Current Perspectives On Pedagogy For English As A Lingua Franca

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
viii Contents
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 ix
Domingos Sávio Pimentel Siqueira

Chapter 14
English As A Lingua Franca And ELT Materials: Is The “Plastic World” Really
Melting? | 239
Subject index | 259
Yasemin Bayyurt & Sumru Akcan
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 dis-
course (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 examina-
tion 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 Eng-
lishes” when she published her first article on the ELF paradigm in English Lan-
guage Teaching Journal (1998).
As the linguistic properties of ELF are clarified, there is no consensus con-
cerning 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 cur-
riculum 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-
2 Yasemin Bayyurt & Sumru Akcan
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 ELF-
aware teacher-education project, base their pedagogical model on a transforma-
tive framework (originally proposed by Sifakis in 2007). Their project for in-ser-
vice 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 teach-
ers 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
Current perspectives on pedagogy for ELF 3
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 start-
ing 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 under-
lying 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”, inves-
tigates 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 lan-
guage proficiency in ELF contexts. The fourth section, “Language Teaching Mate-
rials”, 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, pro-
viding 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).
In Chapter 1, Flowerdew presents an “exploratory corpus-based” account

showing how ELF has begun to influence the teaching of academic and profes-
sional 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 frame-
work 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 acknowl-
edged 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 famil-
iarizing 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-International-
Language (EIL) community. They use a methodology known as Integrated Prac-
tice in Teaching English as an International Language (IPTEIL), earlier devel-
oped 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-spe-
cific 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 Learn-
ing in Europe (ELLiE), which explores ELF in the primary classroom from a trans-
national longitudinal perspective. The study was conducted in primary class-
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 cur-
ricula and teacher education from a theoretical and empirical point of view.
“Teacher Education”, the second section, addresses such issues as ELF-
awareness 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 ELF-
aware 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 profes-
sional training in the UK. These teachers represent a redefined paradigm for ELT.
However, they also express some uncertainty regarding linguistic and pedagogi-
cal goals.
Azuaga and Cavalheiro in Chapter 6 propose to bring ELF and new ELT poli-
cies 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 dis-
cussion 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 universi-
ties, and the perceptions of pre- and in-service English language teachers. They
emphasize the need to include ELF in English language teacher education pro-
grams in Turkey. They conclude their chapter with the two-pronged need to raise
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 experi-
ences 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 experi-
ence 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 appli-
cable 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 teach-
ing 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 edu-
cation. 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
“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 chal-
lenged 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 high-
light 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 commonali-
ties. Each chapter presents creative solutions to the problems of teaching English
in a changing world, the challenge of training future teachers, assessing new pro-
ficiencies, and developing new materials, all orientated to the current realities of
ELF. As Bayyurt and Sifakis (in print) suggest, raising pre- and in-service teach-
ers’ 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.
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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 Pur-
poses (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 internationalisa-
tion 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 postgradu-
ate 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 lan-
guage 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 facil-
itating online discussions and blog postings, and offering open access to pub-
lications, 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 communica-
tion 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/practi-
tioners. 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
14 Lynne J. Flowerdew
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 aca-
demic discourse. Mauranen’s research paradigm has gained increasing currency
in recent years with renewed interest in the field of intercultural rhetoric, moti-
vating 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 meta-
discoursal markers (additive, contrastive, consecutive) in L1 research articles in
Spanish and English and L2 RAs in English from the discipline of business man-
agement, 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 codifica-
tion of several different varieties (see Flowerdew 2012 for an overview). However,
at the same time corpus studies have brought to light the ever-changing dynam-
ics 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
Chapter 1 Adjusting pedagogically to an ELF world: An ESP perspective 15
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 vari-
eties. 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 interpreta-
tions 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 Seidl-
hofer (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 back-
grounds. 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) com-
ments 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 commu-
nicative 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
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 lan-
guage backgrounds (see papers in Granger, Gilquin and Meunier 2013). Interlan-
guage features revealed through learner corpus research, though, are quite dif-
ferent 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 influ-
ences, 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 increas-
ing 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) under-
score 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
well situated to address this growing area of inquiry”. Needless to say, at the heart
of this inquiry lie pragmatic and communicative effectiveness, aspects empha-
sized 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 inter-
face. I then suggest how the writing of expert, multilingual writers in a particu-
lar 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 overwhelm-
ingly 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 lin-
guistic imperialism”. In a similar vein, Horner (2011) challenges the reification
of EAP writing instruction, in particular, US college composition courses repre-
senting strict adherence to NS norms, and calls for a more tolerant and accom-
modationist 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
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 univer-
sity, 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 discus-
sion of how attitudes are closely linked to social differentiation and identity con-
struction). 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 Fergu-
son, 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) initi-
ated 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 fol-
lowing 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).
3 Positioning and re-positioning a proposal

writing module
This 20-hour proposal writing module, also including a 10-minute individual pre-
sentation, 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 activi-
ties 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 “reifi-
cation” when introducing it to students, I consulted three studies in the ESP liter-
ature 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) analys-
ing 68 fundraising proposals, a sub-component of the Indiana Center for Intercul-
tural 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 Founda-
tion 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 obliga-
tory 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
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 consid-
ered 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 terri-
tory 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 struc-

tures 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 struc-
ture, 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 stu-
dents with the overall communicative purpose of the genre as a whole, and the
rhetorical effectiveness of the prototypical individual move structures constitut-
ing this genre. Four of the twelve text segments that I gave to students are given
below.
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
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 success-
ful 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 consid-
ered 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 lan-
guage user has available to him or her a large number of semi-preconstructed
phrases that constitute single phrases” (Sinclair 1991: 110). Seidlhofer and Wid-
dowson (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” cat-
egories 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 catego-
ries 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 strat-
egies for writing successful proposal abstracts, an objective which I again con-
veyed to students. I then decided that consulting two freely-available corpora of
academic written English, the Michigan Corpus of Upper-student Papers (MICUSP)
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 inter-
national 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 Uni-
versity 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 inconsider-
able 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 differ-
ent 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 Communi-
cation. 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 jour-
nals”.
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
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 consid-
ered 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 effective-
ness 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 aware-
ness 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 criti-
cal 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 conse-
quence of the writer’s creative mining of their phraseological database and their
familiarity with the phrase lack of knowledge, as illustrated in line 4.
1 strategy researchers. The article gap of knowledge because previous discus-

addresses a crucial sions of dummy var
2 rature is theoretically based and there is a gap in empirical confirmatory testing of the
knowledge validity of p
3 ality attributes on performance. There is a gap in empirical testing to confirm the valid-
knowledge ity of perform
4 perational improvement, we have identi- gap concerning the lack of knowledge on

fied a research the types of oper
5 ations of pre-teenage children. This is a gap in our knowledge and one that has
significant important implicatio
6 statements in Australia, this paper fills gap in our knowledge. Australia Generally
some of that Accepted Accou
7 ent has been subjected to quantitative gap in knowledge is surprising. Part of its
scrutiny, this 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 colloca-
tion 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 fol-
lowing question “Does that mean that the expression ‘a debate is in progress con-
cerning’ 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 exam-
ples 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 back-
ground 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
empirical research on ELF (cf. Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011), underscores omis-
sion of indefinite and definite articles where obligatory, and redundant or differ-
ent prepositions, which is the case we have in Text segment 1 and line 1 of the con-
cordance output in Figure 3. Mauranen (2011: 107) commenting on academic ELF
notes thus: “Among the commonest non-standard features are articles and prepo-
sitions”. 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 identi-
fied 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 func-
tions 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 famil-
iar 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 resource-

rich 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
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 confer-
ences, 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 pro-
vided 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 accommo-
dating 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 par-
ticular 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 continu-
ally 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
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 Wid-
dowson (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 compila-
tion (Flowerdew 2004, 2012). Mauranen (2011: 101) makes the important point
that, to date, ELFA compilation criteria have generally been drawn up on “exter-
nal” grounds, that is, identification of the prominent genres of the discourse com-
munity 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 lexico-
grammatical 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 vari-
ability residing in the lexico-grammar of the keyword.
Another issue, which is of relevance for ESP, concerns a “cline of acceptabil-
ity” 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 eval-
uative, even ideological, judgment as to what the ELF community would deem
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/computa-
tional linguistics recently pointed out to me that in certain instances it is impera-
tive 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 sub-
technical lexis, items such as problem, recommendation which have a discourse-
organising role.
As far as pedagogy is concerned, I have illustrated the ELF-type features
which surfaced in hands-on concordancing using corpora compiled of success-
ful academic writing, in part consisting of texts from writers whose L1 is not
necessarily English. Many pedagogic applications using corpora with interna-
tional 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 inclu-
sion in a corpus. While it may be argued that the English of published research can be con-
sidered ‘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 lan-
guage. 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 recommenda-
tions 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)
In light of the internationalization of academic institutions and the rapidly

growing number of published expert academic writers with different L1 back-
grounds, 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 epis-
temologies 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 “communi-
ties of practice” show a willingness in “Accommodating to ELF in the interna-
tional 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 meth-
odological issues.
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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, for-
mally 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 Learn-
ing) 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 dif-
ferent news media with their varied standpoints, which is a classroom activity
designed to help the students acquire intercultural skills needed for ELF com-
munication.
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 intro-
duced first, accompanied by presentation of IPTEIL as a methodology combining
a few of those approaches, before going on to discussions of its significance, limi-
tations, and prospects for future teaching practice in ELF.
36 Nobuyuki Hino and Setsuko Oda
2 Five ways of teaching EIL

By reorganizing the taxonomy by Hino (2010) that classified existing EIL pedago-
gies into seven categories, methodologies for teaching EIL may be divided into
the five approaches below, which would also be largely applicable to ELF educa-
tion. 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 cul-
tural 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 speci-
fied at least thus far, it is rather difficult for teachers anyway to employ more dis-
Chapter 2 A classroom ELF pedagogy in Japan 37
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 Univer-
sity, 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 Japa-
nese students, with a limited number of international students. IPTEIL is prac-
ticed 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-
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 situ-
ation:
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 cul-
tural 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), Philip-
pine 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.).
3.5 Features of IPTEIL
Main features of IPTEIL may be identified with three points, which are Legiti-
mate Peripheral Participation in the community of EIL users, materials spoken
or written in a diversity of World Englishes, and the integration of multiple peda-
gogical concepts relevant to EIL. Each of these is briefly discussed in the follow-
ing 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 par-
ticipate 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 mate-
rials 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 ver-
sions 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 stu-
dents, 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, Legiti-
mate 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.
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 “nego-
tiation of meaning”(Seidlhofer 2009). Although efficient ELF users are always
ready to accommodate their English to make it comprehensible for their interloc-
utors (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, Con-
tent-Based Language Instruction, Legitimate Peripheral Participation in a Com-
munity of Practice, and Computer-Assisted Language Learning.
For example, IPTEIL exploits the latest world news as materials with mean-
ingful content, rather than some traditional textbooks geared towards the learn-
ing of linguistic forms, with advantages of Content-Based Language Instruction.
Global Education is also naturally incorporated into IPTEIL, as the class goes
through various world news, covering topics such as war and peace, environmen-
tal 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 view-
points 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 commu-
nication. 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 Interna-
tional Whaling Commission. Though IPTEIL puts a considerable emphasis on
non-native varieties of English, native speaking English (English in an Australian
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. Del-
egates 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 sanctu-
ary 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 suc-
cessful 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 lin-
guistic 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 pro-
duction models for Japanese learners of English that are required to be capable
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 Univer-
sity has been receiving highly positive evaluation both from students and the uni-
versity 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 perspec-
tives, 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).

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 Phil-
ippines. In fact, code-switching by interviewees in this news program is so fre-
quent 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 obser-
vation, 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 inter-
nationally-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
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 uni-
versity 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 per-
ceived 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 non-
native English speaking international graduate students are employed as discus-
sion leaders, they would help create authentic ELF environment in IPTEIL class-
rooms. 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.
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 postgrad-
uate 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 tradi-
tional definition of the term, with another native speaker from Singapore. Gallo-
way 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 “creat-
ing 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 assis-
tants 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 restric-
tions 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 environ-
ment 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 inter-
views 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).
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 pioneer-
ing 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 rela-
tively 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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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. Follow-
ing 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. Diverg-
ing 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 com-
monly 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 (Kul-
tusministerkonferenz 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 promis-
ing 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
52 Kurt Kohn
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 communica-
tive 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 suc-
cessful in its manifestation as bilingual subject teaching. In these “Bili” class-
rooms, subjects like history or biology are taught in English (or French); pedagog-
ical 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 toler-
ance, 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).
Chapter 3 A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom 53
A complementary line of research studies has provided rich empirical evi-

dence of ELF communication that proves successful despite deviations from SE
(Cogo and Dewey 2006). Communicative success – mainly in the sense of intel-
ligibility 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 communica-
tive 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 posi-
tion, 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 peda-
gogy 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 communica-
tion is “usually characterized by a high degree of linguacultural diversity, rou-
tinely 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 grammati-
cal accuracy), and that effective communication is best achieved by conform-
ing to the arbitrarily fixed language norms of Standard varieties […].” The ELF-
informed 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 orien-
tation 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 teach-
ers’ awareness and thus enable them “to move beyond normativity” (p. 166).
On the other hand, however, a post-normative approach is seen as compat-
ible with a SE model, provided such an orientation can be justified by the con-
1 TELF (“Tübingen English as a Lingua Franca Corpus”): http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de/

telf (accessed 2 February 2013)
54 Kurt Kohn
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 lan-
guage 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 func-
tion. 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 pedagogi-
cal 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 detri-
mental effects. In my own experience as teacher educator in both pre-service
university education and in-service professional development, many teacher-
students 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 mis-
understanding 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 communi-
cation; 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 socio-
educational 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 tradi-
tional English as a foreign language approaches with their over-emphasis on com-
pliance 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
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 devel-
opment 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 speak-
er’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 owner-
ship of a language is established through such a process of individual construc-
tion, 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.
56 Kurt Kohn
First, creating my English is about creating my own declarative and proce-

dural 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, cre-
ating 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 com-
municative 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 satisfac-
tion as resulting from compliance with one’s own requirements of performance.
This endonormative feeling of success is not only an “evaluation” of past and on-
going 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.
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 regard-
ing descriptive consistency? No. It is my own cognitive and emotional perception
of MASE as a set of language characteristics, more or less consistent and homo-
geneous, 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 influ-
ence 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 every-
day 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 informa-
tion” 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 prac-
tice 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 endeav-
our, 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”
58 Kurt Kohn
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 constructiv-
ist 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 peda-
gogical endeavours. Considering the communicative realities of global ELF com-
munication 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 pro-
cesses 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-
cal nature of the processes involved. Both perspectives need to be considered and
combined.
For ELT professionals, including teachers, teacher educators, and provid-
ers 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 differ-
ent, 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 ade-
quately 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 cor-
rection 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.
60 Kurt Kohn
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 learn-
ers 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 constructiv-
ist 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 construc-
tivist “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 learn-
ing 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 addi-
tion to learning about the characteristics, possibilities, and challenges of ELF,
exposure to pedagogically selected manifestations of genuine ELF communica-
tion helps foster learners’ linguistic and cultural tolerance – both for others and
for themselves. The second pedagogical focus is on helping learners develop
ELF-specific comprehension skills for coping with e.g. unfamiliar pronunciation,

unclear meanings, or weak coherence. Perception and handling of comprehen-
sion problems is an essential part of “third space” construction. Just as in the
case of awareness-raising, extensive practice should be supported and comple-
mented by “learning about” activities. The third pedagogical focus is on devel-
oping ELF-specific production skills. Of particular relevance in this connection
is the concept of pragmatic fluency, which emphasizes non-native speakers’ lin-
guistic-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 lubri-
cation 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 produc-
tion skills involve strategic processes that are anchored in ordinary communi-
cative 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 partici-
pation 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 emer-
gence 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 interest-
ing 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 pedagogi-
cal 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 authen-
ticated natural communication outside the classroom. However, to fully profit
62 Kurt Kohn
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 construc-
tivist “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 communica-
tion, 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, situ-
ational appropriateness, poignancy of expression, and comprehensibility. Exter-
nal norms, as mentioned above, have their place in this through their manifesta-
tion 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 learn-
ing 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 differ-
ent 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
powerful hub for organizing pedagogically integrated blended learning ensem-

bles 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, Wiki-
spaces, 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 collab-
orative creation, sharing, and exchange – not to mention gaming. Real-life com-
munication 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 Inte-
grated Learning”) (2009–2011)² created corpora of video-recorded and pedagogi-
cally annotated “natural narrative” interviews for CLIL settings in secondary,
higher and vocational education (Kohn 2012). In addition to native-speaker inter-
views in various European languages, the corpora also include European mani-
festations 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 appreci-
ate, 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 Communica-
tion 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).
64 Kurt Kohn
Warth 2011). The learners negotiated intercultural topics and contents with their
peers and thereby managed to raise their awareness and tolerance for linguacul-
tural differences, explore and co-develop their own English, develop communi-
cative-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 environ-
ment 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, voca-
tional, 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 Acquisi-
tion”) (2013–2015)⁵. The work plan addresses issues of language learning and
teaching on secondary school level at the crossroads of telecollaboration, lan-
guage 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 orien-
tation, pushed by their communicative needs and identity aspirations, fuelled by
their OWN creativity. With reference to writing classes for non-standard speak-
ers 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).
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for valuable comments and sug-
gestions.
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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 learn-
ing 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 learn-
ers’ FL achievement at specific transition levels or in time through longitudinal
studies (Johnstone 2000; Benvenuto & Lopriore 2000; Lopriore 2001; Roess-
ing 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:
70 Lucilla Lopriore
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 plurilingual-

ism – 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 land-
scapes (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 lit-
eracy development in their mother tongue, in the language of schooling and in
English. Furthermore, since the prevailing means for communication and interac-
tion, 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 phenome-
non, the issues characterising the new school population, and the language poli-
cies adopted in terms of the language of instruction, respect of linguistic diversity
Chapter 4 ELF & Early language learning 71
and of learners’ multilingual repertoire. It then investigates how early language

learning is implemented in Europe through the findings of a longitudinal trans-
national 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 con-
nected 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.
72 Lucilla Lopriore
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 chil-
dren, 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 adapt-
ing 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.
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 resi-
dential 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 cur-
riculum. 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 mean-
ingful interactions.
The Language Policy Division in Strasbourg, in order to promote social cohe-
sion, launched within the framework of Languages in Education, Languages for
Education a special program called The Language of schooling³ for the develop-
ment 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
74 Lucilla Lopriore
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 plu-
rilingualism and the development of multiliteracies, promotes all those educa-
tional 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 edu-
cation.
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 partic-

ularly 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
franca. This type of approach sets new challenges to commonly held assump-
tions about language, language teaching and language education and it activates
learners’ capability “for using, and therefore for further extending, their linguis-
tic 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 train-
ing 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)
76 Lucilla Lopriore
Qualified Qualified Qualified Qualified Preferred National

Teacher Primary F.L. Teacher F.L. Primary Model
Teacher Teacher
England X 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 longitu-
dinal 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 quali-
tative 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
dislikes of the various elements of the learning process as the experience of learn-
ing accumulates in the years.
The data from the ELLiE study have shown how the forms of oral interac-
tions 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 educa-
tion, 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 knowl-
edge 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-
78 Lucilla Lopriore
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’ lit-
eracy level is widely recognized by educationalists, much more so than the fam-
ily’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 sub-
sample 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-
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 coun-
tries 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 Inter-
net, 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, par-
ticularly 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 acqui-
sition processes. While the FL learning processes are influenced by the variety of
input children are exposed to at school, in learners’ perception English is gradu-
ally shifting from a subject per se to an available and shared tool for communica-
tion to be used within as well as beyond the FL classroom.
80 Lucilla Lopriore
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 pre-
disposed 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 chil-
dren’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 natu-
rally occurring attempts on the part of the learners to use the FL for establish-
ing 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).
Table 1: Extract from lesson transcripts
Child (girl – 9 yrs old) Questions Child (girl – 9 yrs old) Responses
– Which hair …colour he have? – A girl

– Is it …is a girl or a boy? – Ten penso
– Kk… hm… how… how looks his – She have… eh… (vediamo)
clothes out? – She has… um… shoes… blue skirt and eh… shirt
– What she doing? what’s he – Brown, brown to red
doing? – Long
– He is the window? – She… eh have her hand in the colour and then on
– Is this qui? the paper
– Yes
The analyses of young learners’ oral production have shown consistent ELF fea-
tures 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 defi-
nite 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 self-
confidence than correcting the commonly regarded mistakes in FL oral produc-
tion. 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.
82 Lucilla Lopriore
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 back-
ground 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-con-
fident 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, mul-
ticultural class where English is usually being taught by non-native teachers and
children develop multiple literacies. Teacher educators are introducing materi-
als 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 profession-
ally 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
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 appropri-
ate pedagogy. (Seidlhofer 1999: 233)
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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 pur-
poses. 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 per-
spectives, obtained during a broader study of language teacher identity. In par-
ticular, 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. Sug-
gestions 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 evolu-
tion or revolution is open to debate, but the overall direction of travel is surely
becoming clearer.
90 Andrew Blair
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 per-
formance, (…) 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 suc-
cessful… 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 perspec-
tive, 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 theo-
rising on pedagogical models and goals (for example, Dewey 2012), and conse-
quent 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 teach-
ers 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 accommoda-
tion 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, tra-
ditional notions of speech community, proficiency and method, towards a model
based on principles of multilingualism and “meta-cultural competence” (Shari-
fian 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-
Chapter 5 Evolving a post-native, multilingual model for ELF-aware teacher education 91
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 ever-
moving 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 pre-
pared? 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 learn-
ers, 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 lan-
guage 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 com-
petence 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 learn-
ers (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-depen-
dent – therefore so is ‘effective pedagogy’.
92 Andrew Blair
Dewey (2012) argues in favour of moving beyond ‘native’ norms towards ‘post-
normative’ 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 prin-
ciples 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 teach-
ers’ “fundamental ambivalence about ELF” (2012: 167). Certainly the teacher par-
ticipants 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 edu-
cators, 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, com-
petence 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 invest-
ment in standards and ‘native’ norms, through their own language learning and
teacher training experience.
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 partici-
pants (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 inter-
views 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, target-
ing two particular teachers currently working and studying in the UK, through a
joint interview. The project aimed to address the following related research ques-
tions:
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
94 Andrew Blair
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, transla-
tion. 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, chang-

ing 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 Inter-
national 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
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 atten-
tion. 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?
96 Andrew Blair
Perhaps this is one way to become a member of what Pavlenko (2003) described
as the “reimagined, multicompetent community” of ‘non-native’ teachers; cer-
tainly 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 aware-
ness 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 matu-
rity 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 differ-
ent contexts; and the inappropriate previous (and current) emphasis on simplis-
tic ‘native’ models – both for themselves and their students. Another theme was
the potential and actual tensions, paradoxes and uncertainties that these teach-
ers 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 reac-
tion 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 reconcep-
tualization 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.
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-stud-
ied 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 princi-
ple’ 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 appro-
priate 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, com-
petence 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
98 Andrew Blair
as central to the “purpose and process” of ELT (Widdowson 2003). On the MA pro-
gramme 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 “post-
method 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 imple-
ment. There is a clear need for teachers to develop their awareness of underlying
principles of language and learning, as ever, but arguably these principles them-
selves 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, compe-
tent 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 knowl-
edge 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, lan-
guage as a system or social practice, teacher knowledge, ‘nativeness’, ‘speech
community’, the ‘final state’ in language acquisition; ‘effective pedagogy’).
– ‘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 substan-
tial 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 com-
petent – 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 ‘multilin-
gual principle’ for teaching and learning, and more appropriate teacher edu-
cation 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
100 Andrew Blair
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.
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Luísa Azuaga & Lili Cavalheiro
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 activ-
ity like advertising, business and banking, industry and commerce, interna-
tional 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) com-
munity 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 par-
ticular one of the two most celebrated varieties, Standard British English (espe-
cially 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 inten-
tions. 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
104 Luísa Azuaga & Lili Cavalheiro
is a natural process that comes into play not only when it is used in new cul-
tural 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 native-
speaker norms. I have suggested that rather than seeking to specify goals in terms of pro-
jected 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 “expand-
ing 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-ser-
vice teacher training courses are structured, as well as their contribution to train-
ees’ actions and attitudes, that suggestions can be put forth to improve training
courses and pre-service teachers’ awareness and perceptions of the transforma-
tions English is going through.
Chapter 6 Bringing new ELT policies and ELF to teacher training courses 105
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 “for-
eigners”, 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 imple-
mented 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 disadvan-
tages 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 communica-
tion, culture and models. Much more recently, Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey (2011)
also review the differences between ELF and EFL in terms of paradigms, perspec-
tives, 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 encour-
aging 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 inter-
national language like English is based on a different set of assumptions when
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 “intel-
ligibility” 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 conver-
sation (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 lan-
guage 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)
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 dif-
ference 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 Widdow-
son (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
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 in-
classroom 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 ques-
tionnaire 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 lan-
guage 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 consider-
ation 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. Pro-
grams 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 pre-
pare 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).
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 profi-
ciency considerably lower, revealing difficulties especially in oral communica-
tion 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 essen-
tial 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 develop-
ing communication skills, in-classroom activities may take on more textbook
oriented exercises, where guidelines of standardized language patterns are fol-
lowed, with particular emphasis on grammar.
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 train-
ees). 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
1st year 2nd year
Mixture of British and American English 52% 48%

British English or similar 20% 26%
American English or similar 16% 13%
Mixture of British and American English with traces of Portuguese 12% 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 speak-
ers, 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 essen-
tial 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
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 impor-
tance 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 year 2nd year
1st British culture 80% 70%

