, so why unsettle matters now by implementing change? But this default position has always been based on the assumption that the principal, if not only, reason to learn an additional language is to communicate with its NSs. The fact that the globalization of English has made this increasingly unlikely

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means though that we must rethink established convention. While the assumption about NS normativity has tended to work throughout the history of language teaching, in the case of English at least this no longer holds the same value. In order to examine the current conceptualization of language in language learning and teaching I will discuss recent research into teachers’ beliefs about and responses to ELF. My findings suggest that uptake of ELF in pedagogy has so far been relatively minimal. This seems to be for several reasons: first, ELF represents a significant challenge to the abiding culture of language and communication currently enshrined in practice; second, the ideology upholding this practice makes it difficult for teachers to imagine an alternative view. Critically addressing the NS-based normative approach to language in the classroom requires considerable intervention. In the following discussion, I consider the conceptual and cultural shift required if ELF is to be more fully introduced in teacher education, reporting on an ongoing project aimed at refocusing the concerns of teachers by exploring the advantages of moving beyond a traditional norm-focused orientation. My discussion draws on findings gathered from studies carried out with teachers actively involved in programmes of teacher development. I discuss, in particular, how teachers can be shown both the limitations of English when conceived as a fixed set of language forms, and by contrast, the rich communicative potential of the language when it is untethered from these constraints and is approached from an ELF perspective.

2 Current practices in ELT Orientations to language in ELT are strongly influenced by popular beliefs and perceptions, or what might be described as ‘folk’ theories of language. Niedzielski and Preston’s (2003) account of folk linguistic methods in language attitude research reveals how people’s evaluations of language varieties predominantly orient towards notions of correctness. This is such a powerful and pervasive ideology that we have learned/are socialized into thinking that standard dialects are not dialects at all, but rather the language itself – not an abstraction or idealization, but ‘real’ or ‘proper’ language. As Jenkins (2007) points out in her study of attitude and identity in ELF, language teachers can in many respects be regarded as non-specialists in relation to linguistic theory, and thus a consideration of folk linguistics is entirely compatible with a discussion of teacher beliefs about language. We do not need to look very far before we find evidence of popular perceptions of language in teaching materials and resources. Even only a fairly cursory analysis of popular textbooks currently produced by major UK based publish-

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ers, for example, reveals a continuing preoccupation with language as a codified set of norms. These are always exclusively the norms of a limited number of NS standard Englishes, most prevalently British or American English. The existing textbook series for adult learners produced by three of the largest, most influential publishers of ELT materials in the UK are as follows: English Unlimited (Cambridge University Press), Global (Macmillan), and Speakout (Pearson). In each of these, the language syllabus is predominantly based on ENL norms. At each level (there are typically six levels for ‘comprehensive’ textbook series, ranging from beginner to advanced) the textbook syllabus has essentially changed very little when compared to much earlier titles released by the same publishers. What has changed to reflect current developments in English language use is the way contemporary materials are marketed, and to some extent the way they are designed. The design differences seem primarily related to more superficial aspects, such as use of graphics and page layout, rather than more substantive matters such as language content. It appears that a growing number of textbooks are specifically promoted as courses that aim to prepare language learners to communicate in English as an international/global language, as can clearly be inferred from the title of the Macmillan book, Global. Many of the newer textbooks are marketed on the basis of claims such as the following: Informationrich, filled with intellectually-engaging content, Global enables students to learn through English and about English in its most international form (http://www. macmillanenglish.com/Courses/Global/). Or in the case of English Unlimited: Centred on purposeful, real-life objectives, English Unlimited prepares learners to use English for global communication (http://www.cambridge.org/gb/ elt/catalogue/subject/project/item5629547/EnglishUnlimited/?site_locale=en_ GB¤tSubjectID=382378). Yet even in cases where textbooks make explicit claims to this effect, the language model being promoted continues to be British and/or American English. As soon as we look beyond the marketing discourse, it becomes apparent just how little the language syllabus itself has in fact been modified when compared to more ‘traditional’ materials. In particular, the focus is on discrete items as conventionally determined in ELT syllabuses. In contemporary textbooks there still appears to be no provision made anywhere for either raising awareness of or helping to promote accommodation skills. Far from being the most appropriate models of language use in ELF settings, it can often be the NSs who may need to learn how to adjust their speech to be better able to communicate. Yet, in existing teaching resources, being a NS of English is predominantly seen as an inherent virtue. The approach taken in English Unlimited reinforces this notion. Although the teacher’s pack makes clear that NNSs are included in the syllabus, and even though NNSE (non-native speaker English) is described as ‘authentic’, which the

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authors explain is ‘the kind of language which is really used by native speakers and proficient nonnative speakers of English in everyday situations’ (2011: 5), this apparent shift away from NS exclusivity is not substantiated in practice. As can be seen from the number of contributions in Tomlinson (2011) that make reference to language corpora, materials development in ELT has become increasingly corpus based. In the case of English Unlimited, the authors explain that the basis of decisions about what counts as useful language to include in the syllabus, and thus their notion of ‘authenticity’, is The Cambridge English Corpus (for details see http://www.cambridge.org/gb/elt/catalogue/subject/item2701617/ Cambridge-EnglishCorpus/?site_ locale =en_GB). The value of drawing on this particular corpus for a syllabus aimed at enabling learners to develop communicative proficiency in international settings is deeply suspect when considered from an ELF perspective. First, the Corpus is predominantly a written one rather than a spoken one (1 billion words and 70 million words respectively), so there is a strong bias towards written language. Second, the written and spoken components of the corpus are both based exclusively on British and American English texts and conversations. Finally, while there is a sub-component of the corpus that includes samples of NNSE, this is relatively small by comparison to the corpus as a whole, and problematically, it is designated as The Cambridge Learner Corpus [my italics]. The purpose of this corpus is to highlight typical ‘errors’ that English language students produce, examples of which are taken from analysis of Cambridge ESOL exam scripts. In addition, this particular teaching resource, like many others currently being produced, draws very extensively on the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), which as Mauranen (2012) observes is heavily biased towards reproducing NS ‘target’ norms. In the CEFR, language competence is primarily defined in relation to NS-like use – the overall reference scales and the descriptors used to characterize different levels of proficiency rely heavily on idealized assumptions about NSE. This is in evidence throughout the CEFR document, as can be seen in the following speaking descriptor for level B2 that appears in the self-assessment grid, ‘I can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible (Council of Europe 2000: 27). The exclusive use of ENL corpora, the extent to which notions of language competence are determined by NS norms, and the tenacity of the deficit view of NNSE are all very difficult to reconcile with the promotional discourse of ELT materials publishers. Important claims are beginning to appear in textbooks and other teaching resources about the relevance of English’s global diffusion and its concomitant diversity, but the implications of adopting an ELF perspective are thus far not being fully realised.

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3 Teacher beliefs about language Taking on board what precisely ELF means for conventional approaches to English language pedagogy requires a seismic cultural shift. Addressing the relevance of ELF to language learning and teaching is far more than a methodological matter. It runs to the heart of current thinking about language in ELT. The orientation to English as a set of prescribed norms is not simply present in teaching materials and ELT-related documentation such as the CEFR, it is prevalent and deep rooted. In this section, I report recent findings of an ongoing study into professional beliefs among language teachers, identifying which aspects of current thinking about language are markedly different from the orientation to language that an ELF perspective would require. The following extracts are illustrative of teachers’ perceptions of knowledge about language. They are selected from a study of two cohorts of experienced English language teachers enrolled on a Master’s (MA) programme in ELT and Applied Linguistics. As an entry requirement for the MA, candidates must have the equivalent of three years’ full-time language teaching experience. The MA programme thus represents a higher professional qualification for teachers wishing to learn more about current developments in ELTrelated research, theory, pedagogy and practice. As a result, all participants in the study are familiar with current debate in applied linguistics research, including ELF and Global Englishes. The extracts consist of written texts provided by teachers in response to a task given in the initial session of a module in teacher education. A central focus of the module concerns the nature of expertise in ELT, which includes consideration of theories and models of teacher education and how these conceptualize the knowledge base of teachers. In other words, teachers are asked to reflect on and discuss what it is teachers need to know in order to develop expertise, including knowledge about language. Extract 1: “Teachers need to know how language works; they need to understand the components of language, the structures, as well as the nuances of the language. They need to know how language can be broken down in order to build it back up again. They need to know how it sounds, how it is used and how it could potentially be misused.” (L1 Eng, 7 yrs experience) (underlining in original)

Extract 2: “Teachers need to know about aspects and features of English, such as tense(s), grammar rules, linguistic features, and sufficient knowledge of vocabulary.” (L2 Eng, 3 yrs experience)

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Extract 3: “Common grammatical knowledge used by native speakers or professional English speakers at least in their daily life situation.” (L2 Eng, 10 yrs experience)

