An Investigation of Pre-Service English Teachers’ Awareness of English as a Lingua Franca and World Englishes

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WE) have appeared as a reaction to the deep-rooted mentality that American and British English are the only ‘proper and acceptable’ type of English in terms of teaching and learning. With the world’s recent position as a ‘global village’, English language has become the lingua franca and this situation has started heated debates on the ownership of English. The field of English language teaching has been affected by these changes and many researchers have offered drastic changes from curriculum to in-class materials in English language teaching. This study aimed to investigate pre-service teachers’ awareness of ELF and WE concepts and their intention of integrating these concepts in their future teaching practices. A questionnaire was administered to 152 second, third-, and fourth-year pre-service teachers to explore their views. Results of this study differed from most of the previous studies. It was investigated that participating pre-service teachers were not only aware of the concept of ELF and WE, but also, they were conscious of the necessity of integrating the principles of ELF to teaching language in their classrooms.

An Investigation of Pre-Service English Teachers’ Awareness of English as a Lingua Franca and World Englishes

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WE) have appeared as a reaction to the deep-rooted mentality that American and British English are the only ‘proper and acceptable’ type of English in terms of teaching and learning. With the world’s recent position as a ‘global village’, English language has become the lingua franca and this situation has started heated debates on the ownership of English. The field of English language teaching has been affected by these changes and many researchers have offered drastic changes from curriculum to in-class materials in English language teaching. This study aimed to investigate pre-service teachers’ awareness of ELF and WE concepts and their intention of integrating these concepts in their future teaching practices. A questionnaire was administered to 152 second, third-, and fourth-year pre-service teachers to explore their views. Results of this study differed from most of the previous studies. It was investigated that participating pre-service teachers were not only aware of the concept of ELF and WE, but also, they were conscious of the necessity of integrating the principles of ELF to teaching language in their classrooms.

___

  • Alptekin, C. (2002). Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT. ELT journal, 56(1), 57-64.
  • Büchel, L. L. (2013, May). Non-Native English speaker accents in Swiss elementary Schools: A summary of pre-service teacher research. In Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca (p. 97).
  • Brumfit, C. (2001). Individual Freedom in Language Teaching: Helping Learners to Develop a Dialect of Their Own. Oxford University Press.
  • Curran, J. E., & Chern, C. L. (2017). Pre-service English teachers' attitudes towards English as a lingua franca. Teaching and Teacher Education, 66, 137-146.
  • Deniz, E. B., Özkan, Y., & Bayyurt, Y. (2016). English as a lingua franca: reflections on ELFrelated issues by pre-service English language teachers in Turkey. The Reading Matrix: An International Online Journal, 16(2), 144-161.
  • Dewey, M., & Patsko, L. (2017). ELF and teacher education. In The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (pp. 441-455). Routledge.
  • Halliday, A. (2009). English as a lingua franca, ‘non-native speakers’ and cosmopolitan realities. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), English as an International Language Perspectives and Pedagogical Issues (pp. 21-33). Multilingual Matters
  • Illés, É., Akcan, S., & Feyér, B. (2013, May). Language awareness of prospective English teachers in Hungary and Turkey. In Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca (p. 31).
  • Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL quarterly, 40(1), 157-181.
  • Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford University Press.
  • Jenkins, J. (2007). Lashed by the mother tongue. Times Higher Education Supplement, 7(07).
  • Kemaloglu-Er, E., & Bayyurt, Y. (2016). ELF-aware teacher education with pre-service teachers: A transformative and technology enhanced case from Turkey. Tsantila, N., Mandalios, J., Ilkos, M. (Eds.). (2016). ELF: Pedagogical and interdisciplinary perspectives
  • Knapp, K. (2015). English as an international lingua franca and the teaching of intercultural communication. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), 173.
  • Kohn, K. (2015). A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom. Current perspectives on pedagogy for English as a lingua franca, 51-67.
  • Llurda, E. (2004). Non‐native‐speaker teachers and English as an International Language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(3), 314-323.
  • Matsuda, A., & Friedrich, P. (2011). English as an international language: A curriculum blueprint. World Englishes, 30(3), 332-344.
  • Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge University Press.
  • Mauranen, A. (2017). Conceptualising ELF. In The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 27-44). Routledge.
  • Phillipson, R.H.L. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University Press.
  • Rajagopalan, K. (2004). The concept of ‘World English’and its implications for ELT. ELT journal, 58(2), 111-117.
  • Seidlhofer, B. (2005). English as a lingua franca. ELT Journal, 59 (4). doi:10.1093/elt/cci064. Sifakis, N. C., & Bayyurt, Y. (2015). Insights from ELF and WE in teacher training in Greece and Turkey. World Englishes, 34(3), 471-484.
  • Sifakis, N., & Bayyurt, Y. (2017). ELF-aware teaching, learning and teacher development. In The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca (pp. 456-467). Routledge.
  • Suzuki, A. (2010). Introducing diversity of English into ELT: Student teachers’ responses. ELT journal, 65(2), 145-153.
  • Uygun, D. (2013, May). Attitudes of Turkish prospective EFL teachers towards varieties of English. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference of English as a lingua franca (pp. 190-197).