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.
ELF presents itself as an option to be considered among teachers who will teach English to learners who will not necessarily use English to communicate with a specific English language community (the US, Australia, etc.).
Although ELF covers many different aspects of language (e.g.: lexis, grammar, pragmatics) the one that has most caught my attention is the ELF approach to pronunciation. Different varieties of English usually vary (to a greater or lesser degree) in the amount of differing pronunciation features.
When it comes to teaching pronunciation, what kind of policy do you have in your classroom? Do you teach the variety you speak/know? What kind of exposure to accents do you provide your students with? These were questions I used to ask myself, and did not necessarily have a fixed answer on the matter, especially when it came to teaching ELF. Since ELF caters to mutual understanding among speakers of different English varieties, it is important to help learners become intelligible speakers for a number of potential different contexts/interlocutors. Still, the question becomes, what is the most type of intelligible pronunciation I could teach my students? Well, if we went by country, such as “American English”, “Canadian English”,etc., would be just enmeshing ourselves into a complex discussion, as research has demonstrated that standard native speaker varieties could be more difficult to understand than non-native speaker varieties, depending on the interlocutors (Smith and Rafiqzad, 1979).
The best answer to this question, I believe, has been proposed by Jennifer Jenkins’ (2000) Lingua Franca Core, developed in detail in Phonology Of English As An International Language. Here, Jenkins specifies different phonetic features that are fundamental for Intelligibility in contexts with users of different English varieties.
So far, I have not yet seen myself an ELF approach/mindset applied by any close colleague in the classroom that embraces intelligibility and awareness of different English varieties over the Native variety norm. However, I have noticed some textbook series such as Market Leader or Speakout have started to include English users of varieties from the outer circle in their listening activities .
As many of us are teaching now in Canada (an ESL context) it would, perhaps, make sense that a Canadian variety was taught, especially if students learning English here were doing it for immigration purposes. I would be curious to know what your thoughts are on ELF, if you have ever considered providing students with exposure to other kinds of English other than the inner circle varieties and, if so, how?
References
First, A. (1996). The discursive accomplishment of normality: On lingua franca English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 26(2),237-259.
Kiczkowiak, M & Lowe, R. J. (2017). Teaching Eglish as a Lingua Franca: The journey from EFL to ELF. Surrey, England: Delta Publishing
Smith, L. E. & Rafiqzad, K. (1979). English for Cross-Cultural Communication: The Question of Intelligibility. TESOL Quarterly, 13(3), 371-380.
Chris
Hey Hector ! I’ve really enjoyed reading your post and I think you’ve brought up some really good points. My personal view here is that the message is more important than the practicality of what you’re talking about. I think that opening the classroom to include non-native speakers goes a long way to pitching the idea that English is a global language, or lingua franca, and not just a language used exclusively by seven countries. I think this kind of message serves as a motivating factor for students, as they will inherently see the scope of just how wide the English language casts it’s net across the globe. As for practical side of it, I don’t really agree. I would even argue that when I teach I’m teaching English as a lingua-franca because I intentionally slow down my words, articulate with more precision, and use body language a lot more than I would normally. This version of my English is void of slang, and is calculated to be as intelligible as possible. Additionally, in the only context that I know: teaching English to young Koreans, I didn’t feel my Canadian accent was of much consequence, as my students could just of likely had a Irish teacher the year before and a South African teacher the year after. However, I think you are totally correct about non-native accents being part of the conversation if we are to look at English as a lingua-franca. In this context, accents from India and the Philippines (for example) should be held in the same esteem as accents from the inner circle.
Thanks Hector for this post and Chris for this detailed and thoughtful reply. Since I haven’t taught ESL on the ground for many years, I don’t know what’s happening in classrooms…but at least I am hearing from you two (and others in the class) that good things are happening in yours. I agree with Chris—good L2 teachers automatically do “Lingua Franca” things with language. One researcher whose work has dealt with the ELF question in theoretically very interesting ways is Suresh Canagarajah, originally from Sri Lanka. I recommend his work highly!