These have been selected as a representative sample of participants’ accounts of language knowledge, and because they are also tellingly emblematic of how language tends to be conceptualized in ELT. The comments describe knowledge about language primarily in relation to its formal (essentially grammatical) properties: that is, in relation to its ‘components’ and ‘structures’ (extract 1), ‘tenses’ and ‘grammar rules’ (extract 2), and the ‘common grammatical knowledge used by native speakers’ (extract 3). In other words, they are strikingly different from characterizations of English emerging in ELF research, which by contrast has tended to highlight the fluidity and adaptability of language use in ELF interactions (see e.g. Cogo and Dewey 2012). These perceptions must originate somewhere. It is likely that the descriptions partly emanate from and/or become reinforced by the materials and resources that teachers encounter during their professional development. The discourse of ELT resources continues to characterize language from what we might describe as a ‘normative’ perspective (see Dewey 2012). In this approach to language, grammar is regarded as a precondition for communication, with mutual intelligibility thought to be dependent on close adherence to predetermined norms. As a result, proficiency is predominantly determined by assessing a speaker’s language use in respect of those norms – with teaching thus disproportionately focused on formal assessment. In other words, teachers learn how to see knowledge about language as a system, with teacher manuals relatively unconcerned with language as a discourse practice. Even when teachers have completed modules in sociolinguistics that address ELF and the variable nature of language in use, which all participants in my study have done, this perception generally continues unabated. The teachers’ impressions of language knowledge are also clearly influenced by an ideology of standardization (see especially Milroy and Milroy 2012 for a critical discussion), which holds that it is beneficial for a society to promote linguistic homogeneity and adopt a single prestige variety (the standard). This in fact underpins the approach to language currently being practiced in the profession, particularly in language teacher education. Despite, for example, reference to ELF and Global Englishes now appearing in the syllabus guidelines of prominent teaching awards such at the Cambridge ESOL CELTA and Delta schemes (respectively Certificate and Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), professional preparation programmes for language teachers continue to foster a norm-based approach.

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Even where ELT professionals claim to be ‘fully in sympathy with the ELF call for tolerance of NNS English’ (Swan 2012: 384), they can still fail to see the relevance of ELF to language pedagogy and can still struggle to imagine an alternative to the promotion of NS norms. According to Swan ‘[w]hatever the realities of ELF use, learners need clear and consistent learning models’, and crucially, ‘where they are given basic information about core elements of the language, this will inevitably be drawn from the common ground of the standard varieties’ (ibid). The inevitability resides only in Swan’s continued attachment to language as autonomous system, a bounded entity characterized by predetermined forms and features. If we move beyond this representation of language, and see it more as a dynamic set of resources that can be adapted to fit functional needs, it becomes entirely possible (in fact necessary) to imagine an alternative. Continued promotion of prescribed norms is neither inevitable nor a natural state of affairs, but it is treated as such in mainstream ELT discourse. The modeling and targeting of standardized ENL varieties only is enshrined in current practice; again, this is especially the case in teacher education. Formal schemes of teacher accreditation, both for pre-service and in-service teaching awards, help maintain and reinforce an institutional culture in which language is viewed prescriptively. Within this cultural practice, language(s) are seen as bounded entities, clearly demarcated from each other and thus enumerable. They tend to be defined as stable systems, with relatively fixed points of reference regarding their grammar, lexis, phonology. And crucially, languages are tied to particular sociocultural contexts of use, in which they are thought to have long historical trajectories that have given rise to long established (largely perceived as immutable) formal properties. This conceptualization of language in teacher education is especially apparent in accounts of teacher knowledge about language. Content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge tend to be characterized in relation to language as ‘system’. This can be seen in the following account of language analysis work that tends to be undertaken in teacher training programmes, which Andrews (2007) describes as, ‘typically inductive data-based “consciousness” raising tasks designed to stimulate participants’ reflections on and insights into the workings of different parts of the language systems, and to encourage them to question predigested facts and their own pre-conceptions about language’ (p. 183, my emphasis). This echoes the teacher descriptions of language knowledge discussed above in that the focus is on language as a system, an apparatus with component parts and structures. What teachers need to learn in their development of content knowledge consists therefore in understanding how these parts fit together to form a whole. Andrews does also make reference to the reflective dimension of current approaches to teacher learning in teacher education: namely, that

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methods are more inductive than deductive, that teachers are encouraged to question preconceived ideas. However, this does not typically involve reflection on the socio-contextual properties of language. Reflection and ideas here relate to the system as it ‘stands’, perceived as autonomous and predetermined. This perception of language is clearly present in the metalanguage used in teacher education, which is characterized by a metaphor of machinery. Language is construed as an operating system, with sub-systems connected together through rules and structures. Given the extent to which this metaphorization occurs in ELT professional discourse, it is hardly surprising that teachers should foreground the structural aspect of language when asked to comment on content knowledge. Teachers encounter this impression of language throughout their careers. Popular perceptions of language thus become not challenged but reinforced – first made explicit during pre-service training courses and then becoming further consolidated during teaching practice as experience leads to evermore normative orientation to language in the classroom. Existing teacher education curricula tend to portray language knowledge in terms of individual surface forms, discrete linguistic items such as 3rd person ‘s’, definite article and so on. The current CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines (UCLES 2012), for example, reflect the predominant view of language awareness in teacher education, that is, knowledge about language is defined in relation to the conventional rules governing Standard English usage, and can be measured (at least in part) by a teacher’s ability to label the component parts that constitute these rules. In addition, in the Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT) – designed as a means by which practitioners may gain accreditation for their ‘teaching knowledge’ at any stage of their careers – assessment of a teacher’s ability to describe language consists largely of tasks in which candidates are asked to label underlined words in short (largely decontextualized) written extracts. While developing such skills is one important aspect of a teacher’s expertise, it is also only part of the story. The approach taken in TKT – as with the orientation to language characteristic of other teaching awards  – represents a limited conceptualization of the content knowledge of language teachers. Yet, this conception is not limited to teacher thinking in ELT. It is also prevalent much more broadly in all manner of educational contexts.

4 Language ideologies in education Taking account of teacher beliefs about language is not simply a matter relevant to ELT. In order to properly understand, let alone attempt to counteract, the influence of Standard language ideology on teachers’ thinking it is also essential that

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we consider how language is oriented to more broadly in education. Treatment of language as an autonomous system is of course not exclusive to ELT. If anything, once we look beyond ELT to examine current conceptualizations of language more generally, this monolithic-ness appears to become even more intensified. The presence of this ideology of standardization in education surfaced in a striking way in a news item widely reported in the media in the UK in February 2013. The news story revealed how the Head teacher of a primary school (for children aged 5–11) in Middlesbrough, a city in the North East of England, wrote a letter to parents of children at the school detailing a list of ‘banned’ regional words and phrases in the school and urging parents to ‘correct’ their children’s use of local pronunciation and local dialect features at home (for the original report of this story see http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/story/2013-02-06/ sacred-heart-primary-middlesbrough-teesside-letter-slang-dialect). Subsequent media reports were mainly supportive of the Head’s actions, with newspapers typically running headlines such as the following, ‘Hooray for the Head who teaches correct English’, which appeared in the Daily Express, a ‘middle-market’, politically right-leaning national newspaper (http://www.express. co.uk/comment/expresscomment/376163/Hooray-for-the-Head-who-teachescorrect-English). In aiming to promote the pupils’ use of Standard English, the school in question is adopting an approach that is in fact counterproductive, and potentially quite damaging. Attempting to ban the use of dialect features not only fails to acknowledge the importance of these language forms in the children’s speech repertoires, it also runs the risk of marginalizing children who use local dialects and non-standard forms. Rather than helping pupils to make academic progress, this reductive approach is more likely to alienate them and harm their chances of doing well in education. There is mounting empirical evidence that reveals how exclusive promotion of standard norms at the expensive of other dialects can be educationally detrimental. Godley, Carpenter and Werner (2007), for example, report a longitudinal study examining classroom grammar practice activities in English lessons in a state-funded US secondary school. In a yearlong ethnographic study, the authors find that English is broadly represented in the education system as a monolithic entity, both in policy discourse and classroom procedures. Godley et  al. conclude that this monolithic approach means that language is treated as autonomous, with language forms seen and presented in isolation, disconnected from meaning, function and contextual use. As a result, all other varieties become devalued and stigmatized, thus giving rise to greater linguistic discrimination of students who do not speak the standard dialect ‘natively’. As Bloome et al. (2005) argue, ‘common-sense’ narratives about standard language and ‘correct’ lan-

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guage use become very persuasive in educational settings. What is perhaps most striking about Godley et al’s research is not just the extent to which language is dealt with normatively, but rather the effect this has on student and teacher beliefs and practices. Our study suggests that what grammar instruction teaches students, both implicitly and explicitly, about the nature of language shapes the literacy learning opportunities provided to students, positions students as expert or deficient language users, and can challenge or promote patterns of societal discrimination based on language. For example, Cindy [the teacher whose classes formed the basis of the study] did not realize until she analyzed the video-taped Daily Language Practice activities that her insistence that students speak Standard English during the Daily Language Practice promoted a view of African American English as incorrect, ungrammatical English (Godley et al. 2007: 124).