2nd American culture 60% 65%
3rd Cultures from other English-speaking countries (e.g. Australia, 40% 48%
Canada, etc.)
4th Students’ own culture 32% 22%
5th Cultures from L2 countries (e.g. India, Singapore, etc.) 48% 57%
6th Other worldwide cultures (e.g. Brazil, China, Germany, etc.) 60% 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 associ-
ated 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 perspec-
tive 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.
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 – need-
less 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 objec-
tives 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 con-
cerning 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 impor-
tance of other central issues. For instance, when regarding writing “without
grammar mistakes, even if American and British varieties are used interchange-
ably”, 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 “profi-
cient 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).
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 respon-
dents. 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.
Trainees continued to share this same awareness, when taking into account
the status of “being a proficient speaker, even if some mistakes (grammar or pro-
nunciation) are made, but with no hindrance in communication”. There was like-
wise 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 commu-
nicative 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 accord-
ingly 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 materi-
als used to develop these skills (e.g. written texts, audio files and films/docu-
mentaries). Once again, preference was primarily manifested in favor of British
produced materials, followed then by those developed in the United States. Nev-
ertheless, it is noteworthy that the tendency for British and American based mate-
rials decreased in second year trainees, especially regarding those produced in
Britain, which fell by 15%, from 80% to 65%.
When teacher trainees were questioned about materials produced elsewhere,

those strongly in favor of this option never surpassed the 35% mark, which con-
firms 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 commu-
nication, 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 refer-
ring to the Anglo-American culture as the central point of reference, as similarly
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 aware-
ness of their limitations in language production; hence, giving special attention
to communication and context of situation. Nevertheless, when considering lis-
tening 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 pre-
service 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 perfec-
tion 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 pub-
lished 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 teach-
ers 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 pro-
moted not only between trainees, practicum supervisors and university profes-
sors, 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 teach-
ers, and not only to their training, so that they could understand “the nature of
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, aware-
ness 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 communica-
tion 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); pre-
senting 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 expe-
riences, 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 Linguis-
tics. 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
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 circum-
stances 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 else-
where, 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 well-
established texts in the field, as well as reflect on and develop a critical aware-
ness 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 tradi-
tional 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 foster-
ing the development of author-based materials centered on learners’ needs, and
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”.
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Oxford University Press.
Edwards, Corony & Charles Owen. 2005. The impact on teachers of language variation as
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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.
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in the outer circle. In Randolph Quirk & Henry G. Widdowson (eds.), English in the world:
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Medgyes, Péter. 1994. The non-native teacher. London: Macmillan.
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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 teach-
ers 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 con-
siderable body of research that provides very detailed accounts of the many tran-
sient 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 rela-
tion 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
122 Martin Dewey
means though that we must rethink established convention. While the assump-
tion 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 cur-
rently 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 con-
ceived as a fixed set of language forms, and by contrast, the rich communica-
tive 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 per-
ceptions, 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 percep-
tions of language in teaching materials and resources. Even only a fairly cursory
analysis of popular textbooks currently produced by major UK based publish-
Chapter 7 Time to wake up some dogs! Shifting the culture of language in ELT 123
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 influen-
tial publishers of ELT materials in the UK are as follows: English Unlimited (Cam-
bridge 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 text-
books are marketed on the basis of claims such as the following: Information-
rich, 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 learn-
ers to use English for global communication (http://www.cambridge.org/gb/
elt/catalogue/subject/project/item5629547/EnglishUnlimited/?site_locale=en_
GB&currentSubjectID=382378).
Yet even in cases where textbooks make explicit claims to this effect, the lan-
guage 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
124 Martin Dewey
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 commu-
nicative 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 compo-
nents 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 Cam-
bridge ESOL exam scripts.
In addition, this particular teaching resource, like many others currently
being produced, draws very extensively on the CEFR (Common European Frame-
work 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 docu-
ment, 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 spontane-
ity 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 dis-
course 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.
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 qualifi-
cation for teachers wishing to learn more about current developments in ELT-
related research, theory, pedagogy and practice. As a result, all participants in
the study are familiar with current debate in applied linguistics research, includ-
ing 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, teach-
ers 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)
126 Martin Dewey
Extract 3:
“Common grammatical knowledge used by native speakers or professional English speak-

ers 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) prop-
erties: 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 interac-
tions (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 dis-
course 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 lin-
guistic homogeneity and adopt a single prestige variety (the standard). This in
fact underpins the approach to language currently being practiced in the profes-
sion, particularly in language teacher education. Despite, for example, reference
to ELF and Global Englishes now appearing in the syllabus guidelines of prom-
inent 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 con-
tinue to foster a norm-based approach.
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 alter-
native 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 variet-
ies’ (ibid). The inevitability resides only in Swan’s continued attachment to lan-
guage 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. Con-
tinued 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 edu-
cation 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 pre-
digested facts and their own pre-conceptions about language’ (p. 183, my empha-
sis). 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
128 Martin Dewey
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. Lan-
guage 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 rein-
forced – first made explicit during pre-service training courses and then becom-
ing 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 knowl-
edge’ 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 under-
lined 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 orienta-
tion to language characteristic of other teaching awards – represents a limited
conceptualization of the content knowledge of language teachers. Yet, this con-
ception 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 influ-
ence of Standard language ideology on teachers’ thinking it is also essential that
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 Febru-
ary 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 ‘mid-
dle-market’, politically right-leaning national newspaper (http://www.express.
co.uk/comment/expresscomment/376163/Hooray-for-the-Head-who-teaches-
correct-English).
In aiming to promote the pupils’ use of Standard English, the school in ques-
tion 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 detri-
mental. 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. con-
clude that this monolithic approach means that language is treated as autono-
mous, 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-
130 Martin Dewey
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 dis-
course structures reinforcing a notion of language learning as prescriptive, creat-
ing a strong impression among students that ‘good’ language use is regulated by
rules and authority. This research indicates not only that daily language prac-
tice 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 dif-
ferent 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 sociolinguis-
tics in the curriculum, and from much earlier on in a teacher’s professional devel-
opment – 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 aware-
ness among ELT professionals of the following: the integral link between language
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, includ-
ing 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 activi-
ties 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
132 Martin Dewey
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 inevi-
table among individual teachers, however. There is a dominant, institutional dis-
course 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 dif-
ferent 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 prin-
ciples and re-examine these in a critical light. Critical reflection enables teach-
ers 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 normativ-
ity 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 com-
munity 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 prac-
tically 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
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 challeng-
ing 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 interac-
tions can translate as uncertainty and lack of clarity. Teachers and teacher edu-
cators 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, profes-
sional discourse in ELT has a long tradition of treating language as if it were pre-
determined. 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 pedago-
gies 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 consid-
eration 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.
134 Martin Dewey
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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?
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 com-
petitiveness 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 sig-
nificant 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 indus-
try, 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
136 Dilek İnal and Esra Özdemir
both economic and interpersonal purposes, and has increased demand for Eng-
lish-language education. Simultaneously, the instrumental as well as interper-
sonal 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 (Hür-
riyet 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-
Chapter 8 Re/considering English language teacher education programs 137
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 poli-
cies 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 sec-
ondary 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). Start-
ing 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 profi-
cient learners,” the length of Turkey’s English teacher education program was
extended to three years in 1962, to “train better language teachers” with addi-
tional 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 an-
ticipate 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.
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 Col-
leges whose programs were modeled after counterparts in native English-speak-
ing countries, except for the courses in Turkish language and history. Hence, Tur-
key’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 pro-
grams, 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 English-
medium 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 tri-
partite 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).
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 consider-
able 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 Teach-
ing 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 Edu-
cation 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. Com-
municative 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.
Thus, the new program, which is currently in use in all the faculties of educa-
tion across Turkey today, reflects a radical re-thinking of educational philosophy
in the context of foreign language learning and teaching. When interpreted care-
fully, 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 lan-
guage teacher education as perceived by the central authority in higher educa-
tion. 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 undoubt-
edly 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, appro-
priate 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-
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 aca-
demia, 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 inten-
tion to investigate how the main stakeholders in English language teacher edu-
cation 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. Ninety-
seven 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, compris-
ing 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 partici-
pation from 42 cities of Turkey.
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 (Dimen-
sion 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 partici-
pant’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 pro-
grams?
The first research question was basically addressed by Dimension 1 (Paradig-

matic 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 prac-
tice of English language learning and teaching; such as progress and proficiency
in English. The statements prepared for Dimension 3 sought to investigate par-
ticipants’ acknowledgement of the place of ELF in the English Language Teacher
Education Programs in Turkey. Example statements from the three dimensions
are as follows:
Dimension 1: Dimension 2: Dimension 3:

Paradigmatic Changes Teaching and Learning English Language Teacher
English 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, ELT education programs
conform to Standard English but developing proficiency on should familiarize English lan-
makes sense is acceptable. language forms is of utmost guage teachers with different
importance. 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.
As mentioned earlier, a higher score from the survey meant a stronger ELF ten-
dency. 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 dis-
tance 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 aca-
demia 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 learn-
ing (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.
Table 1: Total mean scores of the three participant groups
Total Group N Mean Std. Sum of df Mean F Sig.

Deviation Squares Square
Academia
100 103,5700 11,49814 Between 733,927 2 366,963 2,853 ,059

Groups
service
100 107,0900 10,87681 Within 38204,660 297 128,635

Pre-
Groups
service
100 104,0200 11,63587

In-
300 104,8933 11,41181 Total 38938,587 299
ANOVA
Table 2: Paradigmatic changes

Academia
100 26,9500 4,16667 Between 225,360 2 112,680 6,018 ,003

Groups
service
100 29,0500 4,40013 Within 5561,210 297 18,725

Pre-
Groups
service
100 27,7300 4,41040

In-
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
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 sta-
tistically significant manner. The results showed that the difference between aca-
demia 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.
The mean scores for Dimension 2 (Teaching and Learning) showed that pre-
service 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 never-
theless 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 differ-
ence was not significant for the academia and in-service groups, and pre-service
and in-service.
Table 3: ELF teaching and learning

Academia
100 39,4500 4,87702 Between 122,427 2 61,213 2,390 ,093

Groups
service
100 40,9300 4,97520 Within 7606,010 297 25,609

Pre-
Groups
service
100 39,7500 5,31887

In-
300 40,0433 5,08405 Total 7728,437 299
ANOVA
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 aca-
demia (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).
Table 4: Education programs

Academia
100 37,1700 4,21411 Between 24,180 2 12,090 ,808 ,447

Groups
service
100 37,1100 3,53595 Within 4442,740 297 14,959

Pre-
Groups
service
100 36,5400 3,82290

In-
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 question-
naire 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.
Table 5: ELF Familiarity
ELF familiar N Mean SD SEx t test
t df p
ELFTotal Yes 242 106,2769 11,16204 ,71752 4,420 298 ,000

No 58 99,1207 10,69198 1,40393
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 instruc-
tion 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 respon-
dents’ 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 indi-
cates 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 df p
ELFTotal Yes 142 106,5845 11,57599 ,97144 2,454 298 ,015

No 158 103,3734 11,07961 ,88145
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 lan-
guage 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 linguis-
tic 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; Dimen-
sion 2: Learning and Teaching English) but when it comes to the third dimen-
sion (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.
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 pro-
ducing 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 teach-
ers 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: Learn-
ing and Teaching English), they are placed between pre-service teachers (who
scored the highest) and academia (who scored the lowest). In the third dimen-
sion (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 aca-
demia’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 “decision-
making 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.
The results also indicated that there was a dependency between ELF famil-
iarity, 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 encompass-
ing 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’ commit-
ments. 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.
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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 expand-
ing circle countries (Sifakis and Sougari 2010). Current changes in the demo-
graphics 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 (hence-
forth 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-lingua-
cultural 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 inter-
play 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.
154 Areti-Maria Sougari & Roxani Faltzi
2 Teachers’ beliefs and factors affecting their

beliefs
Teachers’ beliefs are an important yet intricate concept. The abundance of def-
initions 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 aca-
demic 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 univer-
sity 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 pre-
service 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 catego-
ries. 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 prac-
tices. 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).
Chapter 9 Drawing upon Greek pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ELF-related issues 155
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 confi-
dence 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 con-
sidered 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-
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 pronun-
ciation 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 self-
perceptions 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 intercul-
tural 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 self-
beliefs refers to the pre-service teachers’ own estimate of their capabilities to
teach the English language, a view that could stem from their university educa-
tion 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 expe-
rience 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).
4.1 The participants
The number of participants returning the questionnaire was 86 out of 117 ques-
tionnaires 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 sec-
ondary schools (i.e. four weeks in each school). At this stage, it should be men-
tioned 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 pro-
gramme. 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 surveil-
lance of the cooperating teacher who acted as a mentor. As part of the internship,
the participants³ were expected to compile a portfolio, which included observa-
tion 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 fol-

lowed 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 respon-
dents’ 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.
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” ques-
tions, 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 par-
ticular attention. What we tried to deduce was whether the respondents’ lan-
guage 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 sta-
tistical 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 vari-
ability 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 question-
naire. For most purposes, Alpha should be above 0.6 to support reasonable internal consistency
(Hinton et al. 2005).
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 associat-
ing 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 Neither Disagree

agree or agree nor or strongly
agree (%) disagree (%) 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 25.6 20.9

(i.e. methodology courses) had adequately pre-
pared me to teach English in the primary classroom
4. I think that the teacher education programme 44.2 33.7 22.1

(i.e. methodology courses) had adequately
prepared me to teach English in the secondary
classroom
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 peda-
gogical 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.
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
N Mean score of Std. Deviation Minimum Maximum

self-beliefs
NSs 13 2.38 .38 2.00 3.00

NNSs 5 3.45 .48 3.00 4.25
with NSs and NNSs 42 2.30 .43 1.50 3.50
with my students 19 2.67 .75 1.00 4.00
Total 79 2.48 .59 1.00 4.25
F (3, 78) = 27.024, p<.001
A further post hoc test was conducted to find out the exact conditions that pro-
duced this effect (Hinton et al. 2005). The Scheffe’s post hoc test revealed that
the interaction of the two variables (i.e. self- beliefs and the use of English in
communication exchanges) led to the creation of two subsets as follows: the first
addressed the communication exchanges with (i) NSs, (ii) NNSs and NSs, and (iii)
their students, and the second was restricted to communication with NNSs. In
other words, it seems that we have two distinct groups: (i) those who use English
in their exchanges with NSs, NNSs and their students and (ii) those who use
English only with other NNSs. On the one hand, English is used in various com-
munication exchanges depending on the situation, whereas, on the other hand,
English is used mainly with NNSs (by very few respondents (N=5)). Thus, depend-
ing on the self-beliefs held, individuals seek opportunities to use English in their
exchanges. Visits to English-speaking countries and participation in an Erasmus
exchange programme, did not affect their self-beliefs.
4.4.2 Making the link between beliefs about teaching English and intercultural
experience
With regard to the respondents’ beliefs about teaching English, five questionnaire
items⁶ pertained to this category (see Table 3).
Table 3: Pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teaching English
Strongly Neither Disagree

agree or agree nor or strongly
agree (%) disagree (%) disagree (%)
5. It is important for the learners of English to 37.7 35.3 27.1

develop a native-like accent
6. The teaching focus should be on Standard 21.2 31.8 47.1

English grammar
7. When teaching English, learners’ awareness 64.7 31.8 3.5

of aspects of various cultures (i.e. other than the
target one) should be raised
8. Teachers of English should have a perfect accent 53.5 30.2 16.3

in English
9. It is necessary for Greek teachers of English to 46.5 27.9 25.6

imitate native speakers’ accent
Even though pre-service teachers seemed to display quite diverse attitudes

towards the development of a native-like accent by the learners of English, they
stated that the subject of English should embrace a variety of English and other
cultures in order to raise learners’ awareness of the spread and variability of the
English language worldwide. When it comes to Standard English grammar as the
teaching focus, the majority expressed their opposition to that. They attested to
the importance of having a perfect accent in English, even though they did not
have similar expectations from their students.
While trying to trace an interaction between pre-service teachers’ beliefs
about teaching English and the variable of intercultural experience, the General
Linear Model procedure (Univariate ANOVA⁷) was employed. The analysis showed
that there is no interaction between the two variables (i.e. beliefs about teaching
6 The overall Alpha value .603 was given which indicates a reliable scale.
7 Univariate ANOVA was used to examine if any independent variable (main effect) or any inter-
actions influence the beliefs about teaching.
English and intercultural experience), which possibly means that the students’
experience in intercultural settings does not lead to more ELF-aware perceptions
with regards to teaching English in Greece. As can be seen in Table 4, beliefs
about teaching practices are not affected by any of the items that pertain to the
category of intercultural experience (i.e. as indicated by the Univariate ANOVA
tests that were run). However, once the two items “I use English to communicate
mostly with NSs, NNSs, both NSs and NNSs and my students” and “Have you ever
visited an English speaking country?” were regarded as one item for statistical
purposes, a statistical difference arose indicating that teaching practices could be
affected when the respondents have accumulated experience, which derives from
personal visits in an English speaking country and the use of English in various
communicative contexts.
Table 4: The interaction between beliefs about teaching (dependent variable) and intercultural
experience: Test of between – subjects effects
Source Type III Sum df Mean F p

of Squares Square
I use English to communicate mostly with NSs, .185 3 .062 .211 .888
NNSs, NSs and NNSs, and my students
Do you have friends or relatives who live abroad? .000 0 . . .
Do you contact them often? .713 1 .713 2.439 .129
Do you use English in your exchanges with them? .005 1 .005 .017 .897
Have you ever visited an English speaking country? .030 1 .030 .102 .752
Have you taken part in an Erasmus programme? .073 1 .073 .250 .620
I use English to communicate mostly with NSs, 2.537 1 2.537 8.676 .006
NNSs, NSs and NNSs, and my students
Have you ever visited an English speaking country?
4.4.3 Teaching practices adopted
Once faced with the classroom reality, pre-service teachers assumed the role of
the teacher and reacted upon the occurrence of oral errors perceived as interfer-
ing either with the comprehension or the grammaticality of the output. Thus, the
obvious options were to opt for focus on form, on content, or both. The degree of
importance placed on a certain type of error was examined and the relationship
between the error types and the teaching context is summarized in Table 5. The
Pearson chi-square test was employed to examine whether there was any asso-
ciation between the types of errors corrected by teachers and the school context
(primary or secondary classroom). The results presented vertically refer to the
responses that apply to the primary sector, whereas the results presented hori-
zontally refer to practices adopted at the secondary level. When confronted with
oral errors committed by their learners in the primary and secondary classroom,
different priorities were given. The order in which errors were corrected at the
primary level were as follows: content (35.8%), grammatical (30.9%), pronuncia-
tion (17.2%) and lexical (16.1%). When accounting for practices adopted at the
secondary level, the following picture arises in the case of errors corrected: gram-
matical (37.0%), content (29.6%), lexical (21.0%) and pronunciation (12.3%).
Table 5: Types of errors mostly corrected in the primary and secondary classroom
Secondary classroom
Content errors
Pronunciation
Lexical errors
Grammatical
errors
errors
Total
16 5 2 2 25
Grammatical errors
19.7% 6.2% 2.5% 2.5% 30.9%
Count % of total
5 5 1 2 13
Primary classroom Lexical errors
6.2% 6.2% 1.2% 2.5% 16.1%
5 4 18 2 29
Content errors
6.2% 4.9% 22.2% 2.5% 35.8%
4 3 3 4 14
Pronunciation errors
4.9% 3.7% 3.7% 4.9% 17.2%
30 17 24 10 81
Total
37.0% 21.0% 29.6% 12.4% 100.0%
χ2 (9) = 31.712, p < .001
What becomes prevalent in the data analysis is that pre-service teachers cor-
rected similar types of errors up to 53% in both settings; thus, to a great extent
there was tendency to show similar practices without displaying differential
treatment depending on the classroom context. However, 38 out of the 81 respon-
dents admitted having different priorities in the two settings. As revealed in the
data analysis, when addressing secondary learners, greater variability arises,
thus offering greater variety in the types of errors that the pre-service teachers
reacted upon. In both the primary and secondary context, content and gram-
matical errors were prioritized and received some kind of treatment. However, we
notice that content was given primacy in the primary context over grammaticality
in the secondary one.
The data obtained were also analysed in order to draw insight into the cul-
tures portrayed in the pre-service teachers’ teaching at the primary and second-
ary context. Table 6 presents the priorities given in relation to cultural portrayal
in the two educational contexts.
Table 6: Cultures portrayed in teaching
Secondary classroom
Other cultures
American
British
Total
21 4 5 30
British
Count % of total
48.8% 9.3% 11.6% 69.7%
2 4 0 6
Primary classroom American
4.7% 9.3% .0% 14.0%
Other cultures (e.g. 2 1 4 7

Spanish, Greek) 4.7% 2.3% 9.3% 16.3%
25 9 9 43
Total
58.2% 20.9% 20.9% 100.0%
χ2 (4) = 15.287, p = .004
The Pearson chi-square test was used here as previously and rendered a sig-
nificant difference in the practices in the two contexts. Pre-service teachers
admitted incorporating the different cultures to varying degrees. In both con-
texts, the portrayal of the British culture was a top priority, even though such
portrayal was mainly undertaken in the primary classroom (69.7% vs 58.2% in
the secondary classroom). The portrayal of the British culture in both settings
attracted the attention of almost half of the respondents (48.8%), reflecting the
participants’ engagement with traditional teaching practices that reflect the NS
culture. In the case of the secondary classroom, there seems to be an increasing
interest in incorporating instances from the American culture as well as other
cultures.
5 Discussion of findings and implications to

pre-service teachers training
In light of the above findings, some issues arise and need to be highlighted.
The overwhelming majority of Greek pre-service teachers have realised the role
English serves and the importance of English in communication exchanges
with NSs and NNSs; this seems to concur with previous studies (Coşkun 2011;
Öztürk, Çeçen and Altınmakas 2010). Participants with intercultural experience
were found to be more open to the possibility of using English not only with NSs
but also with NNSs. A reciprocal situation between self-beliefs and experience
of intercultural communicative contexts is transpired here. In other words, the
more diverse encounters they had (in which English is employed), the more their
self-beliefs were strengthened and vice versa.
When it comes to classroom practices, Greek pre-service teachers of English
fall back on familiar patterns stressing the need to focus on form (Sifakis 2004).
Both grammatical and content errors captured pre-service teachers’ attention in
both primary and secondary school settings but to a varying extent. Emphasis on
content was given primacy over grammaticality in the case of instructing primary
learners, whereas grammatical accuracy received greater attention at the sec-
ondary level. Both lexical and pronunciation errors were the least corrected,
a fact that highlights pre-service teachers’ priorities when dealing with errors
and contemplating ways of remedying the situation. Furthermore, their preoc-
cupation with form reflects their attachment to NS norms. Previous research has
also highlighted Greek in-service EFL teachers’ norm-bound views; their views
reflected (i) the teachers’ self-perception as the ‘legal guardians of the English
language with respect to their learners’, (ii) the association of any language with
its NSs, and (iii) their lack of awareness of ELF-related issues (Sifakis and Sougari
2005).
Greek pre-service teachers of English seem to feel confident about their com-
petence in English as well as their own accent, a finding that contradicts previous
findings (Bernat 2008). It is possible that this new generation of English language
teachers, with more opportunities for intercultural contacts, will display greater
awareness of the emerging role of English. However, that remains to be further
explored as well as cultivated if we wish these beliefs to be translated into ELF-
aware teaching practices. For this reason, beliefs that are linked to Greek pre-ser-
vice teachers’ intercultural experience should be put into practice and pre-service
teachers need to be properly informed about ELF and trained regarding how to
incorporate such information in their teaching practices.
We suggest that any interaction between NNESTs should be encouraged and

promoted since it is expected to enable future teachers of English to respond to
any challenges in their future professional lives. Collaboration between Greek
pre-service teachers and other NNESTs coming from various sociolinguistic back-
grounds could prove valuable. In this respect, they could exchange ideas online
through blogs and other social networks. Moreover, focus group discussions on
topics raising ELF awareness can be conducted on a regular basis during teacher
training courses. Pre-service teachers’ reflections can be pivotal to their future
development as well as form a potent instrument for their empowerment (Bailey,
Curtis, and Nunan 2001).
Future research should try to investigate further the possible impact of
such endeavours both on a short term as well as on a long-term basis. Previous
attempts to explore the impact of exposure to World Englishes through a univer-
sity course (Drljaca and Sirola 2010) or TV programmes (Shim 2002) proved quite
encouraging towards this direction. Additionally, longitudinal studies that would
record the development of pre-service teachers’ beliefs need to be designed and
implemented in order to further advance knowledge in the area of beliefs con-
struction and cultivation.
6 Conclusion
In this chapter, we have presented collective data from a larger investigation con-
cerning Greek pre-service teachers’ self-beliefs and beliefs about English that
relate to the notion of ELF as well as their teaching practices. The role of inter-
cultural experience in shaping pre-service teachers’ beliefs has been identified
but needs to be further manipulated in teacher education programmes. In order
to move beyond norm-driven approaches, the curriculum of ELT departments at
universities should be enriched to embrace those changes. An ELF-aware com-
ponent could be incorporated so as to challenge pre-service teachers’ beliefs as
constructed in the past, hence leading to a more ELF-informed pedagogy.
The current generation of pre-service teachers of English holds a crucially
important position in this transitional time of globalisation. Pre-service teachers
are burdened with the responsibility of crossing from the traditional way of teach-
ing English to a challenging teaching philosophy and methodology that would
take into account this emerging situation. Ultimately, by reshaping their modus
operandi, they will pave their students’ way for successful intercultural commu-
nication in English.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and
valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Elisabeth Weber
Chapter 10
Can we change the subject, please?
A pedagogic perspective on EFL
1 Introduction
In the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms we are still confronted
with the deeply ingrained idea of the privileged status of the native speaker as
the ultimate authority and owner of the language (Seidlhofer 2011: 41). The cur-
rently promoted program of employing Foreign Language Assistants, – non-pro-
fessional native speakers of English – , as role models for teachers and students
in EFL classes is symptomatic of this thinking. In this article I wish to discuss
implementations of a changed perspective of the school subject EFL that is based
on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). There is particular reference to the above
mentioned program, with a view to proposing an alternative scheme which high-
lights pedagogic competence, strengthens EU citizenship and promotes using
English as a means of international communication.
2 The foreign language policy of the European

