native – Educational Sociolinguistics

ELF: how to best implement it?

Hector Alvarez

I’m currently reading a book called Teaching English as a Lingua Franca: The journey from EFL to ELF by Marek Kiczkowiak and Robert J. Lowe, which provides practical activities to develop effective ELF classes. However, first of all, what is ELF? ELF stands for English as a Lingua Franca, first defined by Alan Firth (1996) as “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” (p. 240). However, the focus of ELF in recent years has become more encompassing, including now both native and non-native speakers of English.

ELF is not a variety of English, but a phenomenon that emerges from the interaction between different English users that accommodate and adapt their speech to their interlocutors. For example, a British speaker who usually use the expression “to take the mickey out of you” would, instead, opt to say “criticize you”, as the former, although common within the British English speech context, is not common among other varieties of English. Hence, in an international context, among users of different English varieties, it’s safest to choose the type of language that steers clear from what would be considered slang from a particular English variety.

Am I good enough to compete in the local ESL market (in the eyes of recruiters)?

Hector Alvarez

I’m a fresh-off -the-plane newcomer here in Canada, originally from Argentina. I’ve been here for five months, and I’ve been looking around for job opportunities on the side just to gather some English Language Teaching (ELT) experience Canada.

The question is not whether I, myself, believe I’m good enough to teach English within this ESL (as opposed to EFL) context, but whether local recruiters believe so. At the end of the day, they have the final word on whether I get hired or not.

Native and non-native speaker language teachers

Sihong Chen (Blog post 2)

In China, English native speakers seem to have overwhelming advantage over Chinese ESL teachers. When I interned in New Oriental (an English Institution in China), there were some foreign teachers whose teaching experience and teaching methodology are not as good as Chinese English teachers, but they were more welcome by students and parents. When I was an undergraduate, there were also many foreign teachers in my university’s English department. However, there is a phenomenon and that is that most foreign teachers do not have much teaching experience and what they teach is just the language itself. Conversely, these Chinese professors not only have enough teaching experience but also have deeper understanding of language construct and better research background. After I came to Montreal, I wanted to learn some French so I began to think about the question again. Native or non-native FSL teachers, who is better? Finally I choose the non-native speakers because I think they are more familiar with my cultural background and are easier for me to understand. In different contexts, we may have different opinions about native and nonnative language teachers. My experience in Educational institutions, in both my university and in Montreal, makes me rethink about the identity and ethnicity of native and non-native speaker teachers.

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