In short, the increase in explicit grammar instruction in US schools, as well as the manner in which this is put into practice, positions students who speak a non-standard dialect as deficient language users, further enhancing patterns of wider discrimination. Unwittingly, the teacher herself becomes implicated in this by attempting to follow institutional policies, with the dominant classroom discourse structures reinforcing a notion of language learning as prescriptive, creating a strong impression among students that ‘good’ language use is regulated by rules and authority. This research indicates not only that daily language practice has no effect on language and/or literacy development, but that teaching becomes predominantly norm-fixated and assessment driven: much to the same degree that this has become a feature of ELT (see Dewey 2012). In attempting to follow prescribed curriculum requirements, the teacher, Cindy, reports feeling a loss of professional independence, and being less able to focus on the particular needs and interests of her students. Studies of English language and literacy instruction in mainstream schooling in the UK and US (e.g. Bloome et al. 2005, Godley et al. 2007) are clearly very different educational contexts when compared to ELT classrooms. However, lessons can be learned from work in this area, especially with regard to the pervasiveness and impact of standard language ideology in education. If an ELF perspective on pedagogy is to be more fully adopted then this has to be addressed. We need to develop strategies for producing a more critical pedagogy in teacher education. This would involve much wider inclusion of themes and topics from sociolinguistics in the curriculum, and from much earlier on in a teacher’s professional development – in the UK, relevant subjects only tend to be included on higher level in-service programmes, typically on MA TESOL courses. Greater inclusion of these themes in the curriculum would help raise awareness among ELT professionals of the following: the integral link between language

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and identity; the diverse nature of language in communication; the hierarchical and discriminatory nature of societal responses to non-privileged languages and varieties. This would compare with what Alim (2005) recommends in the context of mainstream education in the US, that educators and sociolinguists work in collaboration to revise pedagogical practices. Alim reviews what scholars have contributed to the educational debate and suggests developing critical language awareness programmes as a means to develop a pedagogy in which students’ language is properly taken into account and the interconnectedness of language with wider sociopolitical and sociohistorical factors. This would further validate home languages and help in facilitating access to Standard English. In the case of ELT, the matter is a question of validating students’ linguistic repertoires, including not only L1 (and Ln in the case of multilingualism) but also the manner in which they use English where this differs from prescribed norms. In Godley et al. (2007), the teacher Cindy’s professional thinking and activities were so embedded in the larger sociopolitical makeup of the surrounding educational culture that she was unaware of the impact her approach to language in the classroom was having on some of her students. This is largely an effect of the ideological nature of orientations to language in education. Adopting an ELF perspective in ELT requires an ideological position too of course – but it is one that accepts and celebrates linguistic diversity. It is essential in teacher education (so that teachers can then have similar discussions with their learners) to raise awareness of the ideological nature of language planning and policy – namely, that we have become so attached to standard varieties for sociopolitical reasons not linguistic or communicative ones. In short, a standard language is a dialect that has been elevated to special status not because of its linguistic properties but because it is spoken by a powerful minority. As Godley et al comment, ‘language ideologies create and uphold systems of power in institutions’ (2007: 103).

5 Conclusions We have come to learn that ELF communicative settings involve a high degree of linguacultural diversity. The strong normative characterization of language in ELT, which regards one or other standard ENL variety (British or American English) as the only valid classroom model, is therefore simply not compatible with this dynamism. It is also clear, however, that this norm-based orientation is resilient, even among teachers who have spent considerable time learning about sociolinguistics on high level programmes of teacher education. This is in part an effect of the pervasiveness of standard language ideology in ELT professional

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discourse, but it is also part of a much wider sociocultural landscape in which language is approached monolithically and prescriptively. In my experience, acceptance of this account of language is not always inevitable among individual teachers, however. There is a dominant, institutional discourse in ELT that does continue to fixate on NS norms as the only viable model. Language teachers are though very often much more receptive when it comes to the question of seeking out alternatives for their own specific teaching contexts. This is in evidence in the following comment from an experienced language teacher when reflecting on what studying for an MA ELT and Applied Linguistics has meant to her professional development. Extract 4: “Sociolinguistics in ELT means considering language as a means of communication that is in constant change, with many variations in the way the English language is present in different speech communities. Keeping this in mind we can make informed decisions on what we present to our students as ‘English language”.

A key value in pursuing a higher-level programme of teacher education is that it allows teachers to become more aware of the ‘cultural’ nature of existing principles and re-examine these in a critical light. Critical reflection enables teachers to develop their individual pedagogies in response to what they encounter through exposure to theory and research. Given the levels of acculturation that teacher training and education can involve, however, this critical reflection may need for many teachers to be guided explicitly towards questioning the normativity of current methods and materials. ELF provides relevant empirical evidence from which teachers can construct personal pedagogic principles, but it may take a good deal of work for teachers to overcome longer established practitioner community based principles. For the most part, discussions of the relevance of ELF to ELT have focused on the implications of our field for language pedagogy, but so far with relatively limited consideration of how these might become realised in application. As one experienced language teacher recently said when discussing an MA assignment she was working on, ‘I’m getting tired of all these implications – everything I read in ELF literature is about “pedagogic implications”, but what does this mean practically for teachers?’ (personal communication). Practice-relevance, however, does not simply materialise as a result of greater awareness and discussion of academic research. As Bartels (2005) suggests, increased awareness and knowledge about language is of potential value to the language teacher, but simply acquiring new knowledge does not necessarily lead to any significant change in pedagogical

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practice. For one thing, the compatibility of new concepts with existing beliefs and knowledge must be taken into account, both in relation to personal and cultural conceptions of language and language teaching, or what Leung (2009) describes respectively as ‘independent’ and ‘sponsored’ professionalism. In relation to creating better practice-relevance for ELF research it is clear that sponsored professionalism in ELT represents a substantial cultural barrier that needs to be overcome if teachers’ independent professionalism is to benefit from a greater awareness of ELF. As Tsui (2003) remarks, teacher expertise cannot simply occur as the result of experience; it requires a willingness to reinvest time in learning more about how theories and principles relate to the specific demands of an individual teacher’s professional context. This can be particularly challenging if the new insights suggested by research present teachers with possibilities that call into question established thinking and ‘intuitive’ practice. When set against the certainty of a norm-based account of language and communication, the instability and diversity typically on display in ELF interactions can translate as uncertainty and lack of clarity. Teachers and teacher educators are imbedded in a culture of professional practice that likes to deal with precise answers, and which deals in a currency of determinable features that are supposed to behave in predictable ways. And even though, as argued at length in Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2009), language is a complex adaptive system, professional discourse in ELT has a long tradition of treating language as if it were predetermined. The common orthodoxy in language education promotes a system of thinking about language, which is not suited to mutability. Trying to resolve these fundamental differences is not going to be an easy task. The only way this can be properly addressed is by promoting in teacher education a theory of language and communication that takes much better account of the complex adaptive nature of language, that is less concerned with language as an abstracted system and more in line with a notion of language as ‘local practice’ (c.f. Pennycook 2010). It is also essential though that in attempting to promote alternative pedagogies we do not undermine teachers’ confidence in their knowledge base. We must establish that moving beyond current ways of looking at language may require a certain degree of de-socialization from the dominant educational norms, but that this is something that experienced language teachers are very well placed to do. In ELT teacher education we most certainly do need to ‘wake up the dogs’, but we need to attempt this sensitively and in collaboration with teachers. What is required therefore is a teacher education curriculum that sets out to achieve the cultural shift required of an ELF perspective, but which also gives careful consideration to existing beliefs and practices. These cannot simply be dismissed out of hand and replaced with new practices; they must be properly worked into the development of alternative pedagogies.

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References Alim, H. Samy. 2005. Critical language awareness in the United States: Revisiting issues and revising pedagogies in a resegregated society. Educational Researcher 34(7). 24–31. Andrews, Stephen. 2007. Teacher Language Awareness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archibald, Alasdair, Alessia Cogo & Jennifer Jenkins (eds.). 2011. Latest Trends in ELF Research. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bartels, Nat. 2005. Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education: What we know. In Nat Bartels (ed.). Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education, 405–424. New York: Springer. Bloome, David, Stephanie Carter, Beth Christian, Sheila Otto & Nora Shuart-Faris. 2005. Discourse analysis and the study of classroom language and literacy events: A micro ethnographic perspective. Mahwah, N J: Erlbaum. Cogo, Alessia. 2012. ELF and super-diversity: a case study of ELF multilingual practices from a business context. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(2). 287–313. Cogo, Alessia and Martin Dewey. 2012. Analysing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-driven Investigation. London: Continuum. Dewey, Martin. 2012. Towards a Post-normative approach: learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1). 141–170. Ellis, Nick. C. & Diane Larsen-Freeman (eds.). 2009. Language as a Complex Adaptive System. Wiley-Blackwell. Godley, Amanda J., Brian D. Carpenter & Cynthia A. Werner. 2007. “I‘ll Speak In Proper Slang”: Language Ideologies in a Daily Editing Activity. Reading Research Quarterly 42(1). 100–131. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2007. English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leung, Constant. 2009. Second language teacher professionalism. In Anne Burns & Jack C. Richards (eds.). Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education, 49–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-native Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauranen, Anna & Elina Ranta (eds.). 2009. English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Milroy, James & Lesley Milroy. 2012. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. (4th edition). London: Routledge. Niedzielski, Nancy & Dennis Preston. 2003. Folk Lingiustics. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as Local Practice. London: Routledge. Pitzl, Marie-Luise. 2009. “We Should not wake up any dogs”: idiom and metaphor in ELF. In Anna Mauranen & Elina Ranta (eds.). English as a Lingua Franca Studies and Findings, 298–322. Newcastle on Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Swan, Michael. 2012. ELF and EFL: are they really different? Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(2). 379–390. Tomlinson, Brian. 2011. Materials Development in Language Teaching (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tsui, Amy. 2003. Understanding Expertise in Teaching: Case Studies of Second Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UCLES. 2012. CLETA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines. Cambridge.