Union and the role of English
The view of the primacy of the native speaker is officially sanctioned by EU foreign
language policy. This can be regarded as a body of ideas, laws regulations, rules
and practices intended to bring about language change in a society, a group or
a system (Ricento 2000: 23) and this policy has undergone a paradigmatic shift
as “not only scientific scholars but also political stakeholders set out to rethink
the heterogeneous linguistic landscape in Europe in the scope of the diversity
framework” (Rindler Schjerve and Vetter 2012: 1). Over the years, there has been
a movement towards a plurilingual concept (Rindler Schjerve and Vetter 2012: 10)
where languages enjoy a high priority and are seen as an essential component
of our identities and the most immediate expression of culture according to the
European Commission (Official Journal of the European Union 2007: 2). However,
Trim highlights the pragmatic functions of foreign languages when stating that
“[t]he Council of Europe has promoted language learning not for its own sake,
as a mental discipline or as an aspect of elite personal culture, but as a tool for
172 Elisabeth Weber
everyday social interaction among fellow Europeans, promoting and facilitat-

ing vocational and educational mobility” (Trim 2007: 2). Language diversity is
actively promoted within the EU and multilingualism is contractually guaranteed
and based on Degree No. 1 for the regulation of language related questions for
the European Economic Community, a document dating back to 1958 (Limbach
and Gerhards 2012: 4). Furthermore, the EU is based on the principle of equality
(Official Journal of European Union 2007: 1–271) with all member state languages
having the same value.
One of “the most influential instruments in European language education
policy” (Rindler Schjerve and Vetter 2012: 2) within the European Union is the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2007). Decided upon
in 1996 by the Council of Europe, the Common European Framework of Refer-
ence for Languages (CEFR) is designed to serve as a basis for language learning
and teaching within the European Union. It includes descriptions of objectives,
contents and methods, and is meant to serve as an appropriate instrument to
“enhance the transparency of courses, syllabuses and qualifications” (Council
of Europe 2007: 1) and provide more coherence in the language learning process.
According to Trim “[t]he CEFR is conceived as one tool that will give all those
working in the language field greater autonomy based on knowledge, under-
standing and skill” (Trim 2007: 2).The recommendations set standards to evaluate
the level of language learners and provide a definition of proficiencies.
This document that “seems to have a major impact on language education
[…] is used […] in all educational sectors” (Martyniuk and Noijons 2007: 7) and
serves as a guideline for the implementation of language learning at member
states’ level. It is therefore also embedded in the foreign language curricula
of the member states. The publication considers all languages alike, with no
recognition given to the special function of English as an international lingua
franca both within and outside the European Union. Most languages in the EU
are mainly used for communication between its native speakers. However, as
has been shown extensively, English is primarily not used in such a way but
as a means of international communication involving native speakers of other
languages (for example, Kachru 1996; Crystal 1997; Graddol 1997; Widdowson
2003). This being so, it seems inappropriate to think of English only in native
speaker terms.
The institutional view of this subject matter has not adopted this view point
though and simply neglects findings in ELF research. In the CEFR, for example,
the native speaker is assumed to be the ultimate authority of the language as
Seidlhofer (2011: 184–185) points out. This can be seen in the following measures
of attainment that it prescribes:
Chapter 10 Can we change the subject, please? A pedagogic perspective on EFL 173
Pronunciation of a very limited repertoire of learnt words and phrases can be understood
with some effort by native speakers
Pronunciation is generally clear enough to be understood despite a noticeable foreign

accent
Can keep up with an animated conversation between native speakers

Can sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritat-
ing them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker
I can write so well that native speakers need not check my texts
Although CEFR criteria for success depend crucially on the concept of ‘the
native speaker’ this concept is never explicitly defined. Such a shortcoming
necessarily limits the value of the publication. It is hard to see how descriptors
of language proficiency can be used with any degree of reliability when they
are so imprecise and how teaching and assessment can be based on something
that is not defined. The CEFR claims that it provides “fixed points of common
reference [which offer] transparency and coherence” (Council of Europe 2007:
36) But this presupposes that there is an objectively defined common reference
on which points can be fixed. However, since native speaker competence is not
defined, there is no common reference, and equally no transparency and coher-
ence either. Though the CEFR claims that it is a tool to facilitate assessment,
it lacks reliable assessment criteria. Terms as vague as “regular interaction”
(Council of Europe 2007: 24) or “normal speed” (Council of Europe 2007: 67) do
not facilitate coherent assessment across the European Union but rather open
doors to ambiguity.
These principles of the CEFR have vast consequences for the school subject
English as a Foreign Language since it is used as the foundation for the Euro-
pean Union member states’ curricula design. Its endorsement of native speaker
authority also supports the current policy of employing English native speak-
ers as foreign language assistants (FLAs) to join regular non-native English lan-
guage teachers in class and serve as role models for students and teachers alike
as well as guarantors of so-called authentic communication and information
on language and culture-related issues. These native speakers neither need to
meet any specific set of qualifications as far as language competences are con-
174 Elisabeth Weber
cerned nor are they teachers or teachers-in-training¹. An Austrian curriculum

states it as self-evident that “the highest possible level of authenticity can be
achieved by native speakers of the foreign language” (Bundesministerium für
Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur 2004: 3). Asked about the reason for the employ-
ment of native speakers as Foreign Language Assistants in class, the Ministry of
Education stated that native speakers serve as huge enrichment for foreign lan-
guage education. Their implementation offers the advantage that language and
the ability to express oneself orally are promoted. Apart from the native speaker
competence, the Foreign Language Assistant also brings his intercultural and
sociolinguistic competence to class. Consequently, it is not only the students
that profit from this co-operation but also the teachers. (Austrian Federal Minis-
try for Education, Arts and Culture 2010).
In its guidelines for assistants the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education
points out that a major reason why Foreign Language Assistants work at school is
to give a realistic impression of a conversation in their mother tongue and that stu-
dents will appreciate the authentic communication with them (Douba 2010: 34).
Also the Fulbright Austrian-American Educational Commission, the organi-
zation carrying out the Foreign Language Assistant program for U.S. Americans
postulates that the “mutually beneficial nature of this program is obvious” and
that these native speakers “contribute substantially to the quality of foreign lan-
guage instruction in Austria” (Fulbright Austrian-American Educational Commis-
sion 2010: 6). These mutual benefits, however, are not so obvious in practice and
the contribution of these native speakers is questionable. Their implementation
in Austrian schools is actually symptomatic for the current state of affairs at the
institutional level.
3 The view from ground level: attitudes of

teachers
Does this institutional view of English language teaching correspond with that of
those involved in teaching and learning it in the school setting? In order to find
out, I used research methods that bring together a qualitative heuristic approach
and empirical research. In an initial pilot study, two online questionnaires were
conducted. In 2011, English native speaking FLAs working at Austrian schools
1 In this text, the FLAs to whom I refer are U.S.-American Foreign Language Assistants that par-
ticipate in the exchange program offered by the Fulbright Austrian-American Educational Com-
mission.
were asked to (1) share their understanding of the job of an FLA and (2) the impact
of their work on students. There were more than 50 responses (60.5 percent
response rate) with the average participant being 24.5 years old, from the USA
(92 percent) and female (62 percent). About half of the respondents had one year
of teaching experience as FLA (57 percent) whereas the remaining 43 percent had
extended their contract for a second year. In 2012, a second pilot study was con-
ducted with Austrian teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) working
at secondary schools and hosting FLAs. This survey aimed at finding out more
about (1) the teachers’ perspectives of the job of FLAs and (2) perceived outcomes
of their implementation in class. 21 EFL teachers participated in this research
(39.62 percent response rate) that had an average of six to ten years of teaching
experience (42.86 percent) and had worked as host teachers to FLAs for several
years (90.48 percent). Exemplary answers from both these questionnaires are
incorporated in this paper.
A larger-scale online research was carried out in 2013 in cooperation with the
Center for International Relations, the Information Technology Services and the
Methodology Center for Test Planning, all of which are institutions of the Univer-
sity of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. In this empirical study, more
than 140 pupils of Austrian general and vocational high schools and more than
90 university students participated. The two groups shared their experiences,
memories and attitudes towards a variety of areas related to learning EFL at
school and university as well as implemented FLAs in those settings. Participants
were asked about (1) EFL, FLAs and regular non-native English language teach-
ers at school, (2) personal motivations for learning English, (3) aspects of com-
munication relevant to them when using English, and (4) a personal definition
of language competence(s). Furthermore, three audio files were provided offer-
ing short conversations between native and non-native speakers of English. The
questionnaire participants were asked to (5) evaluate the perceived competency
level of the speakers involved based on their given definition, (6) state in how far
the conversation was successful, (7) whether the speakers heard were perceived
as English native speakers and (8) how they had derived this opinion. In a final
section, the study participants then ranked the recordings according to the fol-
lowing criteria: (9) appropriateness for learning EFL, (10) understandability and
(11) personal preference. The results of this online study are currently being ana-
lyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Some preliminary trends are incorporated
in this paper.
176 Elisabeth Weber
4 The foreign language assistants’ view

How do Foreign Language Assistants themselves understand their role in class? In
order to find an answer to this question I conducted an online questionnaire with
former Foreign Language Assistants in which the following responses came up:
My role was to bring the subject to life as a native speaker.

I am a native speaker, therefore a rich resource.
I provided access to real English and American culture.
Because I am a native speaker, I naturally demonstrated correct pronunciation and also real
vocab. I also provided motivation to learn the language since students could see that real
(and hopefully cool) people speak English!
When I asked English language teachers how they feel about the functions and
outcomes of the implemented native speakers, a number of answers were quite
similar to those of the Foreign Language Assistants themselves:
I believe it is positive that the pupils sometimes hear someone speak real English. The role
in class is to show the students what real English sounds like. It is not just ‘School English’.
The pupils learn a lot about English culture. I do the normal English with them. I teach the
students how the language works (e.g. grammar, vocabulary). […] The native speaker really
speaks with them.
It is her [the Foreign Language Assistant’s] language, so she can help the pupils use it effec-
tively. The Foreign Language Assistant is the language expert, I am the teaching expert.
All these statements underline the current assumption of the role of the English
native speaker and today’s reality in English as a Foreign Language classrooms
across Europe. In this context it seems surprising, to say the least, that English
language teachers belittle their own language competence as well as their profes-
sional teaching as ‘School English’ that seems to be regarded as inferior, deficient
and not as real as the kind of English presented by native speakers of that lan-
guage. Given the global use of English as a lingua franca mainly by non-native
speakers, there seems no justification for not recognizing that English language
teachers are also authentic users of the language. Such a recognition is neces-
sary not only because it seems sadly contradictory that members of a profession
should be meek supporters of a system that degrades their professional impor-
tance but also because teachers are multipliers and their attitudes are passed
on – directly as well as indirectly – to generations of students. In my research the
majority of FLAs as well as non-native teachers of EFL believe in a positive influ-
ence of the implementation of NSs as do the pupils and university students. There
seems to be a common assumption of the positive role of the English NS in the
English classroom. In that respect Seidlhofer states that there are conservative
attitudes towards ELF in teaching professionals and that “the degree of inertia is
quite striking” (Seidlhofer 2011: 190). In can be concluded that at grass-roots level
the attitudes towards the teaching of EFL are in agreement with the prescribed
institutional views. These attitudes, however, need to be questioned.
5 Why do we learn English at school?

The question why we learn and teach EFL at schools all across the EU seems very
simple and straightforward, yet it is of utmost importance. According to Eurostat,
in Austria, 99.4 per cent of all students acquire EFL at school (European Com-
mission 2012). Likewise for the rest of the EU’s student population at schools the
figures are very similar and show an EU average of 92.7 per cent of students learn-
ing EFL in schools (European Commission 2012). The Eurobarometer report also
states that “English dominates as the language that Europeans are most likely to
be able to speak” (Office for official publications of the European Communities
1985: 19). Why does such an overwhelming majority of European teenagers learn
to communicate in English and not another foreign language such as, let us say,
Danish at school. In how far is English different to Danish or any other European
language?
Danish is spoken by about 6 million people, mainly in Denmark but also in
some parts of Northern Germany where it has the status of a minority language,
as well as some areas in the USA, Canada and Argentina and by parts of the popu-
lation of Greenland (Official Journal of the European Union 2007). Danish is pri-
marily learned to communicate with the Danes. This language is of rather limited
use if one wishes to communicate with as many people as possible in the rest of
the world. English, though, serves exactly this purpose.
It is estimated that English is spoken by over two billion people (Graddol
2006: 98–99). This language provides its users with the ability to gain access and
contribute to a wide range of shared information. It enables its users to partici-
pate in an international setting and allows for communication across the borders
of one’s own language(s). English, it gets quite clear, is different to Danish as it
is used for different purposes and fulfills different communicative functions than
Danish could. English is not anymore a language used primarily to communi-
cate with its native speakers but rather for communication across various first
languages. It has been pointed out that “[m]ost of the scientific, technological
and academic information in the world is expressed in English and over 80% of
all the information stored in electronic retrieval systems is in English” (Crystal
1997: 106). Kachru clearly pointed out the special status of English saying that
178 Elisabeth Weber
“knowing English is like possessing the fabled Aladdin’s lamp, which permits
one to open, as it were, the linguistic gates to international business, technology,
science and travel. In short, English provides linguistic power” (Kachru 1986: 1).
Widdowson explains that “the global spread of English as an international lan-
guage has come about, and continues apace, because it operates in a range of
institutional and professional domains of an academic, economic, and political
kind” (Widdowson 2003: 61). This, of course, also holds true for the European
Union where English is currently the main vehicle for intercultural communica-
tion (see Graddol 1997, 2006) and offers a vital contribution to the linguistic rep-
ertoire of most EU citizens (Böhringer and Hülmbauer 2010: 171).
In this context, it seems interesting to mention that while the EU seeks to
promote homogenization amongst its member states and for most of its agendas,
when it comes to language policy the situation is the other way around. Still,
English has a de facto lingua franca position, meaning that English is used for the
“purpose of intercultural communication (i.e. with a speaker of a different L1)”
(Hülmbauer et al. 2008: 27), within the EU and this trend accelerates as English
will expand exponentially due to the fact that the first function of foreign lan-
guage acquisition is to communicate with others. From this, according to Limbach
(Limbach and Gerhards 2012: 4–5) it follows quite logically that learning EFL
makes most sense as this is the language that already most other Europeans use
for communication purposes with others that do not share an individual’s first
language. This is even more the case if one extents the frame of reference to also
include worldwide language constellations. English is the most frequently used
foreign language in this world. So, based on the decision for one specific foreign
language the following step leads to new constellations for all those to make
the same decision later on in time. The number of people who use English has
by then increased again which makes it even more plausible for those to decide
which foreign language to learn to opt for English as well. One can already get an
impression of how dynamic such a process of language speed is when referring to
the Eurobarometer survey (Limbach and Gerhards 2012: 4–5).
To summarize, the reason for why such a vast majority of Austrian and Euro-
pean students learn English rather than Danish as a foreign language at school is
precisely this international power and that English functions as a lingua franca
within as well as outside the EU that gives this particular language a distinct role
in comparison to other European languages. This is a commonly accepted state of
affairs. Therefore, it seems essential that English as a Lingua Franca is accepted
and understood as a reality that should be reflected in English as a Foreign Lan-
guage curricula. English needs to be singled out from the other European lan-
guages in the CEFR and needs a status of its own as an international lingua franca.
There is the need to clearly state that ELF plays a unique role (Seidlhofer 2011:
185). Such a clarification would help bring an end to the clash of the linguistic
reality on the one hand and the continuous European mantra of the equivalence
of all languages on the other hand. It would no longer be necessary to pretend
that in the European Union, English is used in the same way as every other lan-
guage when “the socio-economic roles of these two categories of languages are so
obviously different” (Seidlhofer 2011: 185).
English could be seen as a rich resource and opportunity to bring people and
cultures together rather than understanding it as a threat to a plurilingual society
as some prefer to do (Beacco and Byram 2003: 19; Trim 1997: 52; Phillipson 2003:
162). English as a Lingua Franca does not have an intracultural but a clear inter-
cultural framework, as Böhringer and Hülmbauer (2010: 176) point out, which
means that it is used for communication outside the boundaries of one specific
culture. English as a Lingua Franca therefore allows its users to open up their lin-
guistic repertoire according to global circumstances without limiting the impor-
tance, power or socio-cultural identities expressed by other languages. Quite on
the contrary, as was pointed out, it does not undermine plurilingual diversity but
actually contributes to and promotes linguistic diversity by strengthening those
other languages as English as a Lingua Franca always stands in relationship with
other languages (Böhringer & Hülmbauer 2010: 176) and opens up possibilities
for people to overcome language barriers by creating a common ground. “Multi-
lingual settings are, by definition, sites of language contact in which plurilingual
participants variously negotiate and opt for the best means of communication for
any given situation” (Hülmbauer, Böhringer & Seidlhofer 2008: 29).
6 Consequences for the subject English as a

Foreign Language and teacher competence
The use of English as a Lingua Franca points to the need for a reconsideration of
what is taught in English as a Foreign Language classrooms in Europe today. It
seems essential that the focus shifts from trying to acquire English for success-
ful communication with native speakers towards a more open approach that is
defined by the functional use of ELF (Ammon 2007: 27–28; Seidlhofer 2011) and
therefore independent from native speaker norms. Widdowson directly high-
lights this fact when pointing out that NSs of English “are irrelevant [to the way
the language develops in the world]. The very fact that English is an international
language means that no nation can have custody over it” (Widdowson 1994: 385).
This also implies that the focus has to rest on one’s own cultural and linguistic
background(s) since “when used as a lingua franca, English is no longer founded
180 Elisabeth Weber
on the linguistic and sociocultural norms of native English speakers and their
respective countries and cultures” (Gnutzmann 2004: 358). What ELF research
shows is that with ELF-informed teaching the focus needs to rest on more general
communicative functions of the language.
The major difference between any subject matter and it being taught as a
school subject lies in the latter also, and mainly, including pedagogical consid-
erations. What might seem as very straightforward is of utmost importance and
cannot be highlighted enough. It is actually this fact that lies at the very heart
of the problem: there is the often unexpressed assumption that English as used
by its NSs is English as it is taught and learned as a foreign language. This is not
the case as I would like to show. A school subject has to convey certain aspects
of the subject matter to students, who at that point are not familiar with what is
being taught. There have to be pedagogical considerations on what to teach and
in which order, how to best present the information, ensure that students com-
prehend and finally apply this information. Especially qualified personnel, the
teachers, know where the journey of teaching (and along with it hopefully also
that of learning, as these two are not the same thing) will lead them and how to
ensure that those who do not yet see this final point get there nonetheless within
a given timeframe. These considerations are specific to school subjects. During
the learning process there are limitations of competence and understanding.
This also applies for English as a Foreign Language. English as a language
used by its native speakers is not and cannot be the same as English as a school
subject where we are confronted with students who are not yet familiar with
the foreign language, its systems and conventions. The students in English as
a Foreign Language classroom are in the process of making sense of the subject
matter, of understanding, practicing and making the foreign language their own
in some way. Therefore, Widdowson (2003: 114) points out that “[w]hat is taught
is not English as such, but English as a foreign language, and this, by definition,
cannot be the English of native speakers.” Hence, instead of promoting the idea
of ‘authenticity’ of native speaker conversations in class (as well as for teach-
ing and learning materials for that matter), it should rather become clear that
the language in a classroom situation needs to be made real and relevant for the
students’ purposes – not the native speakers’ – and by that becomes authentic
for this very context. It is the English teacher that has acquired the competences
to fulfill this task in the classroom rather than the native speaker assistant who
makes the language authentic. While scholars such as Medgyes (1994) and Phillip-
son (1992) dwell on the question who might be the better teacher – non-native or
native speakers of English – my point here is clearly of a different kind. I strongly
believe in professionalism in the teaching industry and, thus, am convinced that
the question whether qualified native or non-native English teachers can do a
better job is simply irrelevant and misses the point as the question whether or
not someone is a good EFL teacher has nothing to do with one’s first language,
whereas there is a strong connection between being a good teacher and having
proper education and training and therefore in-depth knowledge and expertise in
the fields of pedagogy and the English language (among other important quali-
ties that good teachers should possess). In my paper, I therefore do not wish to
compare qualities of native and non-native English teachers but qualified English
teachers that happen to be non-natives of English and non-qualified FLAs that
happen to have English as their mother tongue.
In my research it could be seen that such an understanding is rare. Quite on
the contrary, pupils as well as university students stated that they regarded NSs
of English as the better teachers and role models to learn from. This attitude is
also expressed by FLAs and EFL teachers. Interestingly enough, pupils and uni-
versity students express contradictory beliefs when it comes to professionalism.
The majority of participants in the online questionnaire agreed with the state-
ments that “Knowing your mother tongue does not mean that you can also teach
it to someone else” and “I find it important that someone who teaches English at
school [or university, respectively] was trained to do so” by which they recognize
the importance of a sound education and training for teaching staff while at the
same time the opt for answers such as “A native speaker of English (for example,
a Foreign Language Assistant) is generally better to learn English from than an
English teacher”, “A native speaker of English (for example, a Foreign Language
Assistant) is better at bringing English across. He can teach me more.” and “A
Foreign Language Assistant has perfect skills in English as this is his mother
tongue.” Also pupils and students stated that “It is / would be important for me
to be taught English by someone who is a native speaker of English” rather than
choosing “It is / would be important for me to be taught English by someone who
has learned English as a foreign language.” Such answers show a discrepancy
between the prevailing idea of the flawlessness and superiority of the NS, not
only as English language user but also as teacher on the one hand while on the
other hand the participants contradict their own answers by expressing their
wish for professionals in the teaching business and claiming that such a profes-
sional education is essential for teaching EFL.
It seems essential to understand that English as a school subject is con-
structed and designed to facilitate learning. The situation that we are confronted
with in the school setting is different to that of natural exposure. In that case,
learners are surrounded by a foreign language and hopefully learn through the
slow processes of imitation as well as trial and error. Simply providing input in
a foreign language does not automatically lead to learning this language. In that
respect Krashen points out that “[w]hat current theory implies, quite simply, is
182 Elisabeth Weber
that language acquisition, first or second, occurs only when comprehension of

real messages occurs, and when the acquirer is not ‘on the defensive’” (Krashen
1982: 6). From this theory Krashen then derives requirements for optimal input
(Krashen 1982: 127). Therefore in contrast to natural exposure, the environment
at school focuses on aspects that seem relevant and promising to engage the stu-
dents in their language learning processes.
Teaching and learning at school offer a shortcut to proficiency in a foreign lan-
guage and it is the essential role of qualified language teachers to provide such
an environment. It is their profession to prepare content in such a way that stu-
dents are provided with a systematic and structured way into the foreign language.
Content is presented based on a structured bottom-up approach that subsequently
builds on already acquired skills and knowledge. The language used in the class-
room situation fulfills its own, specific purposes and has to be pedagogically
appropriate. By that I refer back to my statement at the beginning of this chapter
where I pointed at the implied pedagogical considerations that are unique to school
subjects and that are realized through appropriate teacher competence. This, then,
implies that native speaker language cannot be imported directly into this learning
environment as the language is controlled and determined by the qualified lan-
guage teacher. The fact that NSs are brought in nevertheless shows that there are
two basic problems at work: first, English as a language used by native speakers is
wrongly assumed to be the same as the English used in an EFL classroom setting.
Second, apparently the importance of pedagogical considerations in the English
classroom is not truly understood and does not receive proper consideration.
So the qualified language teacher plays a fundamental role for the successful
foreign language learning processes in class. In how far is this role of the teacher
different to that of the Foreign Language Assistant? Officially both belong to the
teaching staff; then again the name already gives away that FLAs are considered
to be assistants to the regular EFL teachers. The English language teacher’s major
task is that of a mediator, that is to make the foreign language appropriate for
learning by offering pedagogically designed and modified language input that
is adequate to trigger the development of the learners’ competences. Apart from
that, the English language teacher also offers social and cultural information –
some of it being first-hand information, some not. The FLA has the role of the
informant only. The Fulbright Commission points out the ambassador function
of native speakers in the classroom when it states in its handbook that Foreign
Language Assistants “are representatives of America” and that this “is an impor-
tant aspect of the program” (Fulbright Austrian-American Educational Commis-
sion 2010: 30). The idea that language and culture are intrinsically tied together
is very prominent and also reflected in school curricula as can be seen in this
example: “The teaching should ensure that the students […] know the economic,
political, ecological, social and cultural realities of English-speaking countries”

(Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur 2006: 7). Hence, the FLAs
are expected to offer first-hand information on virtually all social and cultural
issues related to the country they come from.
There is a problematic interrelation of language and culture that can be found
in the European Union. In the CEFR, for example, culture is regarded as a clear-
cut concept that can be learned and applied rather than understanding culture as
a constant process that is never fixed and stable. In a section on sociolinguistic
competence, for example, the CEFR highlights the importance of “expressions of
folk-wisdom […] [which] make a significant contribution to popular culture. […].
A knowledge of this accumulated folk wisdom […] is a significant component of
the linguistic aspect of sociocultural competence” (Council of Europe 2007: 119). A
list of examples is provided including idioms such as “a sprat to catch a mackerel”
or expressions of beliefs such as “Fine before seven, rain by eleven” (Council of
Europe 2007: 120). Consequently, there are also descriptors of sociolinguistic appro-
priateness such as this: “Has a good command of idiomatic expressions and col-
loquialisms with awareness of connotative levels of meaning” (Council of Europe
2007: 122). Apart from it being questionable if native speakers could fulfill this
criterion,such expressions are not fixed and may vary tremendously depending on
numerous factors (such as, for example, region or age). Also in national language
curricula it can be seen that language and culture are intertwined (as for example
described in the course content of year two at colleges for tourism [Bundesminis-
terium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur 2006: 8] whereas it seems noteworthy that
the entire curriculum section on English as a Foreign Language does not include
any information on English being used as a means of international communication
in the field of tourism.). Llurda points at the common assumption that “foreign
languages are often associated with national states perceived as homeland of the
tongue” (Llurda 2005: 27). However true it might be for other languages that they
are intrinsically connected to culture, in the case of English as a Lingua Franca
there is no such immanent connection between the English language and British
and/or American culture (and, interestingly, it is mostly only these two) even if this
is postulated in various curricula. Also Risager (1998: 242) criticizes that despite
the ongoing growing together movement in the European Union, foreign language
teaching is still heavily influenced by the individual nations’ cultures and that this
undermines the process of becoming an EU unity.
How does a foreign language assistant fit in to this picture then? By defini-
tion, Foreign Language Assistants are non-professional instructors and therefore
lack some essential qualities. First, they do not have appropriate teacher com-
petence. They do not know about the pedagogical considerations to adapt and
modify the foreign language to match the students’ needs as they are not required
184 Elisabeth Weber
to have any qualifications in language pedagogy. Native speakers may possess

implicit knowledge but this will not put them in a position to explain the working
of their language and get their knowledge across to the students as this knowl-
edge must become explicit. It is also necessary for any qualified language teacher
to be familiar with the concepts that describe language and therefore not only to
have an impressionistic reaction that something is wrong but to know precisely
what it is that is wrong, how to correct it and explain it in such a way that stu-
dents can understand and adapt their own language accordingly. Also, as far as
communication competence is concerned, native speakers do not have a superior
capacity to communicate effectively and intelligibly.
Second, the Foreign Language Assistants have never experienced the foreign-
ness of the English language and, as a consequence, lack what makes English
special to the students and regular English teachers.
Third, when students acquire English as a Foreign Language many undergo
the process of changing from monolinguals to multilinguals. Consequently, it
should be clear that the profile for educating multilinguals requires multilingual
English teachers rather than monolingual native speakers of English².
Forth, the Foreign Language Assistant as informant on social and cultural
issues in national native speaking communities has little role to play if it is the
international function of English as a Lingua Franca that needs to be highlighted.
With English as a Lingua Franca there is no connection to one specific culture, as
has already been mentioned. It might therefore seem more promising to engage
students in becoming aware of their own cultural background(s) as well as inter-
national and intercultural sensitivity rather than promoting stereotypical images
of native speaker countries as is the case at the moment.
Such an understanding has implications for the subject English as a Foreign
Language as it calls into question the current subject design and the assumed
value and validity of native speaker assistants in the English classroom. It seems
evident that native speakers are not per se the best option.
7 An alternative scheme
As I tried to show in the previous chapters, research over the last years has proven
prevailing attitudes towards NS supremacy and status as role model for EFL to
be inappropriate and in need for change. Also today’s EFL teaching reality has
2 Native speakers of English can, of course, also be multilinguals. Foreign Language Assistants,
however, are not required to speak any foreign languages.
shown to overrate how much language one knows at the expense of appropriate
pedagogic competence in teachers. This then calls for a reconsideration of what
is taught in EFL classroom in Europe today and how this teaching is realized. It
seems evident that change is necessary.
How can such a change be realized then? I suggest an alternative assistant
exchange program that recognizes the need for a shift of perspectives in teach-
ing EFL. I propose that multilinguals that have experience as users of English as
a Lingua Franca as well as a professional interest in teaching it should work as
English language assistants. These seem to be more likely to provide a realistic
reference point for students in class and can also serve as real role models as they
are successful examples of multilinguals. This is also what the students are in
the process of becoming. These multilingual assistants have acquired English as
a foreign language and therefore know about the successes as well as challenges
that come with this process. Since professionalism is a vital aspect of efficient
teaching I propose that the assistants should be pre- or in-service teachers from
different lingua-cultural backgrounds. Such a professional approach seems more
desirable than the current FLA program that actually undermines the importance
of well-educated and trained teachers.
Such a new alternative exchange program could serve several purposes.
First, it would offer the students an authentic second role model for success-
fully acquiring a foreign language. In contrast to the currently existing Foreign
Language Assistant program, this role model would be a realistic and truly
authentic one that the students could actually live up to.
Second, such a program would strengthen the English as a Lingua Franca
perspective in students, helping them understand the reason for learning English
as a Foreign Language at school. It could help them see that they are not required
to imitate native speakers as closely as possible but become competent multilin-
guals that are equipped with a powerful tool for international communication.
Furthermore, communicating with English as a Lingua Franca speakers would
help prepare students better for their future in which it is most likely that they
will have to communicate in an international setting.
Third, such a program also helps enhance the understanding of plurilingual-
ism, promotes an active interest in acquiring further foreign languages and gives
more attention to intercultural aspects. With this program pedagogic competence
is focused on. International and European aspects could be highlighted rather
than Anglo-American concepts of the world since the assistants could share their
European realities in their teaching. This allows for an increased reflection not
only about foreign languages and cultural perceptions but also the students’ own
identities and languages. Doing so, the sense of common European citizenship
could be stimulated in young generations.
186 Elisabeth Weber
Forth, with this program both, the regular language teacher as well as the assis-
tant could fulfill the functions as mediators and informants and therefore allow for a
more individual support and input of students. Regular English teachers could find
this program more fruitful for their teaching as their assistant is a colleague in train-
ing and therefore it is more likely that such an assistant is more competent when
it comes to lesson planning as well as actual teaching. It can be assumed that the
motivation level is higher than is the case currently. Moreover, this program would
also be highly beneficial for assistants as they could gain valuable teaching practice
under the guidance of an experienced English teacher and profit from international
experience that will help the assistants in their future career as mediators of English
as a Lingua Franca in Europe. It seems vital to understand and communicate that
teaching is a profession that needs professionals as teachers that serve the needs of
their students and are equipped with appropriate pedagogic competence. Hence,
the presence of a qualified assistant could help enhance the status of English as a
Foreign Language lessons at school and the teaching profession at large, highlight-
ing and valuing the importance of appropriate teaching competence in education.
8 Conclusion
“Teachers should realise that their actions, reflecting their attitudes and abilities,
are a most important part of the environment for language learning/acquisition.
They present role-models which students may follow in their future use of the
language and their practice as future teachers.” (Council of Europe 2007: 144).
It is precisely this important role that teachers fulfill, namely to provide our stu-
dents with the best education and to the best of our knowledge for their future
roles in society, that asks for a change of the school subject English as a Foreign
Language. It has already gotten clear that when we wish to help shape future gen-
erations that are prepared to communicate in an international setting and with
members of a multitude of first languages and cultural backgrounds, it seems
essential to prepare them to use English as a Lingua Franca. Seidlhofer states that
“[t]he changed nature of English as a global means of communication surely calls
for some reconsideration of how English as a subject has been conventionally
conceived, and how such alternative conceptualizations also require new orienta-
tions in English language teaching and teacher education” (Seidlhofer 2011: 208).
My proposal offers such an alternative and shifts the focus towards pedagogic
competence rather than perpetuating what has proven to be a (native speaker)
myth of the necessary authority of the native speaker as a language teacher rather
than what I have been arguing in this paper.
A shift in the paradigm of understanding and living the school subject English
as a Foreign Language is a challenging task for most as we all have most likely
been socialized with a mindset that also included the English native speaker as
role model and language authority. Implementing my proposed program there-
fore is a task simple yet difficult. It would be a simple affair to develop a frame-
work that allows for a pre- or in-service teacher exchange program within the EU
since experience and infrastructure for such an undertaking already exist thanks
to Erasmus and Leonardo exchange programs. However, the challenge lies in
the deep seated attitudes both at the institutional and grass-roots levels. Still,
it seems essential that in efforts we are driven by considerations based on the
questions of why we teach English, who we teach English to and what we teach
English for.
The title of this paper asked if we can change the subject EFL. The answer
is: Yes we can. I suggest that my proposed program could offer such a feasible
new beginning that future generations – and with them their teachers of EFL –
deserve and are in need of.
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University Press.
Part III: Assessment
Kimberly Chopin
Chapter 11
Reconceptualizing norms for language
testing: Assessing English language
proficiency from within an ELF framework
1 Introduction
ELF as a research area is growing steadily, yet research relating ELF to the area of
language testing is still something of a novelty, as shown clearly by the program
for the ELF 5 conference, where of the 200-plus presentations given, only five
directly looked at issues of testing (albeit that one of the five was the introduc-
tory plenary talk). This could be because ELF as a field has been developed by
researchers not working specifically with language testing, who Elder and Davies
(2006: 296) referred to as ‘those outside the professional language testing field
unfamiliar with the constraints and requirements of language testing.’ Alter-
nately, it could be argued (as was done by Tim McNamara in the ELF 5 plenary
talk referred to above) that the testing community (as exemplified by Elder and
Davies 2006; Taylor 2006) has not taken the recommendations of ELF research-
ers sufficiently on board. Whatever the reason, there is a need to bring ELF ideas
into the field of language testing because there is a need to assess performance
and proficiency in a world where the use of ELF is increasing. This paper will
explore one setting where such links could profitably be made: the international
university.
Universities in the expanding circle, particularly but not only in Europe,
are increasingly offering degrees and coursework in English with the aim of
attracting international funding and high-paying international students (Jenkins
2011; Coleman 2006). As a general rule, adding in English medium instruction
(EMI) means increasing the population at a given university who do not share a
common language apart from English, which in turn leads to an increase in the
use of English as a lingua franca. It also brings a need for members of the univer-
sity community to be able to communicate effectively in English. Students need
to be able to attend and participate in lectures, take exams, and produce written
assignments in English; teachers need to be able to teach in EMI settings, and
often to research and write articles in English as well; administrators need to be
able to communicate important information to international students and staff
in English.
194 Kimberly Chopin
When deciding who to admit to the university community, either as a student

or as a member of staff, then, language proficiency in English is increasingly a
factor. One way of making sure such proficiency is not problematic would be the
‘sink or swim’ method – let a new student or staff member enter the university
community, and see what happens. If the person can perform, then they, by defi-
nition, have the proficiency that is needed. This makes sense for those who are in
fact proficient enough – but the loss of resources training those people who are
not, and would not ultimately be able to stay in the university setting make this
an unfeasible option¹. The more obvious option is to somehow test proficiency so
that students admitted and staff hired has a greater chance to become successful
members of the university community. Taking this obvious option leads to a need
for proficiency testing and assessment instruments which reflect the ELF nature
of the university communicative setting, a need which will become greater as uni-
versities become more international and multilingual, thus exemplifying more
and more ELF domains of use.
When considering these assessment instruments, two primary issues arise.
The most salient issue is that of the norms upon which language tests are based.
English language testing has traditionally been based on a native speaker norm,
the goal (real or assumed) being to approximate native speaker English (usually
standard American or standard British English) (e.g. Elder and Davies 2006;
Taylor 2006). Clearly, in a lingua franca situation such as in an international uni-
versity, these native speaker norms are no longer appropriate. But what norms to
use instead is not obvious.
A second issue concerns what factors are taken into account when assess-
ing language proficiency. Typical language tests such as the TOEFL give great
weight to linguistic formal features such as lexis and grammar, and specifically
on whether the forms test-takers exhibit match or approximate the forms used by
native speakers. This may have some appropriateness for someone preparing for
work or study settings in an inner circle English context², but from an ELF per-
spective, form is not the most relevant criteria.
This paper will consider these two issues, using as context the language
situation and a specific testing instrument currently being used in one specific
international university, the University of Copenhagen (KU). The next section will
give background on this specific case, and on how the language test in question
can be viewed from within an ELF framework. The following sections will revisit
1 This is in addition to the personal cost (for example, trauma, depression, anger) for the indi-
vidual entering a community, then not being able to successfully participate in it.
2 Though even in an international university in an inner circle English context, there will be
many situations in which ELF is relevant.
Chapter 11 Norms for language testing 195
the issues of norms and forms, applying them to the University of Copenhagen
setting. The final sections will consider implications of this research to language
teaching, and will give suggestions for further research in this area.
2 An example from a Danish university

The University of Copenhagen (KU) is the largest university in Scandinavia. As of
January, 2013, it offers 53 graduate programs in English³. Currently, there are no
complete undergraduate courses offered in English; however, a number of indi-
vidual courses at the undergraduate level are offered in English across the 6 facul-
ties of the university. Jensen and Thøgersen (2011: 17) estimate that approximately
8% of students and a similar percentage of staff can be predicted not to be conver-
sant in Danish, with some faculties showing higher percentages than others. This
group would be a natural source of students and staff for EMI courses. In addi-
tion, many if not most Scandinavian and Danish faculty and students can expect
to be in an EMI setting at some points in their time at KU. The end result is an ELF
situation of great diversity in terms of linguistic mix, where some EMI classrooms
are composed largely of Danes (or of Scandinavians who can converse with Danes
without using English) and others are more multilingual.
Currently there is not one set of tests used to measure proficiency of KU stu-
dents to use English in these varied EMI settings across the university. However
there is such a test available for teaching staff who are teaching in graduate level
EMI classrooms, namely the Test of Oral English Proficiency for Academic Staff,
or TOEPAS⁴. The TOEPAS is given by the Centre for Internationalisation and Par-
allel Language Use (CIP), a center researching ‘the field of parallel language use
in an academic context and the use of needs analyses and diagnostic language
tests’ and which ‘offers language courses in Danish and English, which are tai-
lored to the various needs across the University’ (http://cip.ku.dk/english). The
TOEPAS (as described in Kling and Stæhr 2012, 2011) was developed in order to
assess the ability of non-native English speaking teaching staff to give lectures
in English at the graduate level at KU. The certification is based on a simulated
teaching situation, in which three teaching staff from the same department or
institute at the university each give a short (20 minute or so) teaching presenta-
tion. Along with this presentation, test-takers play the role of graduate students,
who are instructed to ask questions or make comments during their colleagues’
3 http://studies.ku.dk/studies/degree_students/ma/list_of_programmes/
4 http://cip.ku.dk/english/certification
196 Kimberly Chopin
presentations, as well as to participate in a short (5–7 minute) open discussion

session after each lecture component is done. Currently only non-native speakers
are assessed; native speakers are explicitly excluded from the certification proce-
dure, a point which will be returned to in a later section.
Test takers are evaluated by two examiners (who are present in the lectures)
in the areas of fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and interaction.
Their performance is rated in each area using a 1 to 5 scale; they are additionally
given an overall score for their performance, also from 1 to 5. The descriptors for
the global ratings can be seen below (from Kling and Stæhr 2012: 26).
– 5: The lecturer has demonstrated English language proficiency for univer-
sity teaching equivalent to that of a highly articulate, well-educated native
speaker of English. The lecturer has been certified to teach English-medium
courses. No training is required.
– 4: The lecturer has demonstrated excellent English language proficiency for
university teaching. The lecturer has been certified to teach English-medium
courses. No training is required.
– 3: The lecturer has demonstrated good English language proficiency for uni-
versity teaching. The lecturer has been certified to teach English-medium
courses. No training is required, but training may be beneficial in one or more
of the assessed areas.
– 2: The lecturer has demonstrated less than sufficient English language pro-
ficiency for university teaching. The lecturer has not been certified to teach
English-medium courses. Training is required.
– 1: The lecturer has demonstrated limited English language proficiency for
university teaching. The lecturer has not been certified to teach English-
medium courses. Significant training is required.
As can be seen from the overall descriptors, this test is not oriented towards an
ELF view of language. The norm, as seen in the descriptor for the highest level, 5,
makes explicit the ideal user of English in EMI classrooms as ‘a highly articulate,
well-educated native speaker’. Interestingly, it is not made clear which native
speaker is being talked about, though in practice⁵ any inner circle variety should
qualify⁶. Each level below 5 is demonstrably further and further away from that
native speaker ideal, moving from excellent proficiency, to good, sufficient, and
on to less than sufficient then limited, in each case in relation to native speaker
proficiency. One additional feature to note is the indication of whether training
5 The phrase ‘in practice’ indicates knowledge gained as part of the team of TOEPAS examiners.
6 There have not yet been any TOEPAS test-takers with a native-like outer circle accent.
is needed. This goes along with a formative element to the TOEPAS certification
which will be given focus in a later section.
The individual subskills also show how the test is based on a native speaker
norm. Below is a listing of key words (taken from Kling and Stæhr 2011: 220, also
found in Kling and Stæhr 2011: 13; a complete grid of all descriptors can be found
in Kling and Stæhr 2012: 27) which characterize a good performance in each of
the five areas:
– Fluency: smooth, coherent, effortless, at an appropriate pace, no unnatural
language-related hesitation
– Pronunciation: intelligible, precise, not causing strain or impeding effective
communication
– Vocabulary: correct use of a broad range of general, academic, and domain-
specific vocabulary, good command of idiomatic expressions and colloca-
tions
– Grammar: a high degree of grammatical accuracy in simple and complex
structures
– Interaction: understanding questions and comments, responding appropri-
ately and effectively, capable of dealing with unclear questions or misunder-
standings where necessary.
That a native speaker norm is being used is clearest in the expectation of idiomatic
expressions and collocations, as these are measured based on inner circle ideas of
what constitutes a correct expression or collocation. A high degree of grammatical
accuracy and precision in pronunciation are also measured by agreement with a
native speaker standard. So, a speaker who is completely intelligible, yet does not
use the 3rd person singular ‘s’ would not be assessed as a level 5 regardless of other
language factors. Similarly, someone with a mild accent, but who does not make
a distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds (a typical feature of English as
spoken by Danes), would also not be assessable as a level 5.
It must be noted that areas which appear to be more geared towards com-
munication, for example interaction and fluency, in practice contain a strong
correctness element. For example, the evaluation of fluency puts weight on the
use of standardized discourse markers used to signpost or structure the lecture,
such as, ‘I’m going to talk about fruit fly breeding today’ or ‘and that brings me
back to my earlier point regarding the use of political indicators’. A test-taker who
misuses such formulaic expressions, saying, for example, ‘I would like you to
make this as a group exercise’, would be downgraded because of this. Even the
interaction score, which would seem to be the most amenable to ELF commu-
nication, in practice indicates to some extent the use of appropriate phrasing,
such as ‘That’s a good question’ or ‘I’ll actually be coming to that point later on’.
198 Kimberly Chopin
This could be a result of a lack of precision in the descriptors for the interaction
section, but the end result of this imprecision is that form is focused on, most
likely because it is the most salient feature for examiners, all of whom have a
background in language teaching and are used to listening for errors.
The example of the TOEPAS certification shows a language test which is
based on native speaker norms, in particular where weight is given to the correct
use of inner circle native speaker forms rather than features which might be more
relevant when considering communicative effectiveness in the classroom. The
next step is to explore how such norms and forms can be broadened out, altered,
adapted, or otherwise made more amenable from an ELF perspective. This will be
done in the following two sections. The ideas and suggestions brought up here
will then be related back to the TOEPAS and to certification tests in the interna-
tional university more generally.
3 Getting rid of native-speaker norms

Asking what norms might be used for grounding an ELF oriented test perhaps
begs the question of whether norms are needed at all. I would argue that they are,
insofar as language tests (and indeed all tests) inevitably measure distance from
a target so that an assessment of performance can be made. But do these norms
need to be inner circle English ones? Clearly central to the ELF research agenda
is the idea that they do not, that there is a ‘need to abandon the native speaker as
the yardstick and to establish empirically some other means of defining an expert
(and less expert) speaker of English, regardless of whether they happen to be a
native or nonnative speaker’ (Jenkins 2006a: 175).
It must be pointed out that the idea of getting rid of the native speaker as setter
of norms is not just to be found in ELF research. For example, Isaacs and Trofi-
movich (2012), working in the area of intelligibility research, have made a case
for separating out ‘accentedness’, or how much a person sounds like a specific
target variety, and ‘intelligibility’, or how much a person is understood by listen-
ers. Although Isaacs and Trofimovich are not working from within an ELF frame-
work, their research echos (and also cites) work such as that on the Lingua Franca
Core (Jenkins 2000), which also focuses on what is essential for understanding
to occur regardless of the accent or variety of English being used by participants
in conversation⁷. Harding (2011) also examined the use of varied accents, includ-
7 Of course, speakers who speak the same variety or who are familiar with each other’s varieties
will be better able to accommodate to each other by using their shared languages as a resource.
ing of non-inner circle English speakers, in listening tests, and found there to
be a strong basis for the use of such accents, especially for tests geared towards
academic settings, ‘where students are likely to encounter a variety of accents not
only among other students, but also among lecturers, tutors and teaching assis-
tants’ (p. 25). Another test showing support for the use of non-native accents is
the TEEUS (Test of English for European University Students), recently pre-trialed
at the University of Venice, where the use of non-native accents in the listening
tasks was found to be ‘unproblematic for the test designers and uncontrover-
sial for the test takers’ (Newbold, this volume). The work referred to is focused
primarily on pronunciation and listening, but it is logical to assume that other
linguistic areas might function in the same way – for example, separating out
‘native-like’ grammar with some sort of structural intelligibility when evaluating
overall performance on a speaking test.
So, the native speaker norm is not necessary, yet some norm against which
test performance can be measured is needed. To what norm shall we then turn?
This question would be an easier one if there were an existing or emerging variety
of English called ‘ELF’; however, research into this question (thoroughly sum-
marized in Mortensen 2010) would appear to indicate that there is not. Some-
thing else is needed instead. Tying this discussion back to the example of the
TOEPAS certification, the question to be asked is if the level 5 formulation of
‘highly articulate well educated⁸ native speaker’ is not a useful goal, what formu-
lation could take its place? Clearly having language which is equivalent to that of
a native speaker is not relevant when assessing proficiency in ELF contexts. But
few would dispute that a high level of language proficiency is required to teach in
a graduate level classroom where the aim is to inform but also to lead students to
a higher level of thinking.
4 Moving away from form

One thing that stands out when looking at a test such as the TOEPAS is the focus
it gives to structural form. As mentioned earlier, even sections (such as inter-
action) which do not appear on the surface to involve form have in practice a
formal component. Yet it is this formal element that is most problematic, simply
because there are so many possible varieties of English in the inner and outer
8 The term ‘educated’ in this descriptor can also be seen as problematic, though it has been
a commonly used term in testing (McNamara 2012: 199). However, deconstructing this term is
outside the scope of this article.
200 Kimberly Chopin
circles which could be used as the basis of a test, together consisting of a myriad
of conflicting features⁹. One way of tackling this would be to accept all of these
varieties in exam settings (in a similar way to that advocated by Jenkins 2006a),
except that it would not be practical to expect examiners to be familiar with the
formal and other features of all varieties (or similects) of English which their test-
takers might produce. There is another possible solution to the question of form,
however, which I will advocate; that is simply to ignore it.
That is to say that language testing could and should change focus, away from
form and towards other aspects of performance which may be more meaningful in
terms of how people successfully communicate with each other. This fits in with
McNamara’s (2012: 201) assertion that ‘(w)hat is required in communication in
English as a lingua franca […] is not the ability to “convey finer shades of meaning”
according to native English norms, but a sensitivity on the part of both interactants
to the need to co-operate in the negotiation of understanding’. He further charac-
terizes ELF communication as involving ‘flexibility and accommodation, anticipa-
tion of communication difficulties and strategies for resolving them on the part of
both interlocutors, regardless of their native speaker status’. This image of ELF com-
munication relegates formal elements to lesser status, where they are overshad-
owed by other features. The question then becomes what performance elements
are important when assessing communicative effectiveness in an ELF setting, and
which should therefore be foregrounded and assessed more directly.
So, the focus would not be on grammatical accuracy, but on other factors.
This will not necessarily be an easy task, given the perceived saliency of these
features (particularly among testers whose background is in language teaching,
and who are used to listening to speech with error correcting as a focus). One way
of approaching this might be the same used for developing the Lingua Franca
Core (Jenkins 2000), where communicative situations are examined to see which
factors (in this case of pronunciation) impede communication and which do not.
But this still ends up with a system which is form-focused, albeit not on native
speaker forms. The question still remains what non-formal features would prove
useful, what performance features characterize accommodation, or negotiation
of meaning, or linguistic flexibility.
In terms of a test like the TOEPAS, what indicates successful classroom com-
munication? Even in a relatively monologic genre such as the classroom lecture,
there is still a need to accommodate to an audience (in this case, of students).
There is much research in relevant areas, particular in Northern Europe (for
example, Airey and Linder 2006; Björkman 2012 for Sweden; Klaassen 2001 for
9 Also relevant here is the concept of ‘similect’ (Mauranen 2012: 28–9), which describes varieties
or lects which “originate in cross-linguistic influence” (p. 29).
the Netherlands; Hellekjær 2010 for Norway and Germany) but more still needs
to be done, with the results of the research applied towards creating new perfor-
mance measures. Form, if the test-taker’s speech is intelligible, could be in this
way sidestepped, along with questions of what variety of English is spoken by
any given test-taker.
The end result would be a substantially different test, where only a few of
the existing descriptors would still apply, largely from the interaction section
of the test, for example assessing whether the test-taker is ‘capable of dealing
with unclear questions or misunderstandings’ (Kling and Stæhr 2011: 220). The
test-takers exemplified in a previous section, with generally good communica-
tive effectiveness and easily understood accent, would not be penalized for a
lack of 3rd person singular ‘s’ or lack of distinction between voiced and unvoiced
consonants. There might still be a correlation of the communicative functions
tested and formal features, as high formal proficiency and pragmatic capability
may well be connected; however, the focus would be only on the communicative
effectiveness shown in the test-takers performance.
Another shift would be that more people would be taking the test, as both
non-native and native speakers would need to show evidence of being able to
accommodate and negotiate meaning with interlocutors, and would thus need to
go through a certification process. The native speaker would no longer be given
a free pass, with the assumption that being a native speaker by definition gives
an ability to communicate effectively in ELF settings. Or to put it the other way
round, being a non-native speaker would not automatically mean being the one
at fault for any communicative missteps (as expressed by McNamara 2012: 201,
speaking of the CEFR).
5 Relating testing and teaching

