Using English as a Lingua Franca in Education in Europe

English in Europe: Volume 4

Zoi Tatsioka, Barbara Seidlhofer, Nicos Sifakis, Gibson Ferguson, Zoi Tatsioka, Barbara Seidlhofer, Nicos Sifakis, Gibson Ferguson

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501502972
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume examines the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in education in Europe. Following the implementation of the Bologna process, English has assumed a central role in European education offering institutions the opportunity to cater to the needs of an internationalized student body and increase their competitiveness. On the other hand, the increased use of ELF has become an issue of concern, often perceived as a threat to other languages, tilting the scale towards linguistic inequality and stressing the urgent need for the development of new language policies. Both aspects of ELF are at the center of discussion in the proposed volume, which consists of a variety of papers examining ELF in different parts of Europe (Eastern, Central and Western) and different levels of education. The volume makes a substantial contribution to the lively and controversial debate about what is recognized as a central topical concern of language education policy in Europe and beyond.

Part I: English in Europe: complexities and possibilities

Nicos C. Sifakis

ELF as an opportunity for foreign language use, learning and instruction in Greece and beyond

Nicos C. Sifakis, Hellenic Open University

Abstract: The chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities raised by the growing awareness of the role that English as a lingua franca (ELF) can play in Expanding Circle contexts, namely, contexts where English does not have a historical or statutory role of any kind. The context under review is Greece, where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL). I present an account of the English language teaching, learning and use situation in Greece and reflect on the impact ELF can have for domains like language instruction, materials design, selection and evaluation and teacher education. I argue that ELF research can inform EFL contexts in a number of ways: It can be used to empower non-native speakers of English by broadening their perspective of communicating on a global scale in the 21st century. It can also be used as a means of teacher development. The essential element that underpins this perspective is that, for Expanding Circle contexts like the Greek one, English is not a foreign language (in the way that other major languages like French and German are), but a language with which learners have some degree of familiarity.

Abstract: English as a Lingua Franca, English as a foreign language, teacher education, teacher development, non-native speakers of English, Expanding Circle, Greece

1 Introduction

The ongoing debate about the function and importance of successful communication in English involving so-called non-native speakers of English on a global scale is crucial in that it has shed light on a series of “deep fundamentals” in the area of English language teaching and learning to speakers of other languages (ESOL). My aim in this chapter is to address the ways in which these fundamentals have been challenged. As a case in point, I focus on the context of Greece, a country of the so-called Expanding Circle (Kachru 1985).

I begin by addressing a number of ESOL fundamentals, drawn from the work of Hans Stern. I attempt to show how the current debate in the area of English as a lingua franca (ELF) can significantly impact these fundamentals. My focus then shifts to the Greek context. I discuss the different uses of English in this context, in the state and private domains, and briefly review the curricular situation of the state sector, together with perspectives of teachers and learners regarding the teaching, learning, assessment and use of English. I also review research related to the uses of English by young people in Greece outside school. What I aim to show is that both the uses of English and the perspectives of the users of English in a country like Greece are changing rapidly as a result of the spread of English as an international language of communication. I conclude the chapter with implications for teaching and curriculum designing.

2 ELF research and the fundamentals of English language teaching and learning

This section explores ways in which the current use of English on a global scale can impact the fundamentals of English language teaching and learning to speakers of other languages (ESOL). My concern here is to pose questions that spring from an awareness of the global character of English and its link to and implications for ESOL pedagogy. These questions draw on Hans Stern’s “basic building blocks of all language teaching” (Stern 1983, 1992). Drawing from his experience of researching the teaching and learning of French in predominantly English-speaking regions in Canada, Stern posits that these building blocks (or fundamentals) are “language”, “learning”, “teaching” and “context”. Essentially, all language teaching involves a concept of the nature of language (“what” is taught), a perspective of the learner (“who” is involved), an all-round awareness of the processes involved in language learning (which corresponds to the “how” of teaching) and a comprehensive appreciation of the characteristics of the immediate and broader environments in which the language is learned and used (if at all).

According to Stern, it is essential for teachers to know as much as possible about the learners of their particular context, instead of unquestionably endorsing the profiling of their proficiency levels put forward by the broader curricular and textbook specifications. This means that, in certain cases, it might be perfectly possible for learners to follow one particular curricular and courseware orientation at school and have a completely autonomous life using English, through gaming, texting, Skyping, etc., outside school (see below). It is therefore crucial that these different pathways are explored and taken advantage of by teachers.