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Chapter 8  Re/considering the English language teacher education programs in Turkey from an ELF standpoint: what do the academia, pre-service and in-service teachers think? 1 Introduction Turkey, a multicultural country with many local and ethnic languages, has one official language: Turkish. It did not experience a colonial past; therefore, neither English nor any other foreign language has ever had an official role in its history. However, several motives, most notably the desire to improve economic competitiveness in the international arena, have widely popularized English for both international as well as intranational purposes (Kırkgöz 2009: 666). In line with these motives, English has gained a significant instrumental function in Turkey. Its usage as “a link language” combined with its symbolism of modernization and elitism have created a function on an interpersonal level, too, The remaining regulative and imaginative functions of non-native varieties of English, on the other hand – (Kachru 1992) – are either limited or do not exist as it has not been an institutionalized foreign language (Doğançay-Aktuna 1998: 37). The instrumental function of English in Turkey predominates in three significant domains: education, trade, and tourism. The domain where instrumental functions are constantly and most extensively promoted, and which is the topic of the present study, is undoubtedly education. The Turkish national education system has constantly reshaped its language policy and repositioned the study of English in response to growing practical demand, thereby promoting the spread of English. The rise of English in Turkey’s educational system has been driven at least in part by the domains of trade and tourism. Given Turkey’s growing trade volumes with all regions of the globe, its increasing importance in the global economy, and Turkish companies’ frequent contact with overseas companies, and given the leading role of English in international commerce, it is only logical that English has risen to the forefront in Turkey’s trade sector. Similarly, in the tourism industry, the millions of annual tourists attracted by Turkey’s sights and cultures ensure continuous contact between Turks and foreigners. The prominent role English plays in these two sectors, therefore, positions the language as a sine qua non for

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both economic and interpersonal purposes, and has increased demand for English-language education. Simultaneously, the instrumental as well as interpersonal functions of English have thrived within the forum of the Internet, which has been adopted by almost half the Turkish population and has also increased demand for English, particularly among youth. On the other hand, outside of the trade, tourism, and educational sectors, English has yet to gain traction in Turkey. For example, in media, one surprisingly observes a very limited use of English. The main language of print journalism is Turkish with few exceptions. There are only two newspapers printed in English (Hürriyet Daily News and Today’s Zaman). Broadcasting is almost exclusively in Turkish, although a handful of specialty TV channels (e.g. CNBC-e) broadcast movies and television series with Turkish subtitles, and radio stations, while almost always hosted in Turkish, widely broadcast English-language popular music. At regulative and imaginative levels, Turkey has never adopted any official language other than Turkish for administrative purposes, and has produced very limited literature and songs in English with the exception of a few singers and writers producing English-lyric songs and literature, often aimed at international audiences. Consequently, resembling the situation in many Expanding Circle countries, the status of English in Turkey prevails in a few domains but is still spoken by less than 20  percent of the Turkish population (Eurobarometer Report of European Commission 2006) The focus of the present study is the role of English in Turkey’s educational sphere, within this special context. Related issues such as language policies, curricula, and how English has become “the main agent of language spread” in Turkey (Doğançay-Aktuna and Kızıltepe 2005: 253–4) will be discussed at length in the sections to follow.

2 English in the Turkish Educational Setting From the early years of the Turkish Republic until the recent 2012 Education Reform¹, there has been an ever-growing demand to learn English, which has eventually come to epitomize all that is Western and modern. Today, English as a 1 A very recent change causing considerable commotion has taken place with the 2012 Education Reform, which became effective in the 2012–2013 academic year. With this latest transformation, the duration of compulsory education has been extended to 12 years with the aim of increasing the average education year of the Turkish society, and eliminating the regional differences in schooling ratio in Turkey (MEB 2012). In this new system, 12 years compulsory education is di-

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foreign language has become entrenched in the Turkish educational system, the policies of which have been shaped and reshaped according to the demands of globalization at large and local priorities in particular. Changing language policies are normally accompanied by a restructuring of programs vis-à-vis language teacher education. The current English language teacher education program is a cumulative outcome of a series of reform efforts in the field of English language teaching. The language education policy that was based on literacy teaching in the early years of the Republic has evolved to “serve Turkish citizens in using English as a lingua franca² in an effective way in their communication with citizens of other countries and, thereby, enable Turkey to advance in scientific, economic, military and social fields” (MEB 2006). The historical summary of this progression from “literacy teaching” to an ELF perspective covers almost a century and it follows a path of interconnected steps of English language teaching and English language teacher education. Turkish learners were introduced to English as a foreign language in secondary schools in 1924 (Demircan 1988: 92) but the start of formally educating Turkish teachers of English coincides with the start of World War II when the first “academies” of foreign languages offering two-year degrees were opened to train foreign language teachers for high schools (Demircan 1988: 102). Starting in the 1950s, English replaced French as the primary foreign language of modernization through collaboration with foreign institutions such as the British Council, the United States Information Agency, the Fulbright Program, and NATO. It became a requirement for ensuing and developing technologies, growing economies, and international communication. In 1952, English was established as the primary foreign language at secondary education levels (Demircan 1988: 104) and Turkish learners felt an increasing urgency to develop English language proficiency. In an effort to satisfy the increasing requirement to train “more proficient learners,” the length of Turkey’s English teacher education program was extended to three years in 1962, to “train better language teachers” with additional courses on methodology. The establishment of new school types and the vided into three stages, namely, stage 1 – primary education; stage 2 – secondary education; and stage 3 – high school, and each stage consists of 4 grades (4+4+4). Consequently, learners will be exposed to English for longer hours and from earlier ages, which in turn is expected to affect the students’ language proficiency positively at the end of the 12-year mandatory education. Given the parallel structuring of language education and language teacher education policies, we anticipate this transformation to reflect on the teacher education programs (See also Bayyurt 2013). 2 A literal translation from the original Turkish text would be “English as a common language”, which, by definition, refers to English as Lingua Franca.

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integration of a prepatory year in certain state schools also escalated the need for English teachers. In order to cater to this need in diverse settings, available “instructor resources” were expanded to include English literature majors who had optional pedagogy courses, civil servants who remained in a Western country for the purpose of “increasing knowledge and cultivation,” and US citizens who served in the Peace Corps between 1963 and 1970 could work as English teachers until 1982 (Demircan 1988: 106). In 1978, all teacher-training institutions in Turkey were increased in term from three to four years and were transformed into Higher Teacher Training Colleges whose programs were modeled after counterparts in native English-speaking countries, except for the courses in Turkish language and history. Hence, Turkey’s English Language Teacher Training Program was shaped predominantly by trends in teaching English to speakers of other languages in the Anglo-American world. Yet, other factors also proved effective over time. In the face of the changes in the world’s economic system in which capitalism and free markets stood out, Turkey felt it necessary to implement new foreign language education policies, especially after the 1980s when it started launching international relations with the developing free markets of the capitalist system (Doğançay-Aktuna 1998: 28; Kırkgöz 2009: 670). It became a trend to open new private schools run by the private sector and education foundations (Demircan 1988: 119). Turkey’s language policy in the 1980s and beyond was shaped by the Foreign Language Education and Teaching Act of 1983, which became a milestone in Turkey’s foreign language education history. The act, which authorized Turkey’s Ministry of National Education to formulate policy concerning foreign language teaching at primary, secondary, and non-formal education (MEB 2002) increased the number of private English-medium schools with English preparatory programs, and provided the incorporation of English into the curricula of grades 4 and 5 at private primary schools. This new act also led to the creation of new state schools that offered at least one year of preparatory program and Englishmedium instruction.³ On the teacher education front, the early 1980s marked the foundation of the Higher Education Council, which was founded in 1982 and centralized all higher education undertakings including English language teacher education. The tripartite system that included universities, academies and teacher training col-

3 With this Act, the number of English medium private secondary schools quadrupled in 1987– 88 compared to 1983–84 (25 to 103 schools), and the number of English medium state secondary schools tripled in the same time period (30 to 90 schools) (Demircan 1988: 119). The increase continued over the years, and the number of private schools reached to 222 in 1992–1993, and to 628 in 2006 (Kırkgöz 2009: 670), and to 931 in 2011–2012 (MEB 2012).

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leges was eliminated (Karagözoğlu, Arıcı, Bulbul and Coker 1993: 130). The new system embraced uniformity and integrated all academies and teacher training colleges into universities, transferring the teacher education responsibility from the Ministry of Education to universities (Karagözoğlu, Arıcı, Bulbul and Coker 1993: 130). The Council decided in 1989 that all teachers would be required to graduate from faculties of education following a four-year training period based on a single curriculum implemented across all Turkish universities. Another defining year for Turkish education was 1997, when compulsory primary education was increased to eight years (from five), which marked a step toward meeting the standards of the European Council, whose member states have compulsory education for 10 to 11 years on average (İnal 2009: 73). With this reform movement, English as a foreign language became an obligatory subject of study at the primary level and learners were introduced to English at grade 4 (nine years of age). This change inevitably warranted an update in Turkey’s teacher education programs. Thus, in 1998 the Higher Education Council decided to restructure the teacher training programs, modifying it in a way to also train English teachers for the primary level. The new program apparently aimed to train “qualified” language teachers. The period-based literature and translation courses that formed a considerable part of the previous curriculum were replaced by courses that specifically focused on the issues of teaching English as a foreign language. Methodology courses particularly targeting the “new” group of learners, such as Teaching English to Young Learners, were integrated into the program. But, more importantly, the practicum course was extended to two semesters, allowing prospective teachers more time to observe and practice actual teaching. The Council also decided to put an end to additional pedagogy courses offered to the students of Literature departments and it was decreed that teachers would be graduates of faculties of education only (http://acikogretim.sozel.org/ formasyon-kaldirildi-okuloncesi-ve-ingilizce-ogretmenligi-kapatildi.html). A more all-encompassing change was put forth by the Ministry of National Education in 2003, claiming that it was imperative to revise the English curriculum at primary level to meet the changing needs of the learners and the challenges of the field. The Ministry stated that the paradigmatic changes in ELT (i.e. Communicative language teaching, constructivism and learner-centeredness) and the process of European and global political and economic integration called for implementation of newer and better approaches and methods in English language teaching (İnal 2009: 74). In 2006, to “better equip” Turkish learners, the Higher Education Council quite logically reorganized the teacher education programs to better equip teachers.