Some key work by ELF researchers into language testing tie that testing to lan-
guage teaching, with language testing seen as important insofar as it drives
change in the language classroom. For example, Jenkins (2006a: 49) in her recom-
mendation (cited previously) that testing agencies refrain from penalizing ELF/
EIL forms, argued that such a change in practice ‘would send a strong message to
teachers whose students’ aim is EIL, that they could safely stop correcting items
such as substitutions of ‘th’, uncountable nouns used as countable, omission of
articles, or the use of an all-purpose question tag (for example, ‘isn’t it?’). Instead,
exams – and therefore teaching – could turn their attention to rewarding the suc-
cessful use of accommodation strategies and penalizing their absence, and to
202 Kimberly Chopin
focusing for error correction on the use of forms that are not mutually intelligible
in EIL, such as NS idioms.’ This view implies that language teaching is organized
with the aim to get participants successfully through language tests, with the
result that curricula are constrained to including elements which are favored by
the language tests being used.
Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey (2011: 309) revisits the testing-teaching link with a
more recent call to large-scale testing agencies: ‘[G]iven that testing exerts such
a massive influence on language teaching and, hence, on spoken and written
language use, a major challenge for ELF over the next few years is to make the
strongest possible case to the large ELT examination boards that they should start
to take account of the findings of ELF research.’ This call could also be to smaller
scale testing groups to be more open to what the field of ELF is doing.
For example, for a certification such as the TOEPAS, the goal is not to teach
towards a test, though if the certification became widespread enough, a situation
where such teaching for the test was available could be conceived of. However, as
mentioned earlier, there is a formative element to this certification exam; specifi-
cally test-takers get detailed reports on their performance, and have an opportu-
nity to meet with one of their examiners to discuss their results in more detail.
As the descriptors for the certification are largely based on formal features, the
feedback is also form-focused. A certification where weight was given to other
aspects of the candidates performance would naturally lead to opportunities for
different feedback, and would also lead to a positive relationship between what
is tested and what could be focused on in language training.
6 Future directions
Certain questions will become particularly salient for the development of any
ELF-influenced language test. For example, the ELF articles to date (such as
Jenkins 2006a, 2006b; Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011) clearly reference large-
scale internationally used tests such as the TOEFL or IELTS. The test focused on
in this paper is a very local test developed for use in one particular context (the
graduate level EMI classroom) in a particular place (a university in Scandinavia).
Research would need to be done also into how much testing at different levels can
be generalizable across situations. So, can the same test be given for EMI teach-
ing staff in both Scandinavia or in Asia? Can there be an instrument which would
have predictive validity for students of any nationality intending to study or work
anywhere in the world? In other words, is the TOEFL intrinsically less amenable
to an ELF version than is a test such as the TOEPAS?
Related to this is the question of how the level of diversity influences the ELF
situation. International universities such as KU are only international in terms
of the university itself; they are still embedded in local culture (for example, the
Danish culture for KU) and ideas of language and discussions about language still
take place within a local context (for example, debate on whether EMI affects the
quality of teaching or if it leads to domain loss in the local language, both current
topics of interest in the Danish media, as overviewed in Jensen and Thøgersen
2011). How would participants in an EMI course in Denmark (where most of the
participants can be expected to be Northern European) experience the ELF situ-
ation differently than participants in universities elsewhere in the world, where
the make-up of the group is different? Research into this would also impact the
extent to which large-scale testing would be feasible in a world filled with ELF
communicative settings.
Finally, it is important to stress that the role of any test is to allow test-takers
to give their best performance in order to show what they are capable of doing. It
is for this reason that a test motivated by and developed from ELF concerns would
enable test-takers to show readiness to become members of communities where
their use of English as a lingua franca will be needed.
References
Airey, John & Cedric Linder. 2006. Language and the experience of learning university physics
in Sweden. European Journal of Physics (27). 553–560.
Björkman, Beyza. 2012. Questions in academic ELF interaction. Journal of English as a Lingua
Franca 1 (1). 93–119.
Canagarajah, Suresh. 2006. Changing communicative needs, revised assessment objectives:
Testing English as an International Language. Language Assessment Quarterly 3(3).
229–242.
Coleman, James A. 2006. English-medium teaching in European Higher Education. Language
Teaching, 39. 1–14.
Cook, Vivian. 1999. Going Beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly
33(2). 185–209.
Elder, Catherine & Alan Davies. 2006. Assessing English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of
Applied Linguistics 26. 282–301.
Harding, Luke. 2011. Accent and Listening Assessment: A Validation Study of the Use of
Speakers with L2 Accents on an Academic English Listening Task. Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang.
Hellekjær, Glenn Ole. 2010. Lecture Comprehension in English-Medium Higher Education.
Hermes – Journal of Language and Communication Studies, 45. 11–34.
Isaacs, Talia & Pavel Trofimovich. 2012. Disentangling accent from comprehensibility.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15. 905–916.
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Pragmatics 43(4). 926–936.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006a. The spread of EIL: a testing time for testers. ELT Journal 60(1). 42–50.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2006b. The times they are (very slowly) a-changin’. ELT Journal 60(1). 61–2.
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jenkins, Jennifer, Allesia Cogo & Martin Dewey. 2011. Review of developments in research into
English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching 44(03). 281–315.
Jensen, Christian & Jacob Thøgersen. 2011. Danish University lecturers’ attitudes towards
English as the medium of instruction. Ibérica 22. 13–34.
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medium Engineering Education. Delft: Department of Communication and Education, Delft
University of Technology Doctoral Dissertation.
Kling, Joyce M. & Lars Stenius Stæhr. 2012. The development of the Test of Oral English
Proficiency for Academic Staff (TOEPAS). Copenhagen: Centre for Internationalisation and
Parallel Language Use (CIP), ENGEROM, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen.
http://cip.ku.dk/forskning/cip_
publikationer/CIP_TOPEPAS_Technical_Report.pdf/.
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lecturers’ language skills through certification feedback. In Policies, Principles, Practices.
New Directions in Foreign Language Education in the Era of Educational Globalization,
213–245. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers.
McNamara, Tim. 2012. English as a lingua franca: the challenge for language testing. Journal of
English as a Lingua Franca 1(1). 199–202.
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Taylor, Lynda. 2006. The changing landscape of English: implications for language assessment.
ELT Journal 60(1). 51–60.
David Newbold
Chapter 12
Engaging with ELF in an entrance test for
European university students
1 English in European Universities
English has become the de facto lingua franca in European academic life. It is,
and has been for a long time, the language of most major research publications,
in Europe as elsewhere (Crystal 2003: 110–112). It is the language used by students
on mobility programmes, by visiting professors, and on university webpages
intended for an international audience. Increasingly, it is also the language of
instruction; Wachter (2011) reports that by 2010 7% of all university programmes
in (non English Native Speaker) Europe were being taught through the medium
of English. This trend is spreading from countries in northern Europe, such as
Holland, where English taught programmes (ETPs) have been the norm for many
years, to countries south of the Alps, which have traditionally been seen as a
watershed. In 2012 the Rector of Milan Polytechnic announced that from the fol-
lowing academic year all courses in his institution would be taught in English,
provoking a mixture of alarm and approval in the Italian academic community¹.
This massive linguistic realignment is an indirect result of the 1999 Bologna
Agreement, intended to promote student mobility, to facilitate recognition of
qualifications, and to make European universities more competitive on the inter-
national market by attracting students who might otherwise have studied in the
UK or North America. More than a decade later, it is a policy which appears to be
paying off. But competitiveness comes with a price: the real risk of domain loss
in academic registers of European national languages, especially relatively minor
languages – in terms of populations of speakers – such as Danish (Phillipson
2006). Scandinavian countries, in fact, are among the most popular destinations
for international students (and therefore offering high numbers of ETPs), partly
because of low course fees.
The rapid growth in the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) English Medium
Instruction (EMI) in higher education has brought with it the need for universities
to verify the level of language competence of incoming students, to ensure that they
will be able to cope with the linguistic demands which are likely to be made of
1 reported in University World News, 13.05.2012 http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.

php?story=20120509174302914, accessed 24.1.2013
206 David Newbold
them, irrespective of the course of study they have enrolled for. Although English
language teaching from primary school onwards is now the norm throughout
Europe, and incoming students are likely to have had up to twelve or thirteen years
of school English language lessons, this is in itself no guarantee that a specific level
has been reached, nor of the kind of language competences the student might have.
Newbold (2010) reports on the paradox of fluent English language users who are
successful communicators on social media, but who are unable to pass a tradi-
tional receptive skills test set at B1 level of the CEFR which focuses on formal, but
quite basic, features of the language which are a necessary part of an academic
genre. This lack of fit between test and testee – and the possible shortcomings of
both – is a further reminder of the need to define the kind of competences required
in an academic ELF environment, in which the distinction between native and non
native speaker is increasingly irrelevant, and where terms such as ‘expert users’
(e.g. Swales and Feak 2004) or ‘successful users’ (e.g. Prodromou 2008) seem more
appropriate. At the time of writing (December 2012) the Senate of the University
of Venice Ca’ Foscari, where part of the research reported on in this chapter was
carried out, has ruled that the minimum level in English required for all under-
graduate courses is to be B1 of the CEFR and B2 for postgraduate courses, implying
that a postgraduate course will necessarily be more demanding linguistically, as
students take a more active part in a community of expert users; but the document
says nothing about the kind of competences needed.
2 Identifying students’ needs

A B1 level entrance test was first introduced in some faculties of the university of
Venice in 2008, for those students not already holding recognized international
certification at this level. It was a home-produced computer-delivered receptive
skills tests intended to test grammar, vocabulary, listening and reading. Similar
tests were introduced around the same time in other Italian universities, and con-
tinue to be used. They have the advantage of being relatively easy to produce
and to administer, and probably enjoy high reliability. But they are limited in
scope (as they do not test productive skills) and, crucially, limited in validity as
they do not address the real language needs of incoming students. Like the inter-
national certification which can be used to replace them, they are based on a
default, native-speaker, model of the language; but the reality of language use in
European universities, both for strictly academic purposes, and within a context
which Seidlhofer (2011: 86) refers to as “secondary socialization”, is that of non-
native speaker (NNS) interaction, or English as a lingua franca. The sort of lan-
Chapter 12 Engaging with ELF in an entrance test for European university students 207
guage skills which are likely to be needed by all students, whatever their course,
range from listening to visiting lecturers, to finding their way around websites in
English, not necessarily produced by native speakers, to interacting with interna-
tional students on mobility programmes such as Erasmus.
The enormous popularity of the Erasmus programme, with its steady growth
in the number of participants (more than 230,000 in the year 2010–11²), has
brought home the challenges of international communication to universities
across the continent. For most Erasmus students, who are not specialists in
foreign languages, and who do not have much knowledge of the host country’s
language(s), this means engaging daily with ELF and developing a range of spe-
cific competences. But even stay-at-homers who complete courses at their home
universities without any experience abroad are being increasingly challenged by
the English language demands regularly made of them. It was with these students
in mind (the majority, in any university) that a group of researchers in English
language and linguistics at the University of Venice³ set about devising a recep-
tive skills test for incoming students which would more accurately reflect their
language needs over a three year undergraduate course than the existing test,
and would therefore have some predictive validity.
3 The proposal
The test we envisaged was not a full-blown test of ELF, which Elder and Davies
(2005) suggest is practically if not conceptually problematic, and for which they
advise caution, at least until a fuller description of ELF emerges. Rather, it was a
test with an ELF component, in which test takers would have to react to spoken
and written texts produced by NNS. The test proposal we eventually drew up, in
2010, was the following:
We propose to research, construct, and develop an online test which would be suitable for
use as a screening tool for incoming students in European universities. (…) The test aims to
distinguish between the levels A2, B1, and B2 of the CEFR. (…) This test aims to reproduce
authentic language situations and use in an academic environment in Europe (…). In this
respect, it is likely to have some predictive value, and give students useful feedback about
the specific skills which they need to develop to successfully complete their course.
2 retrieved from the European Commission on http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-

programme/erasmus_en.htm. At the time of writing, the future of the Erasmus programme
seems uncertain for lack of funding.
3 Geraldine Ludbrook, David Newbold and Maria Rees
208 David Newbold
The project required an initial background research phase involving a needs

analysis to identify the specific target language use (TLU) domain, or domains,
defined by Bachman and Palmer (2010: 60) as “a specific setting outside of the
test itself that requires the test taker to perform language use tasks”, and a cri-
tique of well-known existing tests which were frequently used as entrance tests in
European universities. This was to be followed by the development of a prototype
test, and pre-trialling.
The project was funded by Trinity College London, a testing organisation with
which Ca’ Foscari has a long-standing relationship, having developed together
with Trinity a ‘co-certification’ at levels B2 and C1 of the CEFR which, over the
years, has proved popular with students as a performance-orientated alternative
to more traditional form-focussed in-house exams.
4 Background research
4.1 The needs analysis
To seek confirmation of the kind of exposure to English students have during an

undergraduate degree course we administered questionnaires to third year stu-
dents in the four faculties of the university (Economics, Science, Languages and
Humanities) inviting them to look back and identify the purposes for which they
had to use English during their career (Table 1). Altogether 275 valid question-
naires were received, reflecting the distribution of students across the faculties.
In addition, a small parallel analysis (36 returned questionnaires) was made at
the University of Lecce in the south of Italy, to give an idea of the extent to which
the findings could be generalized beyond our own university.
Table 1: English language skills needed on an undergraduate course in Italy
Skill Venice Lecce
Reading textbooks & articles 70% 75%

Using internet for research 53% 44%
Watching film and video 23% 44%
Attending lectures and seminars 21% 8%
Writing emails 19% 8%
Interaction with foreign students 18% 33%
Interaction with foreign lecturers 9% 13%
Writing letters 2% 3%
Predictably, reading skills topped the list, followed by Internet search skills. In
both universities a considerable number of students had also been required to
watch videos in English, while Venice, which attracts lots of foreign visiting aca-
demics, scored rather higher than Lecce for ‘attending lectures and seminars’.
The data refer to the three year period 2007–2010, and we suspect that, five years
down the line, all these values (which essentially involve the receptive skills of
reading and listening) would now be higher, as Italian universities continue to
implement and develop policies of “internationalization” in an attempt to attract
international students⁴.
Lower down the list come the productive and interactive skills, such as writing
emails (e,g, to foreign academics) or interacting with incoming students on mobil-
ity programmes. These skills would also have been needed by students who them-
selves went abroad on mobility programmes (not just Erasmus; destinations for
Venice students included China, Japan and Korea), and these emerged in a sepa-
rate part of the questionnaire which was completed only by students who had been
abroad as part of their course – 22, all from Venice, or 8% of the total (Table 2).
The fact that the English language skills required on study periods abroad were not
closer to 100% (e.g. for ‘interaction with students’, 54%) are not to be interpreted as
evidence that Venice students were uncommunicative or mute during their periods
abroad, but rather that some of them would have been students of the language(s)
spoken in the host countries, and so no lingua franca was required.
Table 2: English language skills needed by students on mobility programmes
Reading textbooks and articles 72%

Using the Internet for research 59%
Interaction with students 54%
Attending lectures and seminars 45%
Exams 45%
Interaction with academic staff 41%
Written course work 22%
Interaction with technical staff 18%
Using university websites 13%
Using phone 4%
Writing emails 2%
Writing letters 0%
The questionnaire was supported by structured interviews with ten teaching staff
from the four faculties. Two teachers felt that students did not need any knowl-
4 An attempt which is bearing fruit, as reported in La Repubblica, 3.3.2012 (p. 36).

210 David Newbold
edge of English to successfully complete their courses; the remaining eight all
identified reading, including Internet research as well as texts and articles, as the
most important skill. Listening to lectures, watching videos and attending mul-
timedia presentations were also considered necessary, but few teachers thought
that students needed to interact in English with foreign students or academics.
All the teachers claimed familiarity with the CEFR, and were asked to identify, if
they could, the minimum levels needed by students (Table 3). Significantly, most
thought that a B1 reading level was too low.
Table 3: Teachers’ perceptions of skills levels needed by students
ESTIMATED LEVELS C1 B2 B1
Speaking/Listening 5
Reading 1 6 2
Writing 3
4.2 Critique of existing tests
The second part of the background research was a comparative analysis of exist-
ing tests which we knew were used as university entrance tests, or which had
recently been developed for this purpose. These ranged from the online diagnos-
tic test DIALANG to online placement tests with immediate reporting, such as
Password and the Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT), to well established pro-
ficiency tests such as IELTS and TOEFL (Table 4).
Table 4: Test structures compared
Levels Skills* Time Results
DIALANG A1-C2? R+W+L+G+L 30–45m immediate

IELTS A2-C2 L+R+W+S 2 hrs 45m 13 days
TOEFL IBT B1-C2 R+L+S+W 4 hours 15 days
TOEIC A1-C2 S+W+L/R 4 hours 7 days
QPT CBT A1-C2 L+R+UE 20m immediate
Password A2-C1 G+L 1 hour immediate
OOPT A1-C UE + L 45m immediate
Pearson TEA B1-C1 R+L+W+S 3 hours 5 days
*S = speaking, W = writing, L = listening, R = reading, G = grammar, L = lexis, UE = Use of English

All of the tests proved problematic, for different reasons. DIALANG, a free online
resource developed through European funding, was under attack at the time from
hackers⁵. More typical problems were inappropriate items in the online place-
ment tests, and the underlying constructs of IELTS and TOEFL, designed with a
native English speaking context in mind. We were also interested in the range of
skills tested, reporting times, and, crucially, cost.
The new online tests interested us because they appeared easy to administer
and testee-friendly, were (relatively) inexpensive, and reported results immedi-
ately. Both Password and OOPT (an online development from the popular paper-
based Quick Placement Test, widely used in Italian universities) offer a form-
focused approach. This is justified in the rationale for Password, which suggests
that grammar and lexis are good predictors for how incoming international stu-
dents, who may not have benefited from a skills based approach, will perform
in an English medium university course; and, as such, the test is ‘equitable’.
However, we felt that some of the sample items were of dubious quality, and, for
our purposes, too focused on accuracy norms. Skills are not a concern for Pass-
word ‘as learners will take skills based courses after taking the test’⁶– which may
be the case in UK and US universities, where pre-sessional courses are offered, at
a cost, to international students, but in Europe things are likely to be different.
The shadow of the default native speaker norm looms even larger in the OOPT:
the test seems to rely heavily on inferencing and (to distinguish B2 from lower
levels) less transparent language, bordering on the idiomatic. In an ELF context,
however, participants work together to make meaning transparent, creating an
‘idiomaticity paradox’; as Prodromou (2010: 39) puts it, in corpus linguistics “it
[idiomaticity] is at the heart of spoken grammar and fluency; for ELF scholars on
the other hand it is irrelevant and indeed an obstacle to mutual intelligibility”.
We also looked at the sample material for the bigger tests, such as IELTS and
TOEFL. Although there were problems with reading texts (for example, we felt
that some questions could be answered by students with knowledge of the topic,
in a TOEFL text about the far-from-minor Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins), it was
the audio recordings which interested us most. We found a range of accents, all
of them native speaker; texts were scripted, and read by actors, with redundant
features built in; some of the accents seemed unnatural, such as the American
accent assumed by a British actor (it seemed to us) in the IELTS sample. There
were no authentic NNS accents.
5 It has since been give a new lease of life by the University of Lancaster, which hosts it at http://
www.lancs.ac.uk/researchenterprise/dialang/about
6 http://www.englishlanguagetesting.co.uk/uploads/The-Password-Test-Design-Development-
and-Reliability_5.pdf retrieved 18.1.2013
212 David Newbold
In short, although validity claims could be made for all of these tests in
the context of students going to English medium universities in English speak-
ing countries, the linguistic and cultural models on which they were premised
seemed a far cry from the reality of language use in European universities.
4.3 Parallel research into ELF in an academic environment
The development of our ‘European’ test was further informed by a parallel research
project carried out, at the same time as our initial needs analysis and background
research, at the Venice International University, a humanities faculty on an island
in the lagoon of Venice where English is the lingua franca for academic and admin-
istrative staff as well as students. The VIU is a consortium of 12 partner universities
from eight countries which organizes courses each semester for students coming
primarily from the partner institutions, but also from other universities around the
world. They include native speakers of English (NS), and in fact two of the partner
universities (Duke and Boston College) are located in the US, but the majority of
students at the VIU are NNS. The academic focus is on globalization.
The research project, promoted by the Faculty of Languages at Ca’ Foscari,
consisted of a yearlong enquiry into the nature of ELF at the VIU, the extent to
which ELF users were aware of the phenomenon, and their attitudes towards it.
Following Seidlhofer (2008) the research focuses primarily not on the investiga-
tion of new forms (although these are noted in the research, and are captured in
the nearly 100 hours of recordings of ELF interaction made by the researcher),
but on the changing mindsets towards using the language, and the communi-
cative strategies they engender, which emerge in questionnaires completed by
97 speakers of eighteen different first languages, and in semi-structured inter-
views. Among the main findings:
– for both NSs and NNSs unfamiliar pronunciation was the most problematic
feature impeding communication (more than non-standard grammar and
unknown lexis); paradoxically (given its diffusion across the world) the
American accent was rated the third most difficult;
– paraphrasing was considered to be the most useful accommodation strategy
to avoid or repair misunderstandings and communication breakdowns;
– proficiency in communication strategies and communicative skills were seen
as being more important than proficiency in standard forms of the language
itself.
The findings are reported in Basso (2012). However, the research was also sig-
nificant for us because it gave us ideas about the types of texts we could use in a
listening test, and it also provided us with speakers (students and teachers) who
provided authentic and semi-scripted material for this part of the test (see 4.2
below).
5 The test
5.1 Test construct
Test validity is traditionally linked to a construct – an underlying theoretical lan-

guage ability, or abilities – which is evidenced in the language sample that the
test elicits. In the case of a test of ELF, or a test with an ELF component, such as
ours, the identification of a construct was always going to be problematic. ELF,
almost by definition, is fluid, and eludes codification. There have been attempts
to identify typical features of ELF production and interaction, e.g. Jenkins (2000)
for ‘core phonology’, Seidlhofer (2001) for lexicogrammar, and more recently
Mauranen (2010) for discourse features. But these need to be seen more as evi-
dence of strategies rather than as examples of norms drawn up in an attempt at a
traditional kind of codification.
More promising was a task-based approach to test design, in which the tasks
would reflect, or actually reproduce, real life language tasks that university stu-
dents may be called to perform. However, Messick (1994: 22), while recognizing
the value of the approach, warns of the risks inherent in task based test design,
namely construct-irrelevant variance (which occurs when a test measures vari-
ables unrelated to the construct) and construct under-representation. Bachman
(2002) suggests that both construct definition and task specification should be
taken into account in test design. Bachman and Palmer (2010: 283–285) advo-
cate a careful analysis of the TLU domain which would identify those areas of
language use we wanted to assess, and from which text tasks could be derived.
This was hypothesized as “a multilingual university setting in which English is
used by non native speakers for academic study and for everyday use”, a setting
on which the recordings from the research project referred to in 3.3 above shed
useful light. Finally Douglas (2000) provided us with a model of language knowl-
edge for assessing specific purpose language ability, which we adapted for the
TLU domains identified (Table 5). We identified areas which we felt would cover
all language demands made of today’s university students, including those on
mobility programmes (for example, in ‘knowledge of university-related proce-
dures’) as well as the much larger category of stay-at-homers. For a full discussion
of the construct, see Ludbrook (2012).
214 David Newbold
Table 5: Test construct within a framework of ‘language knowledge’
Language knowledge
Knowledge of general grammar and syntax; knowledge of general academic vocabulary; Knowl-
edge of vocabulary related to university administration; knowledge of vocabulary related to
everyday student life.
Textual knowledge
Knowledge of cohesion in general academic written texts; knowledge of cohesion in informal
peer interaction.
Knowledge of rhetorical organization in general academic written texts (e.g. narrative, descrip-
tion, argumentation, comparison-contrast); knowledge of conversation organization.
Functional knowledge
Knowledge of ideational functions (e.g. information exchange, descriptions, classifications,
explanations).
Knowledge of regulatory functions (e.g. rules and regulations), interpersonal relations (e.g.
greetings, opinions).
Sociolinguistic knowledge
Knowledge of varieties of English in ELF environments.
Knowledge of informal and formal register in written and spoken texts.
Knowledge of references to university procedures and student life.
Background knowledge
Knowledge of university-related procedures (e.g. enrollment, fee-paying, assessment).
Knowledge of general academic topics.
5.2 Test structure
From the outset we had in mind a non-adaptive computer-deliverable test of the

receptive skills, which would discriminate at levels B1 and B2 of the CEFR, with
the idea that it could also be used for a higher level entrance requirement, such
as a Master’s programme; a requirement which has since become statutory (see
Section 1 above). The test tasks (Table 6) were distributed across three sections
of the test, which were tentatively set at levels B1, B1+, and B2, and which were
respectively labeled ‘Making Connections’, ‘Retrieving Information’ and ‘Ana-
lyzing and Organizing Information’. Text lengths ranged from short phrases in
section 1, to 200 word paragraphs in section 2, to around 500 words in section 3,
to reflect the increased difficulty level. Listening tasks were used in section 2 and
section 3, ranging from short monologues in section 2 (e.g. a lecturer giving infor-
mation about how students’ essays are assessed) and interactions (e.g. students
exchanging opinions about a lecture) to a longer video clip, in section 3, in which
a lecturer presents his course.
Table 6: Test tasks
– Reading a university website to access information.