On the other hand, it is equally important that teachers gather information about another dimension of language learning, namely, the reasons learners have for attending their classes – the “why”. While the target situation of most teaching contexts is more or less specified (e.g. sitting a particular exam, going from one proficiency level to a higher one or even becoming more skillful in a particular skill, micro-skill, or combination of skills), individual learners may have different practical reasons for attending (Ghenghesh and Nakhla 2011). The process of researching the “why” in language teaching further involves looking into other stakeholders’ perspectives (e.g. parents or sponsoring institutions), which can significantly shape all aspects of curriculum designing and implementation, namely, content (what students should know, be able to do and be committed to), assessment (a measurement of what learners are doing at each time and how well they are doing) and context (how the education system is organized).

How does the global spread of English affect the “basic building blocks”, or fundamentals, of ESOL teaching laid out above? It is established that English is successfully used by more non-native than native users in contexts that are extremely varied (Crystal 2003). Successful, intelligible usage depends on parameters that are user- and context-specific, such as the proficiency levels of the interlocutors and the extent to which they can accommodate their discourse to each other’s needs, other languages that may be shared between them, etc. (Deterding 2012). Research on ELF shows that communication involving non-native users of English (Cogo and Dewey 2012; Seidlhofer 2011) can significantly deviate from descriptions of the so-called standard varieties in ways that demonstrate interlocutors’ creativity in the areas of pragmatics, phonology or syntax. This is clearly demonstrated in numerous studies on ELF-related corpora such as the ELFA corpus of academic ELF (www.eng.helsinki.fi/elfa) and the VOICE corpus (www.univie.ac.at/voice). These studies, and others, show that, when involved in ELF communications, non-native speakers from different professional and lingua-cultural backgrounds co-create a transnational space, where they are prompted to negotiate meaning across mother-tongue boundaries and professional and discipline-specific practices. This results in their forming distinct communities of practice that are informed and co-developed by their shared background and identities (see Ehrenreich 2009; Seidlhofer 2007). These communities of practice are particularly salient in online communicative contexts (e.g. Hanson-Smith 2013), where multicultural communication is the norm and the need to adapt to the discoursal demands of online applications (e.g. Skype, Facebook and the like) and gaming platforms (through their chat-rooms) results in ELF interactions.

In this sense, ELF usage results in non-native speakers appropriating English for their own communication purposes, which further develops their awareness of the possibilities of such usage. As successful usage expands across domains (professional, academic, entertainment, etc.), it impacts the attitudes of ELF speakers about what is appropriate and acceptable in these interactions. Soon, notions like the ownership of English begin to take a much broader meaning in the minds of ELF users (e.g. Kubota and McKay 2009), and especially in younger users. For example, access of comments of affiliated groups on Facebook (which feature each participant’s fan pages, favourite sports, films, television shows, songs etc., all in English) expose young people to large amounts of authentic information that is not available to them at school (Blattner and Fiori 2009: 22). The same is the case with computer gaming, itself an activity that has great bearing on learning and literacy (Gee 2003), where the dominant use of English makes for a cognitively and linguistically rich involvement (Peterson 2010; Thorne, Fisher and Lu 2012) and impacts learning in ways that engage participants far more than what is usually encountered in the typical ESOL classroom (Zheng, Newgarden and Young, 2012). Teenagers have also been shown to self-regulate their use of English in these online contexts depending on their self-awareness of their level of English proficiency, apart from other factors, such as personal values and emotions (Leppänen 2009).

Such “multiply placed” practices (Bulfin and Koutsogiannis 2012) render English a significant part of participants’ “literate underlife” (Finders 1997), which are transferred to their school context as well (Rothoni 2015: 284–7). This has very specific implications for the ESOL classroom, as learners are also users of English, with a high awareness of its global function. Research confirms this shift. For example, a survey of 518 learners in Chile showed the emergence of a ‘new language-learning goal […]: international posture’ (Kormos, Kiddle and Csizér 2011: 496), which refers to learners’ perceptions about and willingness not meely to use ELF in interactions with other non-native users, but to consider ELF one of the central concerns for their ESOL studies. Another study of Finnish primary school le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: English in Europe: complexities and possibilities
• Part II: Attitudes toward English as a lingua franca in education
• Part III: English as a lingua franca in higher education
• Biographical notes
• Index