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Thus, the new program, which is currently in use in all the faculties of education across Turkey today, reflects a radical re-thinking of educational philosophy in the context of foreign language learning and teaching. When interpreted carefully, the Turkish response to the global power of English and its pedagogical underpinnings become visible through the new programs and implementations. The course descriptions handed down by the Council outline the priorities in language teacher education as perceived by the central authority in higher education. The program’s primary goals include familiarizing the pre-service teacher with the current paradigm changes, making the teacher conversant with terms such as “culture”, “intercultural”, “identity” and establishing a critical viewpoint on matters related to English language and its pedagogy. The program undoubtedly expects academics to make room for current issues and debates concerning the domain of ELT. The advised content for many courses in the program make this expectation evident. The description of the course titled “Approaches to ELT II”, for example, lists among the content of the course, “…Current issues and practices in ELT, appropriate approaches suitable to learner needs based on current distinctions such as ESL, EFL, EIL, ESP, EAP…” and “…communicative and intercultural competencies for the teacher of the globalized world” (YÖK 2009). What is significant here is the emphasis on the different categorizations of English that have recently become more debatable. Speakers of English as an international language (EIL) have been profiled by scholars in a variety of ways, drawing upon different features; transitions from EFL to ESL are possible; and ELF and EIL seem to be used interchangeably. Thus, any discussion that includes these models of English will naturally entail the current status of English as a world lingua franca and its concomitant debates. Descriptions of the courses titled “English Literature I and II” include in their content: “Cultural history of British and American literature and literary works written in English;… periods in literature in English…”and “a variety of literary texts from a range of eras and writers of British and American literature and literary works written in English…” (YÖK 2009)

drawing attention to the novel understanding that the term “English Literature” also refers to the literature produced in that language as well as a national body of literature. Today, as discussions centered on the state of English as a lingua franca and its implications on ELT are taking center stage around the world, Turkish academia is inevitably in a position to keep pace with these discussions and bring them into the classroom; pre-service teachers are asked to acquaint them-

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selves with these issues and participate in discussions, and in-service teachers are informed through in-service training programs, seminars and conferences. Although the present ELT program does not include a required course consisting solely of ELF, it is integrated into the contents of various other courses. It also appears as an elective course in postgraduate programs. The present study aims to investigate the perceptions of Turkish ELT academia, pre-service and in-service teachers’ concept of ELF and the necessity to make it a part of the English language teacher education programs. It is our intention to investigate how the main stakeholders in English language teacher education relate to the current program at hand: the academia who are to actualize the program’s claim, pre-service teachers who are exposed to it, and in-service teachers who are expected to practice what the program offered.

3 Research 3.1 Participants The study was conducted with 300 participants in total. Twenty-nine percent of the subjects were male and 71% of the subjects were females. Ninety-two percent of the participants were native speakers of Turkish, and the rest were bilingual speakers of Turkish and Kurdish/Albanian/Uzbek/Armenian. Ninetyseven percent of the participants were graduates of (or, would be in the case of pre-service teachers) faculties of Education and 3% were graduates of faculties of Letters. Sixty-six percent were affiliated with state institutions whereas the remaining 34% were affiliated with private ones. There were three subject groups: (Group 1) Turkish ELT academia, comprising professors, associate professors, assistant professors, lecturers, and research assistants working at the ELT departments of the universities in Turkey; (Group 2) pre-service English teachers who were senior students of ELT departments, as well as prospective English teachers; and (Group 3) in-service English teachers who were teaching at the primary and secondary schools in Turkey. Each subject group contained 100 participants and their demographic profile revealed participation from 42 cities of Turkey.

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3.2 Research design and procedure The research adopts both a quantitative and qualitative design. However, since the qualitative study is still in progress at the interview stage, only the first phase of the study will be presented, and the results of the quantitative analyses will be discussed herein. A questionnaire was composed and used as a research instrument to collect quantitative data from the participants. Following the preliminary Demographics Part, the questionnaire included 38 statements based on a Likert Scale of 5 (from 1/strongly agree to 5/strongly disagree), with reverse items, marking a tendency towards or refraining from ELF as a model for English language teaching. The statements were prepared based on the three dimensions that were defined in respect to the literature review and the research questions of the study (Dimension 1: Paradigmatic Changes, Dimension 2: Teaching and Learning English, and Dimension 3: English Language Teacher Education Programs). The sum of the points gained from each statement revealed each participant’s total score on the survey. Higher scores indicated a stronger disposition to embrace ELF. Overall, the research intended to answer the following questions: What are the perceptions of academia, pre-service and in-service teachers of English regarding: – the concept of ELF? – the necessity to make it a part of the English language teacher education programs? The first research question was basically addressed by Dimension 1 (Paradigmatic Changes) of the questionnaire. Statements that were constructed to elicit participants’ appraisal of the basic issues concerning ELF, such as the native/ non-native and standard/non-standard dichotomy in English language, served to reveal participants’ inclinations toward ELF. The second research question, on the other hand, concerned Dimensions 2 (Teaching and Learning English) and 3 (English Language Teacher Education Programs). The statements belonging to Dimension 2 aimed to reveal the participants’ basic understanding of the practice of English language learning and teaching; such as progress and proficiency in English. The statements prepared for Dimension 3 sought to investigate participants’ acknowledgement of the place of ELF in the English Language Teacher Education Programs in Turkey. Example statements from the three dimensions are as follows:

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Dimension 1: Paradigmatic Changes

Dimension 2: Teaching and Learning English

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Dimension 3: English Language Teacher Education Programs

“Any linguistic use that does not In teaching/learning English, ELT education programs conform to Standard English is intelligibility is of utmost should emphasize BBr/Am. defective and incorrect.” importance. Standard English. Any linguistic use that does not In teaching/learning English, conform to Standard English but developing proficiency on makes sense is acceptable. language forms is of utmost importance.

ELT education programs should familiarize English language teachers with different varieties of English.

The research instrument was pilot-tested with 115 participants, and resulted in an 0,86 Cronbach-Alpha value. The survey was posted online and a printed version was made available for some of the participants. The first 100 participants from each group who answered all the questions of the survey were selected as the subjects of this study.

3.3 Analysis and Findings Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, post-hoc analysis, and sample t-tests were employed to analyze the data. A .05 level of significance was used in all of the statistical analyses.

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As mentioned earlier, a higher score from the survey meant a stronger ELF tendency. The bar chart on page 143 displays the distribution of the overall scores gained by the three groups from the survey. Although the difference between the lowest score (63) and the highest score (131) is striking, this bar chart shows that the distribution of the points are relatively close to each other among the three groups. Notably, however, the highest score was tallied by a participant from the academia whereas the lowest score belonged to an in-service teacher.

3.3.1 What are the perceptions of academia, pre-service and in-service teachers of English regarding the concept of ELF? The first research question sought to reveal the subject groups’ perception of ELF through both inter-group and intra-group comparisons. The first step was to assess how participant groups positioned themselves with respect to ELF.

3.3.2 How do the groups position themselves with respect to the concept of ELF? The mean scores indicated that the pre-service teachers had the highest score (107.0900) from the test, indicating that pre-service teachers are more inclined to adopt an ELF approach. Analysis of the mean scores (ANOVA), however, did not result in a statistically significant difference among the groups (F(2,297) = 2.85, p = .059). This indicated that the three groups position themselves in a similar distance and way with respect to ELF. As the significance level of ANOVA was slightly above .05, a post hoc analysis was conducted for group comparisons. The post hoc test revealed that there was one pair of groups whose mean scores differed in a statistically significant way from each other at p< .05. These groups are academia and pre-service teachers and the difference between their scores (p< .029) is above the significance level. The difference between pre-service and in-service teachers, on the other hand, is slightly above the significance value (p< .057), whereas the difference is not significant for the academia and in-service groups. Participants’ perception of ELF was also investigated via the mean scores the groups obtained on each dimension of the survey. In order to examine how paradigmatic changes were acknowledged by the participants (Dimension 1: Paradigmatic Changes); how participants perceived ELF in teaching and learning (Dimension 2: Teaching and Learning); and whether there was dependency between having received ELF instruction and ELF familiarity, and one’s approach towards ELF (Dimension 3: English Language Teacher Education Programs) ANOVA was conducted as a means of analysis.