– Reading titles of university courses, books, lectures to identify their content.
– Reading a search engine result to access information.
– Reading short general academic texts, graded from narrative and descriptive to argumenta-
tive, and comparison-contrast texts.
– Listening to peers discussing university-related topics.
– Listening to lecturers giving information about courses.
– Listening to and watching lecturers presenting their courses.
We ended up with a 60 item test, of which 35 items tested reading skills and the
remaining 15 listening (in keeping with the needs analysis report on above).
Each section, we felt, would take students around 30 minutes to complete; pos-
sibly longer for sections 2 and 3, depending on how we delivered listening texts,
making a total test time of around 90 minutes. All 60 items used 3 option multiple
choice questions.
Table 7: Test structure
Section 1 B1 Making connections

Using a university website
Understanding titles (of courses, books, lectures)
Section 2 B1+ Retrieving information

Reading (3 short texts)
Listening (3 short texts)
Section 3 B2 Analyzing and organizing information

Reading (1 longer text)
Pre-writing (structuring a short academic test)
Listening/watching (video presentation of course)
Using a search engine to do research
5.3 Test design
Chapelle and Douglas (2006) warn of the dangers inherent in computer-based

tests, perhaps the most insidious of which is the method effect, namely the mis-
match between the context of the test (interacting with a computer) and the skills
the test is trying to measure. However, when the test method ‘mirrors character-
istics of the target language situation’ the effect is actually to enhance the valid-
ity of the test. We believe that this is exactly what happens in the first section of
216 David Newbold
the test, in which students are required to click on links, for example to access
information about university procedures (Fig 1), or to use an Internet browser to
identify promising material for a specific research task (Fig 2).
You are thinking of applying to a German university as an Erasmus student. Look at the menu
on a university website. Click on the link to find out more.
 Degree students
 Exchange students : incoming
 Exchange students: outgoing
Figure 1 : Sample item (1)
You need to understand what cold fission is. Click on the link to find out more.
 Cold fission as emission of fragments
di A Sandulescu – 1989 – Citato da 18 – Articoli correlati
Cold fission, defined as a process where virtually all the available energy goes into the
total kinetic energies of the fragments, is considered to be …iopscience.iop.org/0954–
3899/15/12/008
 Cold Fission Media, LLC
Cold Fission Media is proud to introduce our first GPS self guided walking tours of the New
York City Financial District. On the Fly Tours are a fun to use, …web.coldfissionmedia.com/
 http://community.comedycentral.com/Video/Dan-Quinn-Explains-His-Discovery-of-Cold-
Fission/04CFAFFFF020165A3001B01170233
Dan Quinn Explains His Discovery of Cold Fission. STEVIA IS THE CURE. video. Comedy
Central | Video | Dan Quinn Explains His Discovery of Cold Fission. Back…community.comedy-
central.com/…Cold-Fission/ 04CFAFFFF020165A3001B01170233
Figure 2: Sample item (2)
Both tasks are examples of still emerging new online literacies, within the ‘opera-
tional’ dimension identified by Lankshear and Knobel (2006), and conceptual-
ized by Guth and Helm (2012: 43) as “the ability to search for information, use a
particular online tool, share information and resources with others, and multi-
task”.
In our initial needs analysis Internet navigational skills come second only
to reading, thus justifying the choice of a computer-based test on grounds of
validity as well as cost and ease of administration. Equally significantly, from
an ELF point of view, we noted that some of the texts we chose (English lan-
guage versions of university websites, but also extracts from search results
thrown up by Google) were probably not written by native users of English; the
distinction between NS and NNS becomes blurred, and probably irrelevant, in

cyber space.
However, the closest encounter with ELF comes in the recordings. In the
second section of the test, the three short listening tasks involved listening to
students exchanging opinions after a lecture, a teacher explaining how essays
are marked, and a student asking administrative staff for information about the
canteen. They were chosen from 13 semi-scripted interviews specially made at
the VIU by students and teachers whose mother tongues were German, Indian,
Israeli, Japanese, Swedish, Thai and Turkish. There was also one native speaker
of English, from Ireland. Readers were told they could change anything in the
dialogues that they found unnatural, but in practice they only changed the
names, substituting invented names with real names. All of them agreed that the
language mirrored authentic contexts at the VIU. The recordings we chose were
those which seemed most spontaneous, and clearest in terms of quality of audio,
rather than for phonological reasons, such as approximation to a hypothetical
‘core’ phonology.
In spite of the fact that students were reading texts written in standard, gram-
matically correct English, some non-standard forms emerged naturally, such as:
(1) *He spokes very clearly.
(2) *I can’t tell you who will that be.
These did not hinder communication in any way (and may not have been noticed
by the participants) and were included in the trial version of the exam. As far as
we are aware, no institutionalized test of English includes non-standard forms of
this kind.
The third section of the test uses a video clip made professionally at the VIU,
and posted on YouTube, in which a professor, a native speaker of Dutch, gives
information about his course. This is an extended (three minute) monologue in
which the test taker sees a small inset video of the professor while listening, and
at the same time scrolling through the clickable MCQs – an exercise in multi-task-
ing which was unplanned but justifiable within a framework of new literacies.
The example of the video points to design problems, and in particular the
nature of the test/testee interface, which we encountered in all three sections.
Fulcher (2003) makes a number of practical recommendations about how to
keep the interface user-friendly, most of which coincide with best principles of
webpage design. In our prototype test, and with limited resources and expertise,
interface design was beyond our remit. There were problems in simplifying web
pages without losing visual authenticity, and any further development of the test
218 David Newbold
would mean resolving issues of copyrighted material. Nonetheless, we believe

that some of the task types, such as Fig 2 above, are innovative, authentic and
valid. For a fuller discussion of design features in the test, see Rees (2012).
6 Trialling
6.1 Test administration and results
By the spring semester of 2011 we had a version of the test ready for trialling, or
rather, pre-trialling. This was intended to give information about administrative
aspects (timing, instructions) as well as the quality of the items, and the suit-
ability of the test as a whole. The reading and listening parts were administered
separately, with only the listening parts administered online, using the Moodle
platform of the Faculty of Languages language laboratory. The reading part was
administered as a pen and paper test, undermining the authenticity, at least in
terms of the digital literacies mentioned above.
43 students took the reading test, and a month later 36 students (most of
whom, but not all, had taken the reading test) did the listening part. They were all
students attending the University Language Centre (Centro Linguistico di Ateneo),
from different backgrounds, none of whom were majoring in English. They were
chosen by level, and divided into three groups who had passed the centre’s exams
at respectively levels A2, B1 and B2, and who had just begun courses at levels B1,
B2 and C1.
For a range of reasons, some of which are apparent above (loss of authentic-
ity, and the separation of the test into two parts, administered at different times,
to different students) the test results are of limited significance, and are not
reported here. However, an item facility analysis confirmed that most items were
pulling their weight at the levels at which they were intended to discriminate, and
enabled us to identify those which were not.
6.2 Students feedback on the test
Of greater interest to us at this point was how students perceived the test, par-
ticularly in its innovative features, perhaps the most evident of which was the
exposure to NNS accents. At the end of the listening test students were thus asked
to complete a questionnaire giving feedback on aspects of the test such as level,
content, quality of recordings, and accents. 83% (30/36) thought that the level of
the test was more or less right; the remaining 17% thought it was too high. No-one
chose the ‘too low’ option. The quality of the recordings was ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’
for 94% of test takers, while 100% thought that content of the test was either
‘fairly’ (47%) or ‘very’ (53%) realistic. No-one chose the ‘unrealistic’ option.
Perceptions of accents were more evenly distributed across the three options
(Fig 3) but a clear majority of students (64%), from each of the three levels, thought
that they were ‘neither easier nor more difficult to understand than NS English’
and so did not affect their comprehension. A significant minority (25%) believed
that the accents were easier; only 4 test takers (11%) thought that they were more
difficult than NS accents. However, these students came from the lower two pro-
ficiency bands, and were the ones who did least well on the test as a whole. It is
by no means certain that they would have had better results if the texts had been
recorded by native speakers. Rather, the option ‘difficult to understand’ may have
presented them with an opportunity to explain their own disappointing perfor-
mances; non native accents were just a scapegoat.
The accents were B1 B2 C1

A difficult to understand because foreign (not NS English) 2 2 0
B easy to understand because foreign (not NS English) 0 3 6
C neither easier nor more difficult than NS English 6 7 10
Figure 3: Question from student feedback sheet
7 Conclusion: the challenges ahead

The test, which we have provisionally called Test of English for European Univer-
sity Students (TEEUS) has not at the time of writing been adopted for the purpose
for which it was intended, for reasons of design, software, costs, and copyright,
some of which have been referred to in 5.3 above. But we believe that we have
a prototype which has innovative features, which is high in face validity, and
which is essentially unproblematic for potential test stakeholders, primarily
the universities and the test takers themselves. This is somewhat surprising,
given that the debate on testing and ELF has not advanced very far over the last
decade, and that most, if not all, testing agencies continue to steer clear of ELF.
Jennifer Jenkins’ 2006 invitation to testing organizations to engage with ELF –
because “it is changes in teaching which keep pace with changes in testing,
and not vice versa” – has gone largely unheeded; six years later, a proposal by
Jenkins to address a British Council ‘Going Global’ conference (sponsored by
220 David Newbold
IELTS and TOEFL) on the theme of “Internationalizing English for the interna-
tional university”, which addressed the question of testing ELF – was rejected
(see Jenkins 2012).
Why should this be so, in spite of the body of research into ELF which has
now emerged, the creation of corpora, and the identification of recurring, if not
fixed, formal features, and especially, user strategies by which participants co-
construct meaning? Part of the reluctance to engage may be explained by the
ambivalent attitudes towards ELF which ELF users themselves display. There is
plenty of evidence that educated users of English in Europe still aspire to native
speaker models, such as British English (for example, Mollin 2006; Basso 2012;
Groom 2012), while at the same time are ‘more aware of the importance of exploit-
ing the resources of language as a whole, not only the limited ones of Standard or
Native English’ (Basso 2012: 32). As this awareness grows, and mindsets change,
the potential validity of an ELF construct in a test designed for an ELF context
grows with it.
TEEUS tests the receptive skills. The real challenge will come with the devel-
opment of a test designed to assess the productive skills. This would need to be
grounded in the pragmatics of ELF interaction, and it would need to identify fea-
tures of successful communication, and to allow for formal variation in a qualita-
tively different way from rating scales currently used in institutionalised testing.
It would need to be user-centred and norm-defocused, since ‘when it comes to
production, it is the learners’ prerogative to select the manner with which they
wish to construct themselves’ (Ishihara and Cohen 2012). It is unlikely that the
test developers who take up the challenge will get it right first time. But as the
need grows to assess productive and interactive competences in an ELF context,
both in and beyond the world of academia, then we believe that the way to meet
the challenge begins, like the receptive skills test reported on in these pages, with
a careful identification of the TLU domain, and, above all, a clear understanding
of the purpose of the test.
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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
1 Introduction
It is widely recognized that the English language has reached unprecedented
role in the world. Its widespread use among non-native speakers and its charac-
terization as a lingua franca have brought implications for the education of lan-
guage teachers in the Expanding Circle (Gimenez 2006). The reconceptualiza-
tion of English as a lingua franca (ELF)¹ is putting into question many of the
traditional English as a Foreign Language (EFL) tenets (Seidlhofer 2001) and,
thus, inviting professionals in the English Language Teaching (ELT) world to
rethink their current assumptions about language, accuracy, appropriacy and
the role of native speakers in establishing what counts as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in
language use.
Although internationally ELF is already an established area of research, in
Brazil only recently it has been adopted as a perspective with implications for
teaching and learning in classrooms. Recent overview studies have revealed that
there has been a growing interest in this area (Calvo, El Kadri, and Gimenez 2013;
Bordini 2013). The conclusions so far have pointed out that the majority of the
ELF investigations in the Brazilian context focus on reflections on the status of
English in a global world and the importance of seeing this language as a medium
of international communication. There are fewer publications reporting how an
ELF perspective is being included in pre-service or in-service English language
teacher education. The existing ones focus on beliefs about ELF and the teach-
ers’ lack of confidence in dealing with ELF related issues in the classroom,
even when they recognize that the Inner Circle varieties should no longer be the
only privileged ones (El Kadri 2010).
Despite the paucity of research in teacher education programs, if ELF is to have
an impact in classrooms, undoubtedly this is one of the most important areas to be
1 ELF is defined as “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 2011: 7).
226 Telma Gimenez, Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo, Michele Salles El Kadri
addressed, along with the production of teaching materials, which have played a
major role in educational innovation (Tomlinson 2011). Considering that many lan-
guage teaching resources used today in our context are coursebooks produced in
countries where English is a native language or are designed by English native
speakers, an ELF perspective demands access to learning resources that include
examples of many different types of interaction between non-native speak-
ers, respect local varieties of English, develop tolerance for differences and
promote cultural diversity. This means overcoming the predominant thinking in
English language teaching (ELT) that favors an allegedly international variety and
ignores language variability. As Seidlhofer (2011: 9) puts it:
While the global role of English is now increasingly being referred to in teacher education
curricula, in ELT conferences, and in teaching materials, this special status of English has
had virtually no effect (so far) on how the language is formulated as a subject in syllabuses
and teaching materials.
Although not making specific reference to the Brazilian context, the need to
acknowledge the diversity of language in teaching materials is well observed by
Jenkins (2007), when she reports that the current problem is not only the lack of
non-NS-oriented materials, but also “the fact that ENL [English as a Native Lan-
guage] is almost always presented as the only ‘real’ English, and its speakers as
the only ‘experts’” (p. 244). Additionally, Matsuda (2003) points out that applied
linguists and publishers need to find ways of promoting an ELF perspective in
teaching materials, including coursebooks.
In the same vein, Matsuda and Friedrich (2011: 333) argue for the need to
provide practical examples of how to incorporate the view that English is the lan-
guage for international communication when they state that
Although some pedagogical examples may be provided within the context of theoreti-
cal discussions in order to clarify the concepts in hand, researchers have in general not
engaged in profiling pedagogical ideas that are theoretically sound, informed by research,
and at the same time specific enough to be useful in classroom.
As English language teacher educators, we have been involved in educating pro-

fessionals at pre-service level for many years. During our trajectory we had been
focusing on a view of language based on notions such as standard American or
British English and native speakers’ norms. However, more recently, we² decided
to challenge these assumptions in our teacher education program, and offered
2 The course was taught by Telma Gimenez. The other two authors contributed with the analysis
of the materials produced in the course.
Chapter 13 Beyond Madonna 227
an optional 60 hour course in order to raise awareness about ELF, while using
the production of teaching resources as the materialization of the participants’
understandings.
The education of English language teachers in our country is usually done
in 4-year programs, in a mix of theoretical and practical disciplines as well as
participation in projects and school-based teaching practice. A small part of the
curriculum can be done through optional courses, allowing the students some
flexibility in their own education. The course we decided to offer in 2010 was
called “English as a lingua franca” and its general aim was to promote awareness
on the differences between EFL and ELF regarding its learning in the Brazilian
context. As specific objectives, it aimed at:
a) introducing some basic references on English and its global spread,
b) discussing ELF and the implications of the de-centering of the native speaker
as a norm,
c) familiarizing the students with some grammatical and discursive features in
transcultural communication through the analysis of ELF corpora,
d) analyzing teaching materials according to the discussions above.
The course contents reflected those objectives and, in addition to the differences

between ELF and EFL (Graddol 2006), the syllabus included: the spread of English
in the world, Englishes and their implications for teaching and learning, grammar
issues arising from interactions among non-native speakers and the ownership of
English. Because every course in our teacher education program has to include
assessment, the course participants were evaluated through four instruments: a)
an essay on the differences between EFL and ELF; b) seminars; c) a brief analysis
of ELF corpora (VOICE); d) design of a didactic unit that would represent their
understanding of ELF. This last task was seen as a way of capturing the prospec-
tive teachers’ views on ELF and one that would enable us to verify what kind of
pedagogical re-contextualization was envisaged by those course participants. In
this chapter we focus on this last assignment because of its potential to reveal, in
practice, how an ELF perspective could be translated into the classroom.
It is important to note that the teacher education program as a whole does not
have an orientation towards ELF and those student teachers had been predomi-
nantly exposed to an EFL approach, i.e. they were used to considering US or UK
varieties of English and their native speakers as the models to be followed.
After this brief introduction, in this chapter we address the educational
implications derived from an ELF perspective into ELT that were discussed in the
undergraduate course and then present the units produced by the student teach-
ers along with comments on their understandings. As we have already explained,
we see these units as windows to the students’ interpretations of ELF.
2 ELF educational implications

The course was structured around what we consider key issues in ELF pedagogy,
i.e. the de-centering of the native speaker. This was translated into: a) re-conceptu-
alizations of the reasons for learning English; b) the development of intercultural
skills; c) the inclusion of several varieties of English other than Standard Ameri-
can or Standard British for the teaching of receptive skills and examples of ELF
corpora; d) greater variety of topics and themes covering a wider range of social
and global issues, leading to a better understanding of the spread of English in the
world and its connection with globalization. These topics were dealt with in the
course through a reflective approach, i.e. by assigning readings and discussing
them in relation to our own reality. The authors and the concepts we privileged
are the ones mentioned in the next sections. Although aware of other references
(including more updated ones) what we present is the literature given to the stu-
dents at the time the course was offered, as well as the ideas that were discussed.
One of the key features of an ELF perspective in classrooms is that learners
can start to realize that English does not belong only to native speakers. Profi-
cient users, irrespective of their first languages, have the right to appropriate the
language for their own purposes. These students’ goals can then be redefined to
communicate with non-native speakers. This insight is particularly relevant when
learners do not feel attracted to the idea of linking what they are learning to the
United States or the UK, due to the current world geopolitics. As pointed out by
Graddol (2006), while the main objective of EFL is the communication with native
speakers, the teaching of English as a global language aims at communicating not
only with native speakers but also with non-native speakers and even getting a
job in the same country people live in. This change in focus brings the need to
overhaul the predominant thinking as to what, how and to whom to teach this
language. For Rajagopalan (2003), if we conceive of World English as a new lin-
guistic phenomenon, it is possible to design teaching and learning goals that are
more realistic than trying to develop native-like proficiency. For him, teachers can
help students develop skills which will enable them to interact with people from
different parts of the world and not just those from the Inner Circle countries.
Regarding the relationship between language and culture, we took the view
that ELF is use and not a particular variety of English and therefore, the devel-
opment of intercultural competence is more important than teaching about the
culture of a particular country. When faced with potential cultural misunder-
standings, the users of the language will need to have a repertoire of skills to
be able to deal with their different ways of constructing meaning. Additionally,
as pointed out by McKay (2002) many learners want to acquire English in order
to share with others information about their own countries and not only learn
about the countries where this language is used as a native language. Gimenez
(2006) also believes that it is necessary to disconnect the teaching of English from
specific countries because when people learn English they do not need to behave
like native speakers. She reminds us that in intercultural encounters, people
do not need to know “facts” and “people’s habits” associated with countries
where English is learned as a native language, in order to be able to interact. She
argues that instead of trying to teach “the culture” of a particular country (which
brings the problem of holding a monolithic view of culture), it would be more rel-
evant to develop intercultural awareness, so as to enable language users to deal
satisfactorily with potential cultural misunderstandings.
One of the main curriculum decisions is which language model to adopt.
The discussion around this issue was based on the idea that the students need
to be exposed to a greater number of English varieties, from both Inner and
Outer Circles, and less emphasis should be put on US or UK models (Crystal 1997;
Graddol 2006).
Another author who addresses pedagogical implications stresses that the
focus of teaching should be on intelligibility rather than on one specific variety.
Jenkins (2006) suggests that English language teachers should focus on those
sounds that may cause problems in communication and de-emphasize those which
would not interfere with intelligibility. On the other hand, Crystal (1997) argues
that teachers should work with several varieties especially for the development of
receptive skills. There has been some consensus nowadays that teachers can no
longer rely on just one variety of English and that learners need to be exposed to a
wide range of them, including non-standard ones. In our course we also intro-
duced VOICE³ and asked the students to consider the value of having corpora
such as that in order to raise awareness about the uses of English in non-native
speakers’ interactions (Seidlhofer 2001).
One of the advantages of de-centering the native speaker and adopting ELF as
a paradigm for teaching is the possibility of moving away from objectives that are
more directly connected with individual, instrumental needs, and more towards
creating the sense of a planetary citizenship and, thus, of developing collective
solidarity (Gimenez 2001, 2006). Seeing English as a language of the world may
enable its users to see beyond their immediate concerns and start engaging with
issues of a global nature. This reflects the acknowledgement that English is not a
language like any other; rather it enables its users to connect to people around the
world, amplifying the possibilities for participation in global social movements.
3 Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (http://www.univie.ac.at/voice).

For us, one of the advantages of adopting an ELF lens in teaching/learning is

to be able to expand the learners’ understanding that using the language is more
than just talking about celebrities, a topic that is very common in coursebooks
(hence the title of this chapter). We take the stance that meaningful conversa-
tions around global issues and critical awareness raising activities can be better
explored within an ELF approach rather than an EFL one, which is predominant
in coursebooks that, in general, tend to focus on trivial matters (Arkian 2008;
Siqueira 2012). For this reason, in the course we tried to include discussions about
globalization and its link with ELT as well as to raise awareness about alternative
viewpoints facilitated by the recognition that English allows people to connect
to others in ways never seen before, thanks to technological advances. A criti-
cal agenda becomes more feasible with the de-centering of the native speaker and
the education of language learners can be framed as the education of global citi-
zens (Gimenez 2006). In the experience reported here, the ELF perspective was
brought into attention and the production of teaching units was used as a way to
evaluate how student-teachers understood and re-contextualized such perspec-
tive into teaching.
In contexts where the teachers have little access to a wide range of English
language varieties because they rely mostly in coursebooks, it seems logical that
those proposals have to find way into the classroom via published textbooks.
However, many of the existing books available in schools do not favor an ELF per-
spective and teachers interested in promoting such view would have to comple-
ment those materials by creating additional activities. The Internet is a valuable
source and we encouraged the student teachers in our course to search the web
for relevant language samples.
Having explained the main ideas discussed in the course and some of the
references adopted, we now comment on the teaching units produced and what
kind of language awareness was revealed by them.
3 Producing English teaching materials within an

