This presentation examines English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), English as an International Language (EIL), and World Englishes (WE) as a challenge for Second Language Acquisition (SLA).

1. Charlotte Jones

2. • Seidlhofer (2005) “In recent years, the term ‘English as a
lingua franca’ (ELF) has emerged as a way of referring to
communication in English between speakers with
different first languages.”

3. • Numbers:
• Graddol (2006) estimates that native speakership will reach more
than two billion in the next few decades.
• Crystal (2000) …. Since roughly only one out of every four users of
English in the world is a native speaker of the language (Crystal
2003) , most ELF interactions take place among ‘non-native’
speakers of English.”
• Colonialism
• Matsuda (2003) It is a challenge to look beyond the Colonial spread
of English. “The teaching of EIL is inextricably linked to the stories
of worldwide spread; its changes in forms, functions, and users;
and the politics of language (p722).
• Globalization
• Bamgbose (2001)“the maintenance of culturally determined
varieties of world English in the face of pressures to achieve viable
communication”
• Do not let opportunity become opportunism for native speakers.

4. • Kachru (1992)
• The inner circle (English as first
language): Australia, Canada,
Ireland, New Zealand, UK, USA
• The outer circle (English
as second language where the
language is the official language
or a second-language in a
multilingual setting): Bangladesh,
Ghana, Hong Kong, India,
Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Philippines
• The expanding circle (English
as foreign language; Nations
which recognize the importance
of English as an international
language though they do not
have a history of colonization):
China, Egypt, Indonesia, Korea

6. • Matsuda (2003, p 721) states that “The inner circle orientation to
ELT may be appropriate for ESL programs that prepare learners to
function in the inner circle, but it is inadequate for a course that
teachers EIL because of important differences in the way EIL
learners use English among themselves relative to the ways in which
NSs use English”
• Kachru & Smith (2009) for at least two centuries there have been
mutually unintelligible native speakers of the Inner Circle

7. • (Jenkins, 2006, p. 138) “SLA researcher’s difficulty with ELF
resides, essentially, I believe, in their inability to distinguish a lingua
franca from a foreign language.”
• ELF: Meiercord (2004) “When English is the mother
tongue of neither speakers who use the language for
communicative purposes, they employ it as a lingua
franca”
• Seidlhofer “A lingua franca has no native speakers”
(p211)

8. • (Jenkins, 2006, p. 138) “SLA researcher’s difficulty with ELF
resides, essentially, I believe, in their inability to distinguish a lingua
franca from a foreign language.”
• Adapted from (Jenkins 2006, 2011; Meierkord, 2004)
• The term ‘EIL’ is a precursor to the more modern term ‘ELF’ and is still used occasionally (Jenkins
et. al., 2011)
English as a Lingua Franca
(ELF)
- Part of ‘Global Englishes’,
but internationally used
- NNSs are more competent
- Difference perspective
- Contact/evolution metaphor
- Transformative, bilingual
- Code/switching = bilingual
resources
English as a Foreign
Language (EFL)
- Part of modern foreign
languages
- NSs are more competent
- Deficit perspective
- Transfer / inference meta
- Conformative, monolingual
- Code-switching = inference
errors
(Meierkord,
2004)
Global
Englishes
Intranation
al

9. • Murray (2012) Explicitly states
that there is in fact a “paucity” of
empirical studies and findings
which concerns the pedagogical
implications for teaching English
as a lingual franca (p 319).
• Seidlhofer (2004) “the work on
ELF pragmatics is very much in its
initial phase and the findings
available to date result from
research on a fairly limited
database.”

10. • Jenkins (2002) identifies several phonological distinctions with
a “lingua franca core” (LFC)
• Consonant inventory: same with the exception of interdental fricatives
/θ/ /ð/ or dark ‘l” (ɫ)
• Phonetic difference: word-initial voiceless stop aspiration /k/ /t/ /p/
changed to their voiced counterparts /g/ /d/ /b/
• Consonant cluster difference: no omission in word-initial clusters
(proper and strap) but there may be an omission of sounds in word-
medial clusters, e.g. friendship may have a reduced –d
• Vowels: Widely the same with the substitution of “E” in some cases,
especially with /a;/
• Placement of nuclear stress: e.g. He came by TRAIN vs. He CAME
by train
• What does this mean?
• For the LFC:/θ/ /ð/ would be considered non-core.
fəˈnɒlədʒi

11. • Seidlhofer (2004) compiles the following from the VOICE
data at the University of Vienna
• Dropping the third person present tense –s
• Confusing the relative pronoun who and which
• Omitting definite and indefinite articles
• Failing to use the correct tag questions (e.g. “isn’t it?” or “no”
instead of “shouldn’t they?”
• Inserting redundant prepositions
• Overusing certain verbs of high semantic generality such as do
have make put take
• Replacing infinitive-constructions with that clauses as in I want
that
• Overdoing explicitness (e.g. black color instead of black)

12. • Meierkord (2004) majority of utterances are unmarked
• Use or non-use of definite or indefinite articles
• We went to supermarket. (Pakistan)
• Lack of subject-auxillary inversion in the construction of –wh
interogatives
• When you will start practicing? (Zamibia)
• “These constructions hardly ever caused a breakdown in
the conversation or necessitated a negotation of meaning
sequence” (p124)
• “The data is indicative of a transitional form of English”;
concludes that it is not a form a world standard spoken
English

13. • Meierkord (2004) students used a number of interactional
modifications to “render the discourse easier to process”
• Simplification: segmented utterances
• Higher speakers slowed their speech; syntactically split up
sentences into smaller units that are easier to process (she
cites Ellis 1994)
• Regularization: topicalization strategies
• E.g. the movement of focused information to the front of the
utterance
• “Three years you have to do” (Pakistan, competent)
• “My unit, it’s not that special, you see” (Malaysia, competent)
• Murray (2012) “the L2 learners may find indigestible
sociopragmatic aspects of the target language culture that
do not align with his or her own values or beliefs. In this
case. it should be left up to the students as to how they
wish to adopt certain behaviors” (p321)

14. • According to Jenkins (2006) ELF is sui generis (meaning it is its own
genus) and is an emergent system and that ELF constructions
cannot belong to the interlanguage continuum which is said to
characterize speakers of Modern Foreign Languages

15. • Murray (2012) empirically based strategies, inductive strategies,
deductive strategies
• (p 322) “findings broadly suggest that preparing learners for ELF
interactions we would be doing them a greater service by developing
their strategic competence on the basis (a) that they will come to each
interaction without necessarily sharing a common social grammar and
(b) that they should, therefore, be encouraged to employ and means
at their disposal to establish mutual intelligibility”

16. • “In a sense incorporating World Englishes is like putting on a new set of
glasses-- the detail and complexity of the world we suddenly see may
initially be overwhelming, but in the long run, we would have a better view
and understanding of EIL.” (Matsuda, 200__)

17. • Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research perspectives on teaching
English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics, 24, 209 – 242.