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Std. Deviation

Sum of Squares

Academia

100 103,5700 11,49814

Between 733,927 Groups

Preservice

100 107,0900 10,87681

Within Groups

38204,660 297 128,635

Inservice

Table 1: Total mean scores of the three participant groups Total Group

N

Mean

100 104,0200 11,63587

Total

38938,587 299

300 104,8933 11,41181

df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

2

366,963 2,853 ,059

ANOVA

N

Mean

Std. Deviation

Sum of Squares

df

Mean Square

Academia

100

26,9500 4,16667 Between Groups

225,360

2

112,680 6,018 ,003

Preservice

100

29,0500 4,40013 Within Groups

5561,210 297 18,725

Inservice

Table 2: Paradigmatic changes Total Group

F

Sig.

100

27,7300 4,41040

300

27,9100 4,39921 Total

5786,570 299

ANOVA

3.3.3 Is there a difference among the groups with respect to Dimension 1? The descriptive statistics of the mean scores for Dimension 1 (Paradigmatic Changes) showed that pre-service teachers performed the highest mean score (29.0500). In accordance with the scores obtained overall, the groups are ranked in the same order depending on their mean scores. ANOVA showed that there was

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a statistically significant difference among the groups for Dimension 1 (F (2,297) = 6.01, p = .003). Following ANOVA, post hoc analysis was performed and the results indicated that there were two pairs of groups whose mean scores differed in a statistically significant manner. The results showed that the difference between academia and pre-service teachers (p< .001), and in-service and pre-service teachers (p< .032) are above the significance value but the difference was not significant for the academia and in-service teachers’ scores. These results indicated that the pre-service group showed the highest inclination toward ELF by favoring both the non-standard and non-native paradigms within the context of ELT.

3.3.4 Is there a difference among the groups with respect to Dimension 2? The mean scores for Dimension 2 (Teaching and Learning) showed that preservice teachers achieved the highest mean score (40.9300), and the rank order remained the same. However, the mean scores were very close, which was reflected by an insignificant difference among the groups in ANOVA (F(2,297) = 2.39, p = .093). Although post-hoc analysis was not a required step, it was nevertheless conducted in order to determine whether there was a difference between pairs of groups. Post-hoc results showed that the difference between pre-service teachers and academia was above the significance value (p< .040), but the difference was not significant for the academia and in-service groups, and pre-service and in-service.

ANOVA

Sum of Squares

df

Mean Square

F

Academia

100

39,4500 4,87702 Between Groups

122,427

2

61,213

2,390 ,093

Preservice

Total

100

40,9300 4,97520 Within Groups

7606,010 297 25,609

Inservice

Table 3: ELF teaching and learning Group N

Mean

Std. Deviation

100

39,7500 5,31887

300

40,0433 5,08405 Total

7728,437 299

Sig.

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3.3.5 Is there a difference among the groups with respect to Dimension 3? The descriptive statistics of the mean scores for Dimension 3 (English Language Teacher Education Programs) revealed very close results among groups. However, the striking outcome was that this time the rank order changed in favor of academia (37.1700). One way to interpret this was to recognize the active involvement of academia as practitioners in ELT education programs. ANOVA, on the other hand, displayed that there was not a statistically significant difference among the groups for Dimension 3 (F(2,297) = .808, p = .447).

Sum of Squares

df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

Academia

100

37,1700 4,21411 Between Groups

24,180

2

12,090

,808

,447

Preservice

Total

100

37,1100 3,53595 Within Groups

4442,740 297 14,959

Inservice

Table 4: Education programs Group N

Mean

Std. Deviation

100

36,5400 3,82290

300

36,9400 3,86517 Total

4466,920 299

ANOVA

3.3.6 Do the participants’ attitudes towards ELF depend on ELF Familiarity? Within Dimension 3, the study aimed to investigate the dependency between ELF familiarity and participants’ attitudes towards ELF. To this end, the questionnaire included items regarding how familiar the participants reportedly were with the concept of ELF and whether or not they received any formal instruction on ELF. The mean scores of the participants who reported familiarity with the concept of ELF were considerably higher than the mean score of participants who did not. The result of an independent sample t-test revealed a dependency between participants’ ELF familiarity and their approach towards it (M = 106, SD = 11,1), t(4,4) = 298, p = .00), indicating a positive correlation between ELF familiarity and ELF tendency.

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Table 5:

ELF Familiarity ELF familiar

N

Mean

SD

SEx

t test t

ELFTotal

Yes No

242 106,2769 58 99,1207

11,16204 10,69198

,71752 1,40393

df

p

4,420 298 ,000

independent sample t-test

3.3.7 Do the participants’ attitudes towards ELF depend on academic instruction on ELF? The study also aimed to investigate the correlation between academic instruction and ELF and the three participant groups’ attitudes toward ELF within Dimension 3. Therefore, an item was included in the survey regarding whether or not the participants received any academic instruction on ELF. Independent sample t-test results revealed that there was a correlation between respondents’ having received academic instruction on ELF and their approach toward it (M = 106, SD = 11,1), t(2,4) = 298, p = .015). There was little difference between the mean scores of the groups. A closer look at Table 6 and a comparison with Table 5 reveals that out of the 242 participants who reported to be familiar with ELF, only 142 reported having received academic instruction on it. This indicates that familiarity with ELF is not tied to academic instruction only. It may come from a variety of resources, and this forms one of the questions that have been included in the semi-structured interviews of the second phase of this study. Table 6:

Academic Instruction on ELF ELF instr.

N

Mean

SD

SEx

t test t

ELFTotal

Yes No

142 106,5845 158 103,3734

11,57599 11,07961

,97144 ,88145

df

p

2,454 298 ,015

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4 Conclusion The primary conclusion of the present study is that pre-service teachers embrace ELF considerably more than academia and in-service teachers. This is significant in the sense that by definition, pre-service teachers are both learners of the language and future practitioners of it. Depending on the role they adopt (learner/ teacher), they may either idealize ELF as a new model of ELT which would not repeat “the mistakes of EFL” and plan to implement it in their future teaching or, as learners, they may feel empowered by the “freedom” provided by it. Either way, results indicate that pre-service teachers are more inclined to question the validity of the normative perspective of English language teaching and are more critical of native-speaking teacher superiority. They believe that nonnative speakers of English can use English for a variety of purposes just as well as native speakers. The criterion that is of utmost importance to pre-service teachers in learning and teaching English is intelligibility. They dismiss the importance of native-like accuracy and they think that the way English is taught should reflect the needs and aspirations of nonnative speakers who use it to communicate with other non-natives. Pre-service teachers would like ELT programs to allocate more space to ELF via courses focused specifically on ELF and related issues. In these hypothetical courses, they would expect to receive specific instruction on linguistic features that can cause problems in intelligibility, as well as communicative strategies that they can utilize in intercultural communication. It is significant that what they are referring to here is a description of language use that may very well be interpreted as English as Lingua Franca. Academia’s approach to ELF is twofold. Their mean scores were the lowest in the first and second dimension (Dimension 1: Paradigmatic Changes; Dimension 2: Learning and Teaching English) but when it comes to the third dimension (Dimension 3: Language Teacher Education Programs), they obtained the highest mean score. Thus, with regard to the changing paradigms in ELT, we can deduce that academia prioritizes conformity to Standard English and define the most suitable variety as British or American Standard English for nonnative learners. They believe that in an English medium situation it is more important to be intelligible to native speakers of English, acutely highlighting native speaker superiority. In evaluating the practice of learning/teaching activities, the academia adopts a pro-normative stance, emphasizing the priority of native-like accuracy and developing proficiency on language forms. Their belief that the way English language is taught should reflect conventions of Standard English further reflects this pro-normative outlook.

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When it comes to English Language Teaching Programs, academia tends to embrace both EFL and ELF perspectives in educating future English language teachers. This indicates that the course descriptions we have mentioned earlier are fulfilled by academia. In accordance with the course descriptions provided by the Turkish Higher Education Council, the academia believes that the programs should reflect the changes taking place in the global use of English; familiarize English language teachers with the different varieties of English that are in use around the world; make room for critical reflection on traditional practices of TEFL and that the programs should be tailored to the needs and priorities of the local educational setting. They state that programs should encourage teachers to identify and to teach the changing features of the English language. They further remark that programs should cultivate teachers’ intercultural communication skills and promote and encourage research on the changing nature of the English language and its pedagogical implications. If academia is seen as an establishment in itself that is pushed toward producing academic work whose features are restricted by the norm-setting groups, then it may be natural for them to uphold the preeminent varieties and standards. But, when it comes to actually teaching the group at hand who are pre-service teachers, they would like to provide both perspectives and educate English teachers for a “globalized world” as defined in the curriculum. When we look at the mean scores for in-service teachers, we see that for the first two dimensions (Dimension 1: Paradigmatic Changes; Dimension 2: Learning and Teaching English), they are placed between pre-service teachers (who scored the highest) and academia (who scored the lowest). In the third dimension (Dimension 3: Language Teacher Education Programs), however, they scored the lowest. This situation creates a conflict as it is contrary to our expectations based on their stance revealed in the first two dimensions. Although the results of the Dimensions 1 and 2 lead us to think that they will display a more pro-ELF approach regarding English Language Teacher Education Programs, what is seen and what we interpret as deviating from such an attitude is actually due to academia’s radically changing attitude toward English Language Teacher Education Programs. In-service teachers, who are assigned a curriculum, teaching materials, and a fixed schedule, keep the middle ground in all dimensions of the survey. This may be interpreted as an indication that they do not perceive themselves as “decisionmaking agents of change,” but rather as professionals who make the system work while being precluded from contributing to its development. Hence, they may feel inclined to contain their classroom activities within the limits of the given curriculum’s stance toward the status of English.