ELF perspective
The production of teaching units was introduced as one of the assessment instru-
ments in the course, as we have already explained. Through this task we wanted
prospective teachers to grapple with the concepts and put them into a practical
example. For this, the students worked in six groups and presented the units enti-
tled: Football, Wales, Kenya (3 groups chose this title) and Scotland. Most of them
were designed for high school learners.
The first unit entitled “Kenya-1” aimed at presenting high school students the
English variety spoken in Kenya and started with a video to trigger a discussion
about that country and to expose students to Kenyan English. The unit focused
on questions pertaining to intelligibility and linguistic varieties, such as: “If you
had difficulty understanding what they were saying, why did it happen? What was
difficult about it? Did the images help understanding? What helped you understand
what they were saying?”
The second unit entitled “Kenya-2” had the purpose of raising awareness
about the spread of English and of teaching vocabulary related to environmental
issues via listening comprehension. In order to do so, the unit started with a pre-
viewing activity with a short text about Wangari Muta Maathai, a Kenyan environ-
mental and political activist. Then, a vocabulary activity was presented in order
to introduce some new words related to the theme; students had to guess what
words they thought they would find in the video. The next activity was a video
about environmental problems in Africa. Students were supposed to fill in the
gaps and discuss some questions, such as: “How can you relate what happens in
Kenya with events in Brazil? and “What is our government doing to reduce poverty
and protect the environment? And you?” which aimed to establish connections
between the local and the global. Other questions such as “Which word combina-
tion or words from the text would you consider a “mistake”? Circle them” or “Did
you find it difficult to understand? Why?” targeted intelligibility.
Another unit focused on Kenya and aimed at developing awareness of
the different varieties of English, by encouraging discussions (after viewing a
video) on cultural and social issues related to HIV/AIDS. Like the previous unit,
this also tried to articulate the connections between the global and the local.
The unit started with a warm-up activity in order to introduce student to the
theme to be explored (“What do you know about Kenya? What are the languages
spoken there? What do you know about HIV/Aids?”). Then, a video was shown,
followed by a general discussion. The influence of Swahili in Kenyan English
and to what extent it made it (un)intelligible was explored. A list of lexical dif-
ferences in Kenyan English was provided but not explored extensively; rather
the list was used as a resource to answer the question “Did you notice that sub-
titles were used? Why?”
The fourth unit, called “Football”, aimed at providing students with the
opportunity to reflect on how relevant it is to speak the standard variety. In order
to reach this goal, the prospective teachers used a video from “youtube”. In this
video, Anderson, a soccer player in Brazil, speaks English during an interview. By
asking questions such as “Do you think non-native speakers should try to sound
like native speakers in order to be better understood? Can the interviewer under-
stand all the answers given by the player? How do you know? Do you think the foot-
ball player spoke a different form of English”. The goal was to discuss intelligibility
and the concept of ‘competent speaker’ with students.
The fifth unit, entitled “Scotland”, was developed not only to promote aware-
ness of the existence of other English varieties (in addition to the American and
British ones) but also to provide students with an understanding of different
accents and to raise awareness about intelligibility. After presenting a fun video
on the Scottish accent, they asked students to try to guess the author’s nation-
ality and proposed a discussion on the video aiming at comparing the Scottish
accent and the American one. The following questions were asked: “Is it possible
to speak like Americans? Do you think you can do it? Is it possible to achieve intel-
ligibility without trying to sound American?”
In the sixth unit entitled “Wales”, the prospective teachers had the objective
of making students aware of English varieties, mainly Welsh English. In order
to do so, pre-viewing questions were asked: “Do you know any variety of English
other than the American or British? Do you know there is a variety of English called
Welsh English? Have you been exposed to it?”. After that, a video on the differ-
ences between English and the Welsh language was suggested and the students
would have to fill in the gaps according to their understanding of it. As a follow
up activity, the task was to carry out a search on the internet to find three other
varieties of English spoken in Britain, and share the results they found.
In order to identify the student teachers’ ELF re-contextualization, we devel-
oped a checklist taking as our basis the implications derived from an ELF per-
spective that guided the course. These implications appear in Table 1.
As the table shows, for the student teachers the more salient aspect of
ELF was the need to associate the English language with countries other than
the United States or the UK. Interestingly, Kenya was chosen by many groups,
despite the apparent cultural distance between Brazil and that African country⁴.
The tasks required learners to look for information about that country (e.g. its
location, languages spoken, history, etc.); whereas two topics (environment and
poverty) were particularly selected, perhaps due to the similarities they identi-
fied with our own country. A more stereotypical topic was also addressed through
a comparison between HIV/Aids both in Brazil and in Kenya, thus reinforcing
images customarily disseminated by the media. This seems to be true also even
when there is an attempt to include social issues into the teaching of English, as
the unit Kenya-2 seems to do by focusing on poverty and the environment. Addi-
tionally it tries to associate the global with the local, by relating the discussed
points with the students’ own country.
4 Our cultural ties are more directly linked to Portuguese speaking African countries.
Table 1: Teaching units and their characteristics
Units Questions: DOES THE UNIT Kenya-1 Kenya-2 Kenya-3 Football Scotland Wales
a) encourage re-conceptualisations of No No No No No No
the reasons for learning English, i.e.,
does it ask the learner to rethink why
he/she is studying English?
b) include tasks to develop intercul- No No Yes No No No

tural skills?
c) include varieties of English other Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
than Standard American or Standard
British for the teaching of receptive
skills?
d) address topics and themes covering No Partially Partially No No No

a wider range of social and global
issues?
e) enable understandings of the spread No No No Yes No No

of English in the world and its connec-
tion with globalization?
Considering the importance of bringing other varieties of English and promoting

the consciousness that it is a language spoken in many parts of the world, the
student teachers succeeded in including other countries as the unit focus, with
countries within the Inner Circle (Wales and Scotland) or Outer Circle (Kenya).
The Brazilian perspective was treated through another stereotypical aspect of
our culture: football. Apparently, then, the students were able to go beyond the
United States or the UK, but not to the point of thinking of speakers from Expand-
ing Circle countries or challenging stereotypes.
In relation to the different English varieties/accents we noticed the prospec-
tive English language teachers were concerned with aspects of intelligibility, as
we can see in the unit “Kenya-1”, related to both pronunciation and lexicon and in
the unit about “Football”, in which an interview with a football player questions
the relevance of speaking a standard variety. This again reinforces the idea that
the predominant understanding by the groups was that ELF means not linking
English to the two widely known standard varieties.
In general, we can say that the majority of the student teachers thought of
bringing topics/themes associated with social/global issues, moving beyond the
common “celebrities’ life” topics. An attempt at developing intercultural aware-
ness can be identified in the tasks demanding the establishment of connections
between the global and the local, with the students reflecting on their own reali-
ties, in a contrastive way.
There was a somewhat repetitive pattern in terms of the designed exercises.
Most of the units had the following basic structure: there was a pre-viewing activ-
ity, followed by a short video presentation and then a discussion among peers,
with a predominance of “fill in the blanks” exercises for listening activities. Only
one unit included written texts (Kenya-2). Furthermore, the format of the exer-
cises did not vary and there was a preference for oral comprehension. This may
be due to the fact that the ELF literature they had contact with dealt more exten-
sively with oral interactions rather than with written ones and thus induced the
understanding that it was easier to think of ELF as strongly connected to oral
interactions (Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011).
Based on this preliminary analysis we can say that for those prospective
teachers attending the course: a) an ELF perspective is about different English
varieties (as well as accents) to be brought in the classroom; b) intelligibility
is more important than achieving a standard native-speaker variety; c) ELF is
related to social/cultural themes although in a stereotypical way; c) the global
and the local are connected, with the students reflecting about the realities in
other countries and their own context; d) an ELF perspective can be more easily
introduced in activities that privilege oral comprehension and production.
These understandings show that the course aims were partially achieved. As
we can see in Table 1, the only goal that was successfully accomplished was the
one that implied consciousness about the existence of other varieties of English.
The implication is that the prospective teachers developed conceptualizations of
ELF as being an awareness of the existence of other ‘Englishes’. Other aspects
were neglected in their production, thus suggesting that re-conceptualizations of
the reasons for learning English remained untouched. This may be explained by
the fact that for many course participants that was the first time they had contact
with the notion that the English language does not belong solely to speakers from
the Inner Circle (many times synonymous with the US or the UK). Another factor
that could have contributed to that re-contextualization was the limited time for
un-learning about EFL and trying to find a pedagogical approach to translate the
ideas presented by the texts into the classroom. As such, these understandings
represent a small step towards designing an ELF curriculum, but much more
needs to be done in order to propose a full-fledged syllabus with materials that
gradually develop the critical intercultural awareness required in a changing,
interconnected world. Perhaps we can gradually move from a stage where there
is the recognition of language diversity, as one would normally associate with the
‘World Englishes’ paradigm, to one where there is acknowledgment that ELF is
about the dynamics of using language to engage in the production of meanings.
As suggested by Seidlhofer (2011: 204–205) “generally speaking, such a frame-

work for teacher education would privilege process over form and awareness over
certainty, and it would treat knowledge of language and knowledge about lan-
guage as equally important”.
4 Conclusion
As we looked at the teaching units produced by the groups of prospective English
language teachers, we noticed echoes of the literature on ELF, since, as we said
before, the teacher education program is only starting to incorporate this per-
spective into the curriculum. Therefore, the students lacked the experience with
this approach and the units they produced reflect the understandings developed
during the 60 hour course. We do recognize that this was a short time and not
enough to work through all those aspects deemed relevant, but the initiative
proved invaluable in terms of moving the student teachers away from a strict EFL
perspective. This suggests that it is possible to introduce the production of teach-
ing materials in teacher education programs as a way of revealing the evolving
thinking around ELF pedagogy. Our experience was at pre-service level but we
believe it is also possible to extend it to in-service teachers.
As a first a course designed specifically to address ELF in a teacher educa-
tion program there are many lessons to be learned. The questions that guided
our evaluation of the teaching units can be expanded to include others that more
clearly reflect understandings of what it means to teach ELF, not as a variety, but
as an approach to the English language that frees teachers and learners to use
language for their own purposes without worrying too much whether they are
adhering to native speakers’ norms. According to the rationale that guided our
curriculum proposal, it would be important to design opportunities for learners
themselves develop checklists and analyze their own materials, later reformulat-
ing them in the light of the teachers’ feedback. This is one of the improvements
that we would make in future editions of the course.
Following the suggestion that an ELF pedagogy is always context-sensitive
and locally produced, our experience in introducing it in a teacher education
program in Brazil has shown that it is possible to raise awareness about the diver-
sity of English in the world today but more work is needed to give it a clear focus,
one which reflects the current ELF research. In other words, we are still in the
process of producing meaning about what ELF is and how it can be translated
into the classroom and this ongoing dialogue can be collaboratively produced
both locally and internationally, effort to which this book bears witness.
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Domingos Sávio Pimentel Siqueira
Chapter 14
English As A Lingua Franca And ELT Materials:
Is The “Plastic World” Really Melting?
Language is by its nature a social phenomenon; the locus of language is the speech commu-
nity rather than a geographical territory. (Brutt-Griffler 2002: 11)
1 Introduction
As surprising it may seem, in historical terms, the trajectory of the English lan-
guage as the contact idiom among different intranational and international com-
munities is a fairly recent phenomenon. As Barber (1993: 234) posits, “Shake-
speare, for example, wrote for a speech-community of only a few millions, whose
language was not much valued in Europe and unknown to the rest of the world.”
By 1600, English was “pretty-well confined to England and southern Scotland,
not yet having penetrated very much into Ireland and even Wales, let alone into
the world beyond” (Barber 1993: 234).
It was due to the British colonialist enterprise around the globe as of the 17th
century, reaching the Americas in the west and Asia in the east, that the great
potential of the English language as one of mankind’s most influential languages
began to be considered. Before this, as Phillipson (1992) contends, English was
nothing but a language of minor importance and of limited reach, a fact admitted
by Richard Mulcaster (1531–1611), regarded as the founder of British lexicography,
who, in an attempt to stimulate the use of the vernacular English in place of Latin
in the country, writes in 1582: “Our English tung… is of small reatch, it stretcheth
no further than this Iland of ours, naie not there ouer all.” (Mulcaster 1582: 256
cited in Wright 2004: 136)
However, with the remarkable spread of British colonialism in the centuries
to come, resulting in the so-called “empire where the sun never sets”, the rise of
one of their colonies, the United States of America, as one of the superpowers
of the 20th century, especially in the political and technological domains, and,
most recently, with the advent of the phenomenon of globalization, English has
traveled along with the territorial, military, cultural, and economic conquests
of these movements, and even under the constant attempt of freeing itself from
its imperial veil, intimately connected with colonialist practices and discourses
(Pennycook 1998, 2001), the language was diffused, appropriated, and nativized
240 Domingos Sávio Pimentel Siqueira
by innumerous subjugated peoples on all continents, acquiring in several coun-

tries the status of official language, shifting from the position of an instrument of
exploitation to that of resistance (Brutt-Griffler 2002).
In this sense, despite antagonistic and controversial visions on the phenom-
enal expansion of English throughout the world, a process in which, “the lan-
guage has been actively promoted as an instrument of the foreign policy of major
English-speaking states” (Phillipson 1992: 1), the marks of this appropriation
are illustrated in the famous words by acclaimed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe
([1975] 2003: 65):
I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But
it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered
to suit its new African surroundings.
According to Phillipson (1992: 1), “the British empire has given way to the empire
of English”, transforming the Anglo-Saxon language into the ‘real black gold of
the North Sea,’ solidly and carefully mined by a transnational industry whose
production reaches a few billion pounds annually. The consolidation of the
current phase of globalization, states Kumaravadivelu (2006a), is characterized
by space and time shrinking, and the dilution of borders, where a global culture,
not infrequently, is equated with terms like Westernization, Americanization or
McDonaldization (Ritzer 1998).
Such a scenario strengthens and legitimizes the role of English as the language
of international communication in today’s world, transforming it into a product of
extremely high value, especially in peripheral countries where teaching and learn-
ing English have become a great business. As Pennycook (2001: 78) points out,
with or without resistance, “English is in the world and the world is in English.”
Central to this movement to acquire the current global lingua franca is ELT
which, far from being a single and innocent combination of letters and words, is
the propelling force of a very profitable, highly competitive international busi-
ness, oriented towards the adoption of a model of “standard English” to be spread
and taught to an avid audience of a few billions in practically every corner of the
planet.
Noticeably, the powerful influence of ELT has contributed to the emergence
and sustainability of uncountable English courses and programs around the
world, employing a great number of professionals worldwide in areas like teach-
ing, research, teacher education, proficiency exams, creation and commercial-
ization of instructional materials, among others, involving universities, schools,
language institutes, technology companies, publishing houses, and similar insti-
tutions.
Chapter 14 ELF and the plastic world of ELT materials 241
Of all different aspects involving ELT practices, our emphasis here will be
on instructional materials, e.g. coursebooks, since it is departing from them
and working with them that a lot is done in language teaching and learning. As
much as Pennycook (1998), who conceives ELT as a genuine product of colonial-
ism, arguing that the matrices and orientations of this enterprise have lingered
on with time, and through it, are renovated and re-invented, we see as crucial
the importance of our, language professionals and educators, launching a criti-
cal eye on every class material we get in contact with. Thus, under an ELF per-
spective, we propose, among other things, the adoption of postures anchored
on critical and interculturally-sensitive approaches which in such a context,
can foment the production and utilization of materials that should move away
uses and users of non-native and non-hegemonic varieties of English from the
peripheral, not to say invisible, condition they commonly occupy in this whole
process (Matsuda 2005).
Having outlined the discussion, a few questions are worth asking: “If English
is in the world, where is the world in ELT materials?”; “What world has been
depicted in global ELT materials over the years?”; “When will local voices have a
say in the content of English coursebooks?” These are just a few of the many chal-
lenges the ELT industry will have to face once it decides to really produce materi-
als with the goal of reflecting on their pages (physical and virtual) the different
uses and users of English as a global lingua franca, since “there is a blatant mis-
match between the purpose for which English is most learnt in the world, namely
ELF use, and what is focused on in SLA, namely ESL/EFL.” (Seidlhofer 2011: 11)
2 Locating and relocating ELT

Regardless of what has happened to the British Empire, the sun has never set for
the English language. For its privileged condition of being today’s means of inter-
national communication, very often we come across initiatives which try to attri-
bute English an aura of modernity and a supposedly neutral character. In other
words, very commonly, attempts are made in order to free English from its impe-
rial vests, consequently seeking to soften its position as a product of colonialism
(Pennycook 1998). Needless to say ELT has flourished under similar assumptions.
However, as Brutt-Griffler (2002: 184) points out, “driven by the political and
economic imperatives of empire, language methodology was subservient to impe-
rial purposes.” Kumaravadivelu (2006b: 12) goes deeper into the question sug-
gesting that “the history of English and ELT shows that its colonial coloration has
four interrelated dimensions – scholastic, linguistic, cultural, and economic”:
The scholastic dimension relates to the ways in which Western scholars furthered their own
vested interests by disseminating Western knowledge and by denigrating local knowledge.
The linguistic dimension pertains to the ways in which the knowledge and use of local
language(s) were made irrelevant for learning and teaching English as an additional lan-
guage. The cultural dimension integrates the teaching of English language with the teaching
of Western culture with the view to developing in the L2 learners cultural empathy towards
the target language community. […] The economic dimension adds jobs and wealth to the
economy of English-speaking countries through a worldwide ELT industry.
(Kumaravadivelu 2006b: 12)
Within the same line of thought, Pennycook (1998: 19) asserts that “there are deep
and indissoluble links between the practices, theories, and contexts of ELT and
the history of colonialism.” It does not matter if its ideological and pedagogical
foundations were initially laid in the colonies before they were exported to the
center of the Empire and then disseminated all over the world. As Phillipson
(1992: 109–110) observes, “proficiency in English was essential for functioning in
colonial periphery-English societies, or at least for those who had dealings with
the colonizers.” In India, for instance, “it was decreed”, adds Phillipson (1992:
111), “that when Indians were recruited to posts under the government, prefer-
ence would be given to those who had received an English education.” In other
words, potential local workers and collaborators would have to be fluent in the
colonial language, since such ability had become “the gateway to all social and
material benefits” (Misra 1982: 150 cited in Phillipson 1992: 111).
Considering such a scenario, it is possible to conclude that ELT, in fact, has
echoed what Pennycook (1998) came to call ‘cultural constructions of colonial-
ism’, and in his view, today more influenced by the peculiar forces of local prac-
tices of English (Pennycook 2010), we shall not forget that “it [was] colonialism
that produced the initial conditions for the global spread of English” (Pennycook
1998: 19). Consequently, complements the author, “ELT not only rode on the back
of colonialism to the distant corners of the Empire but was also in turn produced
by that voyage” (Pennycook 1998: 19).
Although this crucial aspect of the ‘soul’ of ELT has not received enough
attention from areas like TESOL and even Applied Linguistics, clear evidence
has shown that the appropriation of English by different local communities, cul-
minating with the emergence and legitimation of many and diverse Englishes,
has indeed provided a fertile soil for a more realistic approach to ELT, preferably,
deriving from ‘indigenous epistemologies’ whose main characteristic is a deep
struggle against a (neo)colonizing praxis of the conservative view of TESOL as a
whole (Shin 2006).
That is exactly where ELF studies findings can open an important door and,
among other possibilities, contribute to a relocation of ELT, taking into consider-
ation the contemporary use of English worldwide and its political, ideological,
and pedagogical implications. As Dewey (2012: 141) remarks, “research in ELF
has reached the point where established principles and sanctioned good prac-
tice in ELT require substantial reassessment,” showing that “effective communi-
cation in this lingua franca entails especially dynamic and adaptive use of lan-
guage resources” (ibid: 141). The same argument is brought up by Jenkins, Cogo,
and Dewey (2011: 304) when they pertinently defend that “ELF empirical work
and theoretical discussions have raised profound questions about current prin-
ciples and practice in ELT,” and that the pedagogical implications of ELF should
include key areas like knowledge base of language teachers, language syllabus,
approaches and methods, language assessment, and, of course, teaching materi-
als (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011).
Despite the fact that a lot has so far been produced and discussed in terms
of the global presence of English, ELF included, unfortunately, “the daily prac-
tices of most of the millions of teachers of English worldwide seem to have largely
remained untouched by [these] developments” (Seidlhofer 2011: 9). In reality, it
is perfectly plausible to say that “ELF research and theoretical debate have given
rise to some profound questions with regard to current practice and thinking in
ELT” (Dewey 2012: 142), but it is equally important to admit that there is still a
long road to travel, especially in the so-called periphery countries. In other words,
“because ELF research findings pose substantial challenges to current beliefs and
practice, it is likely that further engagement with ELF in the language classroom
will be contested and hence gradual” (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011: 305).
In times of economic globalization power has shifted from hands, but
English, now made into “the international currency of science and technology”
(Graddol 1997: 9), is still the ‘great companion of the Empire’ which, in the posi-
tion of today’s global lingua franca, has given birth to and gloriously feeds an edi-
torial industry whose intellectual tradition continues being strongly connected
with its hegemonic centers, loyally enforcing the traditions and views of the so-
called global North.
Critical of such practices, Matsuda (2003) points out that, under this per-
spective, English is still solely taught as a language from inner circle countries
(Kachru 1985), based almost exclusively on a standard variety of either Ameri-
can or British English, through ‘soulless’ textbooks, very similar to one another,
full of characters and cultural topics from these places, and socially anesthetized
and sanitized for commercial purposes (Gray 2002; Akbari 2008). This posture,
though not explicitly, appears to conceive the language classroom as “a closed
box, an educational context isolated from society” (Pennycook 2000: 89), crip-
pling it of its crucial role of reflecting the world, since, as an unquestionably
privileged sociopolitical space, it does not reflect the world only, it is the world.
As Baynham (2006: 28) argues, “what happens in the classroom should end up
making a difference outside the classroom.”
The examples which follow, taken from some recently published ELT text-
books, while under the glossy label of global materials, corroborates the tendency
to transform the English classroom into an idealized space, a “fantasy island” or,
as some prefer, a “pedagogical Disneyland”, not mentioning several of the topics
which very frequently prove to be completely irrelevant to innumerous students’
contexts and realities:
Excerpt from reading activity in Soars and Soars (1998: 59):
Bill Gates is the richest private citizen in the world. There is nothing he can’t afford. Every
morning, when his alarm clock goes off, the software tycoon is $ 20 million richer than
when he went to bed.
Excerpt from listening activity in Soars and Soars (2001: 38):
Brad from Malibu: My house is fantastic. It’s right next to the ocean. I have a lot of rich
neighbors – some of them are famous actors. My house has ten rooms, and five are bed-
rooms. […] I also have a swimming pool, a private screening room for movies, and an exer-
cise room. I live here alone.
Excerpt from listening activity in Brewster, Davies and Rogers (2006: 33):
I’m Li. I’m from Beijing. I came to the United States because I have family here, and they
helped me get a visa. I’ve lived here since 1995, but I haven’t become an American citizen yet.
Excerpt from reading activity in Clandfield and Pickering (2010: 12):
A portable phone is called different things. In the UK it is called a ‘mobile phone’ and in
the US it is called a ‘cell phone’. […] In the UK, the number of mobile phones is 118 per 100
people. In the US it is about 85 per 100 people.
As Holborow (1996: 172) suggests, “teaching English can no longer be taken as

simply teaching language.” Teaching English as a global lingua franca requires a
daily visit to several fronts and frontiers, setting new priorities such as the adop-
tion of appropriate pedagogical approaches to this new reality which are able to
“accommodate the local” (Gray 2002: 165), legitimizing the interactions among
the more diverse linguacultures. The rupture with premises which still propagate
the idea that the custody of the world language belongs to hegemonic English-
speaking countries or that their cultures are the only ones worth being exposed
to, is to be taken as a political and ideological priority in the agenda of critical
ELT professionals.
Besides that, the varied and diverse contexts where English is taught and
learned nowadays, for a long time already, have been clamoring for a revision of
objectives and orientations in ELT programs and materials, proposing that these
truly reflect learners’ specific needs, promote the insertion of local cultures to
better serve local teachers and foster the development of students’ intercultural
awareness (Baker 2009; 2012), relying on more practice-oriented ELT publica-
tions (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011) and on topics which are part of the ‘real
world’ so as to finally contribute to the deconstruction of the so-called “plastic
world” of textbooks.
3 The plastic world of ELT textbooks

Elaborating on recent ELF developments and the implications to the regular
language classroom, Jenkins (2012: 487) asserts that, “despite the phenomenal
increase in the use of ELF around the world, the prevailing orientation in English
languaging teaching and testing, and ELT materials remains undoubtedly
towards ENL.” As a consequence of such a consolidated practice, in all senses,
“the typical ‘global’ ELT coursebooks […] provide classroom models for produc-
tion based largely or entirely on ENL […] that is assessed in the supposedly ‘inter-
national’ ELT examinations” (Ibid: 487).
As for materials specifically, Pennycook (2000: 98–99) reminds us that
“all textbooks, all teaching materials carry cultural and ideological messages.”
Beloved by some and demonized by others, the textbook, in uncountable lan-
guage teaching and learning programs, is a highly desired element under the
argument that it is a guide and an important supporting material for both teach-
ers and learners (Siqueira 2010). According to Richards (2002: 26), “much of the
language teaching that occurs throughout the world today could not take place
without the extensive use of commercial textbooks.” With advantages and disad-
vantages, in many contexts, textbooks serve as the main source of linguistic and
cultural input for learners and as the basis for a large and important portion of
classroom practice.
Regarding EFL textbooks, Dendrinos (1992: 152) observes that such a material
“does not aim simply at the transmission and acquisition of language structures
with autonomous meanings deprived of their social character”. More than that,
the textbook, concludes the author, “will contain material whose purpose will be
the linguistic acculturation of the learner and therefore their subjugation to social
conventions and to the dominant ideology with which language is invested”
(Ibid: 152).
Through the same critical lenses, Akbari (2008: 282), as mentioned, con-
tends that “the majority of coursebooks used for English instruction have been
anesthetized to make them politically and socially harmless for an interna-
tional audience.” Richards (1998: 2002) admits such a practice, arguing in a
softer tone that efforts are made by publishers in order to avoid contents which
might transmit social prejudices and ethnocentrism, and privilege, on the other
hand, preoccupations, needs, and universal human feelings. However, accord-
ing to this author, the guides conceived by the large publishing companies for
the creation of foreign language (FL) textbooks, having as their main objective
financial success and quality excellence, very frequently, have caused an almost
complete loss of the “flavor” and the creativity of the original manuscript (Rich-
ards 1998, 2002). As a consequence, such a historically well-established prac-
tice has given birth to what has come to be known as the ‘plastic world’ of FL
textbooks (Siqueira 2010).
Prodromou (1988) was one of the first ELT researchers to call attention to the
need for recognizing and confronting the plastic world of FL textbooks. Conceiv-
ing language teaching as a non-neutral process, making explicit its eminently
ideological character, the Greek scholar postulates that in several instructional
contexts, especially English as a foreign language (EFL), the classroom is simply
dissociated from the real world which pulses outside:
I have arrived at this feeling after ten years of trying to ‘sell’ communicative methodology
and Anglo-American ELT textbooks to non-native speaker teachers of English. […] Globally
designed textbooks have continued to be stubbornly Anglo-centric: appealing to a world
market as they do, they cannot by definition draw on local varieties of English and have not
gone very far in recognizing English as an international language either. What were they
about? They were mostly about situations which were not only imaginary, […] but vacuous,
empty of life. […] The classroom is a small world. A community linked with the big world
outside. It is an extension of that world. But we often behave as if our students on entering
our little EFL world, change. […] that, coming to learn English, they leave their three-dimen-
sional humanity outside and enter the plastic world of EFL textbooks; textbooks where lan-
guage is safe and innocent, and does not say or do anything. […] Most textbooks project an
Anglo-centric, male dominated, middle-class utopia of one kind or another. The life has
been taken out of this EFL textbook world.
(Prodromou 1988: 76–79)
Aligned with Prodromou’s arguments, Pennycook (2000) reinforces the idea

stating that many ESL textbooks still work with a 1970s Kellogg’s® Cornflakes
vision of the perfect family: “a blond, white, heterosexual family, with one daugh-
ter and one son (all of whom clearly visit the dentist regularly)” (Pennycook 2000:
100). A quick visit to ELT textbooks sold globally easily reveals that such a pro-
tocol remains practically intact.¹ For example, in Brewster, Davies and Rogers
(2006: 7), Student’s Book 3, Unit 1, Life stories, Prince William’s “perfect” life is
depicted in the following excerpt:
Prince William (William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor) was born in London on June 21, 1982.
He grew up in palaces and mansions, but when he was three years old, he started going to
a pre-school in London. (…) When he was 13, he went to Eton College, where he received his
high-school education. He then attended St. Andrews University in Scotland. (…) He is a
good student and an excellent athlete, too. He used to be captain of the swimming team at
Eton, and now he plays polo, like his father.
As we discussed in Siqueira (2010: 230–231), including or excluding certain con-