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The results also indicated that there was a dependency between ELF familiarity, academic instruction on ELF, and participants’ attitudes towards ELF. Thus, ELF instruction and familiarity have a positive effect on the participants’ approach towards ELF. This, in turn, resulted in the need to include ELF in the teaching programs. The results of the statistical analyses reveal tentative and limited conclusions due to the fact that the qualitative data is still being gathered. A more encompassing conclusion will be sought upon completion of the study’s second phase. At this point, we believe there are issues that require inspection to improve both English Language Teacher Education and English Language Education in compulsory education. When we look at the mission statements of the Turkish Higher Education Council and the Ministry of Education (MEB) with regard to training English learners and teachers, an ELF outlook is evident. However, at MEB level, there appears to be a discrepancy between the mission statement’s apparent inclination toward ELF and what is actually offered by the curriculum, including the materials and the evaluation and assessment systems, which seem to conform more to EFL. For English language Teacher Education Programs, meanwhile, we conclude that there exists an insufficiency in terms of fulfilling the programs’ commitments. Based on the mission statement of the Higher Education Council, as well as academia’s and pre-service teachers’ agreement with the inclusion of ELF in the programs (however implicit it might currently be) ELF as a subject of study in its own right could be included in undergraduate programs.

References Bayyurt, Yasemin. 2013. 4+4+4 Eğitim Sisteminde Erken Yaşta Yabancı Dil Eğitimi (Foreign Language Learning for Young Learners in 4+4+4 Education System). Sarıçoban, A. & Öz, H. (Haz.), Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi İngiliz Dili Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı 1. Yabancı Dil Eğitimi Çalıştayı Bildirileri (Proceedings of the 1st National Workshop on Foreign Language Education) (pp. 115–125), Ankara: Hacettepe University Publications. Demircan, Ömer. 1988. Foreign Language in Turkey from past to present. İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi. Doğançay-Aktuna, Seran & Zeynep Kızıltepe. 2005. English in Turkey. World Englishes 24(2). 253–265. Doğançay-Aktuna, Seran. 1998. The spread of English in Turkey and its current sociolinguistic profile. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19(1). 24–39. Eurobarometer report of European Commission in 2006 titled “Europeans and their languages” (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf).

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Inal, Dilek. 2009. ‘The early bird catches the worm’: The Turkish case. In Janet Enever, Jayne Moon and Uma Raman (eds.). Young Learner English Language Policy and Implementation: International Perspectives, 71–78. Reading: Garnet Education. Karagözoğlu, Galip, Hüsnü Arıcı, Sudi Bülbül & Nazım Çoker. 1993. Teacher training and models in Turkey. In Galip Karagözoğlu (ed.). The Policies and Models of Teacher Training in the Council of Europe Countries, 126–136. İzmir: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi. Kırkgöz, Yasemin. 2009. Globalization and English Language Policy in Turkey. Educational Policy 23(5). 663–684. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı [Turkish Ministry of National Education]. 2012. National education Statistics Formal Education 2011–2012. Retrieved January 02, 2013, from http:// sgb.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2012_12/06021046_meb_istatistikleri_orgun_ egitim_2011_2012.pdf Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı [Turkish Ministry of National Education]. 2012. 12 years Compulsory Education: Questions and Answers. Retrieved January 02, 2013, from http://www.meb.gov. tr/duyurular/duyurular2012/12yil_soru_cevaplar.pdf Yüksek Öğretim Kurumu [Higher Education Council]. 2009. Course Contents for English Language Teacher Education Program. Retrieved January 02, 2013, from http://www.deu. edu.tr/UploadedFiles/Birimler/15208/icerik.pdf Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı [Turkish Ministry of National Education]. 2006. English Language Curriculum for Primary Education Grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Ankara: Devlet Kitaplığı Müdürlüğü. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı [Turkish Ministry of National Education]. 2002. Foreign language Education Act. Retrieved January 02, 2013, from http://mevzuat.meb.gov.tr/html/136.html

Areti-Maria Sougari & Roxani Faltzi

Chapter 9  Drawing upon Greek pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ELF-related issues 1 Introduction The field of English language teaching has been lately questioning the suitability of the EFL model targeted for the teaching of English, particularly in expanding circle countries (Sifakis and Sougari 2010). Current changes in the demographics of English language speakers in the world have led to the change of its status as the world’s lingua franca. By one estimate, non-native English speakers (henceforth NNSs) in the world far outnumber native English speakers (henceforth NSs) (Crystal 2012). Teachers of English are in their majority non-native speakers of English due to the high demand for English language teachers in the world (Canagarajah 2005; Prodromou 2003). Pre-service teachers have also been reported to be NNSs in their majority (Llurda 2005; Medgyes 1999). Accordingly, non-native English speaking teachers (henceforth NNESTs) became a research focus and in particular with regards to the self-perceived challenges they face because of their non-native status. The current study arises from the demand for a re-evaluation of attitudes and popular beliefs as well as teaching practices that continue to be taken for granted. In expanding circle countries the focal point is still entrenched in a mono-linguacultural view of English and Greece is no exception. In the context of English language teacher preparation in Greece, no studies have been reported in the ELF field of interest, thus making it germane to investigate Greek pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards English in relation to its role as the world’s lingua franca. This chapter focuses on associating pre-service teachers’ self-beliefs and beliefs about English language teaching with their intercultural experience; this interplay is expected to influence their ELF awareness as well as their actual teaching practices. Finally, ways in which teacher education programmes could reshape pre-conceived beliefs and attitudes are suggested.

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2 Teachers’ beliefs and factors affecting their beliefs Teachers’ beliefs are an important yet intricate concept. The abundance of definitions creates an impediment when looking into the literature of pre-service teachers’ beliefs (Pajares 1992). Beliefs are often defined in education psychology as “unconsciously held assumptions about students, classrooms and the academic material to be taught” (Kagan 1992: 65). Those “permeable and dynamic structures that act as a filter through which new knowledge and experience are screened for meaning” (Zheng 2009: 74) can serve as a “personal guide” (Pajares 1992) for teachers and have the potential to influence their teaching practices with the acceptance and uptake of new approaches (Breen et al. 2001; Donaghue 2003; Sifakis 2009). In order to improve pre-service teacher education it is fundamental to consider pre-service teachers’ beliefs and expectations prior to their university education as well as during their training years (Pajares 1992). Likewise, as Llurda and Lasagabaster (2010) succinctly suggest it is pivotal to investigate which factors can possibly influence their beliefs since they can impact on their students. There are numerous variables that can exert a powerful influence on preservice teachers’ beliefs. Richardson (1996) identifies three factors: the teachers’ personal experience, their experience with schooling and instruction and their formal knowledge. Based on a review of empirical studies on EFL pre-service teachers’ beliefs, Zheng (2009) concludes that beliefs fall into three main categories. First, teachers’ own experience as language learners and their experience of what works best, the so-called ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie 1975), are influential for their beliefs. Consistently, educators tend to teach their students based on their observation of their own teachers’ methods and teaching practices. Secondly, it is participation in teacher education programmes that can have an impact on their beliefs as future teachers (Li 2012). However, no consensus can be drawn based on that relationship. Finally, there seems to be a two-way relationship between pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices (Zheng 2009), since it has been observed that practicum experience can shape their beliefs (Farrell 2001; Johnson 1996).

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3 Studies on teachers’ self-beliefs and perceptions about ELF It has been argued that the competence of a native speaker (henceforth NS) is not a relevant benchmark for ELT and students’ performance (Jenkins 2011; McNamara 2012). The “myth of the native speaker as the ideal teacher has been deconstructed” due to lack of evidence (Moussu and Llurda 2008: 316). In fact, for a successful ELF communication it is its very nature that requires a less narrow conceptualization of the speakers’ capacities (McNamara 2012). Interest in NNESTs’ positive role in ELT has been demonstrated (Braine 1999; 2010; Llurda 2004; Medgyes 1994). Studies on NNESTs’ beliefs have addressed the native/non-native speaker dichotomy and the superiority of native English speaking teachers (henceforth NESTs) is well attested (Medgyes 1994; Tang 1997). As Jenkins (2005) suggests, NNESTs may “want a NS identity as expressed in a native-like accent” (Jenkins 2005: 541). Nevertheless, in other studies the subjects displayed a sense of confidence and self-esteem as NNESTs (Samimy and Brutt-Griffler 1999). Tackling with NNESTs’ self-perceptions, research has shown that they can be negatively influenced by the absence of a living experience in English-speaking countries (Llurda 2008), and obliviousness to EIL-related matters (Sifakis and Sougari 2005). Teaching qualifications, the frequency of the teachers’ contact with NSs of English, their knowledge of professional organizations, and “some conditions under which they teach” (Reves and Medgyes 1994: 357) are also likely to affect their command of English and thus their self-image. In the context of English language teaching in EFL settings, most NNESTs do not seem to be very “sensitive to the new perspectives that are opening up in front of them, and are still anchored in the old native-speaker dominated framework in which British or American norms have to be followed and native speakers are considered the ideal teachers” (Llurda 2004: 319). In particular, studies in Greece on in-service primary and secondary teachers’ beliefs (Sifakis and Sougari, 2005, 2010; Sougari and Sifakis 2007, 2010) have shown that teaching adheres more to NS norms (McKay 2003). Teachers teach the way they were taught and follow the familiar path. Existing research on pre-service teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards English, under the ELF perspective, has tackled a variety of issues. Some have focused on eliciting pre-service teachers’ perceptions about English in todays’ globalised era with reference to the status it holds. Studies showed that the status of English as a lingua franca is greatly acknowledged as English now dominates many phases of human life (Çoşkun 2011; Öztürk, Çeçen and Altınmakas 2010). A number of studies addressed the problematic dichotomy of NS and NNS norms and demonstrated that NS norms prevail and are accepted as norm pro-

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viding (Çoşkun 2011; Drljaca and Širola 2010; Öztürk, Çeçen and Altınmakas 2010; Shibata 2009; Shim 2002). There seems to be no preference for teaching a non-native variety of English (e.g. Singaporean or Indian English) (Çoşkun 2011; Drljaca and Sirola 2010; Shim 2002) and pre-service teachers, particularly in Asian contexts, seem to be more attached to the western culture and preferably to the American English variety (Shibata 2009; Shim 2002). In the field of pronunciation teaching, intelligibility was considered an important aim of instruction (Grau 2005; Öztürk, Çeçen and Altınmakas 2010) as opposed to focusing on NS accents. Moreover, pre-service teachers have feelings of inferiority and negative selfperceptions apropos their language proficiency and professional adequacy (Bernat 2008). On the whole, it appears that despite acknowledging the lingua franca status of English and the complexities this may entail, pre-service teachers remain attached to NS norms. Consequently, the challenge for teacher education is to unveil pre-service teachers’ beliefs about the current role of English and the nature of teaching and learning English with particular emphasis on local contexts and look into what plays an influential role in shaping their views.

4 The study This study will (i) delve into pre-service teachers’ self-beliefs as NNESTs in an expanding circle country, (ii) detect the possible impact of their own intercultural experiences on their self-beliefs, and (iii) look into the impact of their beliefs on their teaching practices. To be more specific, the concept of selfbeliefs refers to the pre-service teachers’ own estimate of their capabilities to teach the English language, a view that could stem from their university education and in particular the methodological courses they had attended which are part of what can be considered the teacher education programme. Furthermore, intercultural experience here refers to participation in any kind of context in which English was used as the main language of communication. With this mindset, this study will probe into whether the variable of intercultural experience affects their beliefs, hence scrutinizing further the characteristics of NNESTs in order to contribute to a more “sophisticated and ambitious” NNESTs research¹ (Moussu and Llurda 2008: 333).

1 NNESTs research concerns itself with defining the characteristics of a heterogeneous group of teachers of English as a second or foreign language (Moussou and Llurda, 2008: 332). Some of the key concepts on NNESTs literature can be found in Medgyes (1983, 1986, 1994) or Braine (1999).

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4.1 The participants The number of participants returning the questionnaire was 86 out of 117 questionnaires distributed. Of these, 7% were male (N=6), while 93% were female (N=80) and they were all of Greek origin. In terms of the participants’ language learning experience prior to their enrolment in the University, the majority (52.3%) had studied English for 8–10 years, whereas 41.9% of the participants had devoted 5–7  years for their English schooling and only 5.8% had spent 11 years or more. The participants were asked to complete the questionnaire once they had completed their eight-week internship² in teaching English in primary and secondary schools (i.e. four weeks in each school). At this stage, it should be mentioned that the internship is offered to fourth (i.e. final) year students, majoring in English Language and Literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. During their undergraduate studies, students attend a number of courses (some are compulsory whereas others are elective), part of the teacher education programme. The successful attendance of some of these courses (such as “Second Language Acquisition”, “Methodology of Teaching Foreign Languages”, and “The Classroom: Principles and Practice”) is a prerequisite for students wishing to participate in the Internship programme. The internship entailed the close cooperation with a partner and the surveillance of the cooperating teacher who acted as a mentor. As part of the internship, the participants³ were expected to compile a portfolio, which included observation reports, lesson plans, reflective practice reports, and a copy of the materials designed and prepared for the lessons taught.

4.2 Data collection The data collection procedure entailed the administration of a questionnaire followed by ten interviews. The questionnaire, which was thematically organised, consisted of five parts: the first part probed into the respondents’ beliefs about the role of English and teaching English; the second drew upon the respondents’ understanding of varieties of English and pronunciation issues; the third looked into methodological issues that pertained their teaching experience in the 2 The Internship is supported and funded by the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) 2007–2013 (for the programming of the European Union funds at National level). 3 Upon completion of their 4-year studies, graduates become fully-fledged teachers who can teach all school levels in both the state and the private sector.

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primary and secondary school they had their internship; the fourth addressed their self-beliefs relating to the status of the Greek NNESTs, and the fifth elicited information regarding the respondents’ English language learning experience their intercultural experience and demographics. Respondents were required to (i) record their responses on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (5) and from “always” (1) to “never” (5), depending on the type of question, (ii) reply to “yes/no” questions, and (iii) select the most suitable answer. The questionnaire was pilot tested and the feedback received was incorporated in the final version, which entailed some changes in terms of wording, addition and deletion of certain items. Only items that relate to the purposes of the present study are presented. Ten interviews were held so as to further elucidate points that needed particular attention. What we tried to deduce was whether the respondents’ language learning experience and their self-beliefs as language pre-service teachers determined the incorporation of particular teaching practices, such as the types of errors corrected in class. The interview data are not included in the current analysis due to space limitations but will be part of a future paper.

4.3 Data analysis The quantitative analysis of the data entailed the computation of various statistical procedures: (i) the Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient⁴ was used to examine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items under one particular category; ii) One-Way ANOVA with Scheffe’s post hoc test and a General Linear Model procedure (Univariate ANOVA) was conducted, so as to examine the variability in the scores and deduce the interaction between beliefs and intercultural experience, (iii) the Pearson chi-square test of independence was employed to look into the association between the two categorical variables (i.e. the teaching context in relation to the types of errors that were corrected), and (iv) descriptive statistics (i.e. percentages, standard deviations and means) were calculated. The level of significance was set at 5%. SPSS version 17 was used for all statistical processing.

4 Cronbach’s Alpha is a useful statistic for investigating the internal consistency of a questionnaire. For most purposes, Alpha should be above 0.6 to support reasonable internal consistency (Hinton et al. 2005).

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4.4 Findings The data rendered some quite enticing results regarding the pre-service teachers’ self-beliefs and the adoption of particular teaching practices in relation to their intercultural experiences. The presentation of the results will be organised: (i) by making the link between self-beliefs and intercultural experience, (ii) by associating beliefs about teaching with the respondents’ intercultural experience, and (iii) by drawing upon teaching practices followed during the participants’ internship.

4.4.1 Making the link between self-beliefs and intercultural experience With reference to the respondents’ self-beliefs four items⁵ were interconnected. Table 1 illustrates the items that pertain to this category: Table 1: Pre-service teachers’ self-beliefs Strongly agree or agree (%)

Neither agree nor disagree (%)

Disagree or strongly disagree (%)

1. I am confident about my competence in English

78.8

17.4

 4.7

2. I am satisfied with my English pronunciation

67.1

24.7

 8.2

3. I think that the teacher education programme 53.5 (i.e. methodology courses) had adequately prepared me to teach English in the primary classroom

25.6

20.9

4. I think that the teacher education programme (i.e. methodology courses) had adequately prepared me to teach English in the secondary classroom

33.7

22.1

44.2

It becomes apparent that the overwhelming majority of the pre-service teachers were confident about their competence in English and declared their satisfaction with their English pronunciation. On the basis of their answers regarding the teacher education programme they had attended, nearly half of the respondents believed that it had offered the necessary background methodological and pedagogical knowledge so as to cope with the classroom reality in both the primary and the secondary context.

5 A Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of .627 was drawn for the self-beliefs items.

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With particular reference to the respondents’ intercultural experience, they were called to report with whom they held most of their communication exchanges in English, by choosing among options such as (i) NSs, (ii) NNSs, (iii) both NSs and NNSs or (iv) their students. Additionally, they were asked five “yes/ no” type questions by relaying information about (i) whether they had friends or relatives who reside abroad, (ii) the regularity of their contact and (iii) the main language of communication exchanges with them, (iv) whether they had ever visited an English-speaking country, and (v) whether they had participated in an Erasmus exchange programme during their undergraduate studies. The one-way ANOVA test was used to test whether there is any effect of the variables mentioned above on the dependent variable (i.e. self beliefs). The test yielded a significant result only in the case of associating respondents’ self-beliefs and the use of English in communication exchanges (see Table 2). Table 2: The interaction between self-beliefs and the use of English in communication exchanges

NSs NNSs with NSs and NNSs with my students Total

N

Mean score of self-beliefs

Std. Deviation

Minimum

Maximum

13 5 42 19 79

2.38 3.45 2.30 2.67 2.48

.38 .48 .43 .75 .59

2.00 3.00 1.50 1.00 1.00

3.00 4.25 3.50 4.00 4.25

F (3, 78) = 27.024, p