tents in a teaching collection, be it for mother or foreign language learning, is
part of a rigorous screening process by editors, since they are to respond to the
premise that as they are producing a textbook for a global audience, some areas
are regarded as sensitive and therefore should not comprise the list of topics to
be considered for the coursebooks². Based on this, controversial and supposedly
uncomfortable issues are to be solely undermined by the “perceived need to sani-
tize content” (Gray 2002: 166).
According to Gray (2002) and Akbari (2008), most publishers all over the
world advise textbook and complementary materials writers to observe and
follow a set of guidelines summarized in the acronym PARSNIP. In other words,
any topic related to Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, “Isms” in
general (racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, among others) and Pornography are
to be banned, “including those which, potentially, could foster the develop-
ment of critical awareness on the part of both teachers and students” (Siqueira
2010: 231).
Thus, a significant portion of FL textbooks, including those for ELT, chooses
to deal with neutral, apparently harmless topics, ignoring the fact that, as Akbari
(2008: 281) asserts, “there are many groups in any society which are driven to
the margins exactly because their political, behavioural, or belief systems are in
conflict with those of the mainstream groups and they are consequently denied
1 It is important to mention that more recent ELT coursebooks already bring in families from
other origins and ethnicities like Afro-descendants, Hispanics, Asians, immigrants, etc. Howev-
er, the traditional family design still prevails, excluding family groups formed by single mothers
or fathers, homosexual parents, among others.
2 In 1956, in his book Linguistics across cultures, Robert Lado had already stated that, at first
sight, the majority of textbooks are very similar. Thus, the role of publishers is to make their man-
uals to look attractive and the titles to sound very enticing to their potential clients. This is part of
their business. However, adds the author, “if the teacher is trained professionally, he/she will be
able to look beyond attractive illustrations and handsome printing and binding.” (Lado 1956: 2)
certain rights or opportunities.” Because of this, it is reasonable to conclude that

the plastic world of textbooks seems not to be concerned with such issues, moving
on, therefore, with the firm objective of keeping the language classroom detached
from the real world. In other words, once the industry establishes certain stan-
dards to be followed by textbook writers, and such standards are especially moti-
vated by economic reasons, the editorial apparatus makes sure that the regula-
tions which dictate and calibrate the contents in their materials continue intact
throughout the years (Souza 2011).
As we can infer, this is not exactly a recent practice. Once we delve into the
history of language teaching methods, approaches, and techniques, especially
the most contemporary ones (from the Grammar Translation Method to the
various versions of the Communicative Approach), we are easily confronted with
the so-called “illusion of authoring”, since, as we already mentioned, the text-
book writer will never be able to avoid editorial scrutiny, commonly oriented by
ideological and economic reasons (Souza 2011). As a result, as Coracini (2011)
would suggest, we come to the conclusion that linguistic education has indeed
been largely influenced by the textbook industry.
For many years, this tradition has remained untouched. However, the current
global condition of English has been pressing for changes, showing that we need
to become much more aware of the limitations of such a practice once we start seri-
ously considering the wider context of English use in today’s world (Dewey 2006).
Under the ELF perspective, which holds great potential to propose the design of
syllabuses and materials relevant to specific contexts of learning, Jenkins (2012:
487) recognizes that “there are a few examples indeed of coursebooks that adopt
a more ELF-oriented approach, or at least NNES-oriented approach,” but, for her,
more often than not, learners of English “are still encouraged to aim for the kind
of English that British and North American English speakers use among them-
selves” (Ibid: 487).
Certainly, it goes beyond the scope of this text to discuss the characteristics
of different ELT methods and approaches, but when we analyze the contents of
uncountable coursebooks, either structuralist or communicative, it is possible
to notice that elements such as cultural references, for instance, have always
resorted to the practice of mirroring the daily life of native speakers, spreading
and incorporating their beliefs, different types of behavior, values, and ways
of life. As Souza (2011) observes, when it comes to instructional materials, the
overall references are exactly those of native speakers of the target language. The
excerpt below illustrates such a common practice:
(…) In their late thirties, Cindy and Bobby had a daughter, Andrea. After majoring in com-
munication technology, she worked in Chicago for a few years, moved to New York to get a
master’s degree, then to California, where she has worked since 2003. She’s now studying
for a doctorate part-time and spends a lot of time at conventions and seminars, keeping up
with developments.
(Brewster, Davies, and Rogers 2006: 14)
4 Examining a few ELT textbooks

In a brief exploratory study of three communicative English textbooks³ in 2011,
we carefully investigated some aspects that could point to changes in the edito-
rial orientations related to their cultural references, especially due to the fact that
English is today’s global lingua franca. From the categories defined, two are of
great relevance to be mentioned here: (a) places in the world, and (b) English oral
models used.
In Textbook 1 (Passages Upper-intermediate, 2008), 17 countries are men-
tioned in 77 instances, with the United States appearing in 23 (29.8%) of the
examples, followed by Canada, in 9 examples (11.6%). In Textbook 2 (Skyline
Intermediate, 2006), 26 countries are mentioned in 72 examples, with the United
States leading the list in 24 examples (33.3%) and the United Kingdom (mostly
England) in 14 (19.4%). In Textbook 3 (World Pass Upper-intermediate, 2006),
29 countries are cited in 67 examples, with the United States appearing 16 times
(23.8%), followed by Australia in 5 (7.46%) instances.
Regarding the “oral model of English”⁴, in Textbook 1 (Passages Upper-inter-
mediate, 2008), we tallied 84 oral incursions such as dialogs, instructions, and
listening segments, with 79 (94%) from inner circle countries, 5 (6%) from the
expanding circle and none from outer circle countries. In Textbook 2 (Skyline
Intermediate, 2006), 100 incursions were listed, with 89 (89%) being recognized
as models from inner circle countries, especially American English, 10 (10%) from
the expanding circle, and 1 (1%) from the outer circle. The third and last volume,
Textbook 3, (World Pass Upper-intermediate, 2006) brought 31 oral samples, with
the surprising fact (compared to the other volumes analyzed) that all examples
are in American English, that is, one of the inner circle hegemonic models. Models
from the other two circles do not appear in this volume of the series.
3 There were not ample criteria for choosing these coursebooks. They are all admittedly de-
signed for international audiences, and it was our familiarity with them as long-time teachers
that oriented our decision. It is relevant to mention that we analyzed only one volume of each
series, selected randomly.
4 In deciding between outer and expanding circle models, we were guided by the origin of
speaker mentioned in script and by experience.
The political and pedagogical implications of the global spread of English

have been extensively discussed. As Seidlhofer (2011) points out, a significant
number of interactions in English today take place among non-native speakers
of the language, in a lingua franca context. However, “this special status of
English has had virtually no effect (so far) on how language is formulated as a
subject in syllabuses and teaching materials” (Seidlhofer 2011: 9), a situation
which, more than ever, has invited us to realize that many of the consolidated
ELT practices need urgently to be revisited and reviewed, bearing in mind the
new challenges teachers and learners from all cultures are to be confronted
with. That is, at a moment when “for the first time in history, a language has
reached truly global dimensions across continents, domains, and social strata,
and as a consequence, it is being shaped, in its instrumental uses” (Seidlhofer
2011: 7), a great portion of ELT practices has been threatened by “the possibility
to be declared obsolete for the simple reason that they have shown not to take
into consideration some of the most significant characteristics of the phenom-
enon” (Rajagopalan 2004: 114).
As Baker (2012: 69) postulates, “the use of English as the global lingua franca
highlights the need for an understanding of cultural contexts and communica-
tive practices to successfully communicate across diverse cultures.” These con-
texts, ELF research has shown, “are usually characterized by a high degree of
linguacultural diversity, routinely resulting in highly variable and creative use
of linguistic resources” (Dewey 2012: 163). For the ELT industry, although fully
aware of the complex flow of linguistic and cultural practices taking place nowa-
days through English (Baker 2009), due to its intrinsic conservative nature, it still
appears resistant to the fact that “English as a global lingua franca forces us to go
beyond notions of teaching a fixed language and cultural context as adequate for
successful comumunication” (Baker 2012: 69).
As Dendrinos (1992) posits, the ideological perspective is inherent to all
teaching practices, including textbook selection and use. According to Brutt-
Griffler (2002), ELT methodology has greatly relied on the creativity and potential
of local teachers. However, when it comes to textbook content, for instance, it
seems that teachers all over the world, working in different educational contexts,
have not yet felt capable of going beyond the mere appreciation of the utilitarian
value of the materials that come to their hands. Our expectation then is that ELF
contexts and realities trigger some radical changes in such a status quo, firmly
believing that ELF “is likely to continue to evolve of its own accord as long as
English remains the principal global lingua franca, regardless of the wishes of
those who find it distasteful” (Jenkins 2007: 252).
It is well-known that, as any human practice, language pedagogy also reflects
people’s beliefs, values, and attitudes, and, certainly, is oriented towards finan-
cial gains. “A textbook that does not sell is prone to fail, and, consequently, to
disappear” (Souza 2011: 30). For many, it is a matter of great pride the fact that
English has reached the condition of a world language. But it is also a very impor-
tant fact that the consequences of such a process need to be considered in all
aspects, especially when it comes to global speakers who should finally be taken
seriously as legitimate users of English and not as those ‘helpless’ perennial
learners or speakers of an interlanguage (Kachru 1990; Seidlhofer 2011). Our brief
study on a few ‘global’ textbooks, in a certain way, shows that, sooner or later,
changes are to be demanded, mainly at the local levels, where English is indeed
being understood as a language that belongs to those who use it, and therefore
should reflect local realities. In this sense, it is important to highlight the contri-
bution of ELF researchers who, according to Cogo (2012: 103–4), “have started
encouraging learners, teachers, and ELT practitioners in general, to engage in the
debate of what a language is and issues of ownership, and it is hoped that this
engagement will continue to flourish.”
The world consumes English, it appropriates English, provides English with
new colors, new flavors, new forms and perspectives to exactly see the world.
However, this very same world continues being weakly represented in all sorts of
ELT materials. In other words, it seems that the extent of the diffusion of English
geographically, the enormous cultural diversity of the speakers who use it as a
lingua franca, the infinitely varied domains in which the language is found, and
the purposes it serves (Dewey 2006) remain a secondary issue to the ELT industry.
Under such circumstances, the words of reflection by Cogo (2012) are more than
welcome:
There is […] an assumption that ELT is all about grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation
and that this is the sum of communication. Many researchers (not only ELF ones!) prefer to
approach language teaching from a different perspective, one which would see language
teaching as a much wider process involving a whole range of communication skills, knowl-
edge, and attitudes such as communication strategies, pragmatic competence, and lan-
guage and cultural awareness.
(Cogo 2012: 104)
Among the multiple challenges we all have ahead of us, English teachers, learn-
ers, researchers, teacher educators, etc., this is one we certainly need to be aware
of from the very first moment we set our hearts and souls to investigate, teach,
and learn this de-nationalized and de-territorialized language called English
under a paradigm that grants us with “an exciting opportunity to move beyond
conventional approaches” (Dewey 2013: 348).
5 Concluding remarks
Although the debate is just at its beginning, and maybe will never reach a con-
sensus, the fact is that the indisputable status of global lingua franca reached by
English in the post-modern times, as Graddol (2006) points out, tends to estab-
lish its end as a foreign language. According to the author, “native speakers may
feel the language ‘belongs’ to them, but it will be those who speak English as a
second or foreign language who will determine its world future” (Graddol 1997:
10). So, in light of these reflections, we might be approximating the point of over-
coming the perverse premise that those English varieties which differ from the
hegemonic ones find themselves in an everlasting process of maturation, since,
for many people, as Anchimbe (2009) criticizes, the new Englishes are nothing
but deviations of the traditional varieties. On the contrary, says the author, the
new varieties are not growing or advancing towards a higher or better status, they
“no longer chase the foreign parents in the likes of British English and American
English but dig extensively from the repertoire of their mixed societies to make
themselves independent entities, through which speakers not only communicate
but also construct identities” (Anchimbe 2006: 183).
As for instructional materials, Seidlhofer (2011: 201) is precise in affirming
that “the only English represented in textbooks, grammars, and dictionaries gen-
erally is ENL, and no real alternatives are on offer.” The simple fact that so far
there are no textbooks that enable teachers to exercise a ‘new way of thinking,’
however, should not be seen as an obstacle for the adoption an ELF-informed
pedagogy in classrooms worldwide. As mentioned earlier, the great potential
ELF holds to provoke such a change should not be invalidated “by the current
absence of teaching materials that would put it into practice” (Seidlhofer 2011:
201) exactly because “what is crucial is not what teaching materials are used but
how they are used” (ibid: 201). And in an equally crucial collaborative work, “ELF
researchers feel their responsibility is to make current research findings acces-
sible in a way that enables teachers to recondisder their beliefs and practices and
make informed decisions about the significance of ELF for their own individual
teaching contexts” (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011: 306). Consequently, this can
“liberate the millions upon millions of people currently teaching and learning
English from inappropriate linguistic and cultural models” (Kirkpatrick 2006: 81).
Materials and resources are simply one of the many ELT components that
need to be (re)assessed and discussed in a more critical and systematic way, so
we can guarantee the necessary changes to language pedagogy in contemporary
times. Regardless of the quality and the seals of authority which accompany
materials, they are not untouchable. As we stated in Siqueira (2010: 249), “the
textbook is not an enemy to be combated, but a companion to be critically evalu-
ated in the light of the needs and characteristics of each specific context.” Only
the teacher, especially that transformative intellectual, as conceived by Giroux
(1997), will be able to carry out such a task which produces emancipatory effects,
since “the poorer the teacher background, the more vulnerable he/she finds him/
herself in the obedience/dependence of the orientations expressed in (or subja-
cent to) the teaching material” (Almeida Filho 1994: 46).
We, ELF users, as much as native users, are equally privileged ‘shapers’ of the
global language, and, for this fact, we need to assume such a position and claim
our representativeness in material productions, finally overcoming our “colonial
hangover” (Rajagopalan 2011). We need to feel empowered in order to take care
of the invisibilities, the absences, the exclusions which we regularly foster or
ignore throughout our daily ELT practices around the planet. We should struggle
to bring back our self-esteem, see ourselves as legitimate owners of the English
language because, as Le Breton (2005: 21) tells us, “from now on, the geopolitics
of English is less and less geographic, less connected with the economic success
of the United States and Britain.” We need to reflect over our own identity, paying
heed, among other things, to what Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer, in his
anthological The Open Veins of Latin America, invites us to realize and react to:
Along the way, we lost the right to even call ourselves American, although Haitians and
Cubans had already been inscribed in History, as new peoples, a century before the pilgrims
from the Mayflower settled on the coast of Plymouth. Now, for the world, America means
only the United States, and we, in the best of hypotheses, inhabit a sub-America, a second-
class America, of hazy identity.
(Galeano 2010: 18)⁵
We conclude our reflection envisioning horizons of change which, undoubtedly,

begin to materialize in a more desired pluricentric or pluralistic pedagogy of
English as a global lingua franca (Canagarajah 2007; Kirkpatrick 2007), “a multi-
norm, multi-method approach, one in which linguistic diversity is acknowledged
and better understood” (Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey 2011: 306), deriving especially
from the new centers of power, where this language is constantly being remod-
eled, or, allow us to say, ‘rematernized’.
Without relying on naïve expectations or ignoring the fact that we are sur-
rounded by an immense and profitable business, we opt to orient our thoughts
5 Translated from Portuguese: Pelo caminho perdemos até o direito de nos chamarmos america-
nos, embora os haitianos e os cubanos já tivessem inscritos na História, como novos povos, um sé-
culo antes que os peregrinos do Mayflower se estabelecessem nas costas de Plymouth. Agora, para
o mundo, América é tão só os Estados Unidos, e nós quando muito habitamos uma sub-America,
uma América de segunda classe, de nebulosa identidade.
towards the view of the innumerous and fantastic possibilities the English lan-
guage holds today of uniting, integrating, and putting on the same side peoples
from different places and cultures in the world in a multifaceted dance where
only protagonists should perform. A dance where all and everyone can recognize
themselves and exercise in their own and peculiar way, their rights to speak the
English which was given to them and learned by them, an English adapted to
reflect the cultural flows of each locality.
Hopefully, we can follow the example set by African writer and poet Mia
Couto who, with his unique ability and sensibility to go beyond words, in one
of his many trips to Brazil, land where a different variety from his Mozambican
Portuguese is spoken, he affirms to admire and fall in love with the new sounds of
the language instead of rejecting them, or attempting to highlight irregularities.
On the contrary, Couto finds himself as a user exactly in the differences between
the two varieties, and feels that the language, despite natural variations, is basi-
cally his own mother tongue re-appropriated in another and sensual way. In the
words of the author:
My destiny, my trip, is this language which is ours but acquires a new sensuality there.
Brazil has made the language get undressed and assume the movements of a dancer. I savor
this flavor as if the word came out of me for the very first time. Here is my ‘remother’ tongue⁶.
(Couto 2010: 90)
‘Remother’ tongues. Who knows, one day, things will be seen and felt this way
with the many and vastly multicolored Englishes spoken, nativized, and remod-
eled all over the world. Who knows, English may indeed become the world’s lan-
guage in all senses. As we have tried to make explicit throughout the text, these
are words of hope. Hope which, necessarily, is expected to lead into action.
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Subject index
accommodation strategies 17, 53, 90, 114, 212 English language teaching (ELT)
attitude industry 250–251
– towards English 78, 80, 155 English language teacher
– towards ELF 147–148, 151, 177, 220 development 92–93
English language teacher education 77, 186
CEFR (Common European Framework of English language textbooks 246–249
Reference for Languages) English in Turkey 135–136
– descriptors 106–107 English language teacher education
– ELT-related documentation 125 programs 5, 135, 141–142, 144, 147,
– entrance level requirement 6 150–151
– European Union 172, 173 entrance test 6, 205–206, 208, 210
– familiarity 210 English as a foreign language
– governmental policies 116 – approaches 54, 104
– lingua franca 178 – assistant 185–186
– native speaker norms as models 104 – Austrian teachers 175
– NS ‘target’ norms 124 – classroom 171, 179, 246
colonialism 239, 241–242 – curricula 178
communities of practice 28, 30, 61, – native speakers 180–181
community of practice 36, 39–40 – school subject 173, 186–187
communicative competence 51–52, 56, 61, 90 English for specific purposes (ESP) 4, 13–20,
content-based language instruction 40 24, 26–30, 140
content and language integrated learning
(CLIL) 52, 59, 61–63 global education 35, 40
corpus of written English as a lingua franca in globalization 121, 137, 212, 228, 230,
academic settings (WrELFA) 18 239–243
corpus of research articles (CRA) 18, 23–25,
28 higher education 138–140, 150–151, 205
coursebooks 226, 230, 241, 245–248
critical awareness 118, 230, 247 identity, confidence and competence 96–97
cultural diversity 4, 35, 37, 40, 42, 226, 251 ideology 122, 126, 128–131, 245
indigenous epistemologies 242
early language learning 4, 69–71, 75–77 intercultural experience 6, 153, 156, 158–162,
e-learning 4, 62–63 165–166
effective pedagogy 89, 91, 96–98, 100 intercultural web collaboration 63
EIL 1, 4, 35–37, 39–43, 46–47, 140, 155, IPTEIL 4, 35, 37–47
201–202, intercultural rhetoric 14, 16–17, 24, 30
ELF pedagogy 1, 3–4, 35, 45, 51, 53, 60, 91, IPTELF 44, 47
122, 228, 235
ELF perspective 90, 130 language norms 22, 53–54
ELF-aware/awareness 2, 3, 5–6, 89, 91–92, language of schooling 70, 73, 80
95, 97, 99, 153, 162, 165–166 language skills 5, 98, 104, 108–109, 112,
ELF-informed pedagogy 60, 166, 252 114, 209
ELT materials 7, 121, 123–124, 239, 241, 245, longitudinal studies 69, 166
251 language policies 69–71, 136–137
260 Subject index
language policy 73, 135, 138, 171, 178 pre-service teacher education 116, 154, 156,
communicative language teaching 52, 139 225
language learning 241, 245 post-native era 91, 96
language pedagogy 127, 132, 184, 250, 253
language teaching reconciliation of ELT and ELF 58
– approach 104–105 role of Standard English 51
– background 198, 200
– ELF as a model 142 speech community 90, 98, 239
– materials 2–3, 6 standardized ENL varieties 127
– methods 248 student mobility 205
– normative perspective 149 syllabus
language testing 1–2, 100, 193–194, 200–201 – approaches and methods 243
learner corpus research 15–17 – design 90, 100
legitimate peripheral participation 36, – guidelines 126, 128
39–40 – materials 30, 226, 234, 248, 250
lingua franca 64 – spread of English 227
media literacy education 35, 40 teacher competence 179, 182–183

Michigan corpus of upper-student papers teaching culture 110
(MICUSP) 22–24, 28 teacher education 77, 82, 93, 130–131, 141,
multicompetence 90–91, 94 186
teacher education curricula 4, 5, 128, 226
negotiation of meaning 40, 45–47, 114, 200 teacher education program 226–227, 235
native speaker (NS) norms 17, 27, 104, 106, teacher education programme(s) 5, 90,
119, 121, 124, 132, 156, 165, 179, 194, 93–99, 117, 121, 132–151, 153–159, 166
198, 226, 235 teacher development 5, 90, 92, 99, 121
prescribed norms 125, 127, 131 teaching materials 3, 6, 226–227, 245, 252
standard norms 22, 113, 129 teacher identity 92–93, 95, 100, 122
normativity 53, 60, 122, 132 teachers’ self-beliefs 153, 155–156, 159, 166
non-native English speaking teachers test construct 213
(NNEST) 53, 70, 75, 80, 82, 96, 105, 110, transformative framework 2, 118
116, 173, 175–176 transition 69, 140
non-native speakers’ standard English transformative intellectual 253
orientation 57 “open-choice” and “idiom” principle 22
ownership of English 55–57, 60, 62, 227 varieties of English 41, 108, 110, 135, 156,
161, 198, 201, 228–229, 241
perception of ELF 144
pragmatic strategies 121 World Englishes 39–41, 43–44, 47, 97, 118,
pre-service teachers’ beliefs 153–156, 161, 166, 234
166
The publishers and editors of this volume do not guarantee the accuracy or com-
pleteness of any information contained therein and hereby exclude any liability
of any kind for the information contained. The opinions expressed in the chapters
of this book belong to the author(s) alone and may not necessarily reflect the
opinions of the publishers or editors.

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Current Perspectives On Pedagogy For English As A Lingua Franca

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Yasemin Bayyurt and Sumru Akcan (Eds.

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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston

Part I: Teaching and Learning

Nobuyuki Hino and Setsuko Oda

Part II: Teacher Education

Luísa Azuaga & Lili Cavalheiro

Dilek İnal and Esra Özdemir

Areti-Maria Sougari & Roxani Faltzi

Part IV: Teaching Materials

Telma Gimenez, Luciana Cabrini Simões Calvo, Michele Salles El Kadri

Domingos Sávio Pimentel Siqueira

In Chapter 1, Flowerdew presents an “exploratory corpus-based” account

the ELF-awareness of teachers, teacher educators, and academics and then to

“plastic world” or are still being designed towards English-hegemonic centres

English, stressing the value of local-language scholarly publications. Meanwhile,

2 ELF and ESP interface

will need to be supplemented by attention to variety within genres” (p. 305, my

3 Positioning and re-positioning a proposal

3.1 Positioning the proposal writing module

The in-house produced textbook takes a Swalesian genre-based approach to text

synthesis of frameworks described in the afore-mentioned studies, but mainly

In order to emphasise the rhetorical effectiveness of the individual move struc-

Text segment 1: Shouldn’t there be an article before “design”?

Figure 2: Student queries on text segments

4 Consulting academic corpora for students’

Of note, is that there is no mention whatsoever of the background of the authors;

1 strategy researchers. The article gap of knowledge because previous discus-

4 perational improvement, we have identi- gap concerning the lack of knowledge on

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

4.1 Repositioning the proposal writing module

At least for my sophisticated senior graduate students, equally resourceful or resource-

5 Discussion and implications for future

of move structure patterning, necessitating a reconsideration of the concept of

definitive of an expert speaker is required” (p. 127). As noted previously, caution

In light of the internationalization of academic institutions and the rapidly

2 Five ways of teaching EIL

Reflecting the recent trend in educational philosophy toward constructivism,

3.1 ELT curriculum at Osaka University

3.2 Goals of IPTEIL

3.3 Teaching procedure for IPTEIL

3.4 Materials for IPTEIL

3.5 Features of IPTEIL

3.5.1 Legitimate Peripheral Participation in the community of EIL users

3.5.2 Materials in a diversity of World Englishes

3.5.3 Integration of pedagogical concepts relevant to EIL

Multiple educational concepts are put into classroom practice in an integrated

According to this representative Australian newspaper, pro-whaling nations such

3.5.4 Indigenized production models of EIL

In IPTEIL classes, as illustrated above, students are exposed to a linguistic and

of expressing Japanese values as well as internationally communicative, based

Gained recommendation from an overwhelmingly large number of students, by introducing

Several concepts that may be viewed as keywords of ELF communication appear

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

5 Limitations of IPTEIL from ELF perspectives

it would be desirable to have at least one non-native English speaking STA in a

useful for learning accommodation and negotiation of meaning because of the

1 Quo vadis ELT?

Diary of a Part-Time Indian” (p. 269), and “German-American Exchange” (p. 286).

A complementary line of research studies has provided rich empirical evi-

1 TELF (“Tübingen English as a Lingua Franca Corpus”): http://projects.ael.uni-tuebingen.de/

textual conditions and requirements of the respective situations of language use