1) The document discusses teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF) and raising learner awareness of how English is used globally. It provides activities to help students understand the differences between English as a foreign language (EFL) and ELF. 2) One activity involves students guessing populations of English speaker groups and discussing chances of nonnative English interactions. Other activities include labeling acronyms, discussing English accents, and reconsidering teaching goals for ELF. 3) The goal is to help students recognize that English takes different roles depending on the interlocutors, not just location, and to prepare them for variation in English as an international language.

1. Activities for the upper
secondary school
How to teach ELF

2. In practice
• Raising learner awareness: In order to make
informed choices about goals, learners will
need to know about both ELF and EFL in the
world today.
• Activities designed to develop
accommodation skills.
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3. Teaching ELF
Activity
• Show students data about The English speaking
populations of the world.(slide 5.)
• Ask them to use the estimates in the first column in order
to guess the populations of each of the different speaker
groups.
• Students should discuss their guesses in pairs or groups.
• After seeing the answers, the whole class can discuss the
chances of NNS-NNS interactions(ELF) taking place
around the world, as opposed to NS-NNS
interactions(EFL).
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4. • Use a world map to highlight parts of the world
where English is most likely to act as a lingua
franca.
• Introduce the idea of the Inner, Outer, and
Expanding Circles.
• Invite students to place their own country in one
of the circles.
• Discussion about the students experiences that
they personally have had of using English both
ELF and EFL.
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5. Possible
populations
Speaker
group
Actual
population
Actual
population
Your guess Official
1200 million American
English
400 million British English
230 million BBC English
200 million Indian English
57 million Native
speakers
1 million Non-native
speakers
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Answers: AE: 230 mil, BE: 57 mil, BBC E: 1 mil, IE: 200 mil, NS:
400 mil, NNS: 1200 mil. (Crystal 2003)

6. Further activities
• Productive task: Raising awareness about what the different
acronyms mean: EFL, ELF, ENL and ESL.
• Let the students work together and complete a chart such as the
one in slide 7.
• After giving the answers, clarify that the different roles that English
plays depend on who is speaking to who, rather than where English
is being used.
• Discussion: Who decides what is correct and incorrect English in
each of the four situations in the table? Who decides what is
correct in ELF communication in the absence of native speakers?
• There is no right or wrong. The aim is simply to increase learner
awareness of how English works in different ways, e.g. lingua
franca.
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7. Acronym Full name Meaning
EFL English as a (1)_______ language English when it is used by
(5)_______ speakers to
communicate with native
speakers.
ELF English as a (2)_______ language English when it is used by
(6)_______ speakers who do not
have the same first language.
ENL English as a (3)_______ language English when it is used between
two or more (7)______ speakers.
ESL English as a (4)_______ language English when it is used in
countries that were once
colonized by the (8)_______.
English when it is used by
immigrants to countries where
(9)______is the native language,
(USA, UK, etc).
Answers: 1. foreign; 2. lingua franca; 3. native; 4. second; 5. non-native speakers; 6.
non-native; 7. native; 8. British; 9. English.
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8. Activity about accents
• Ask the students to name accents in their own country.
• With a list of accents on the board, students can say which ones
they prefer, and try to explain why.
• Students can comment on how they feel about the standard accent
in their own country, if there is one.
• Let the students hear a number of recordings with people speaking
with different accents.
• As they listen, the students might want to guess the first-language
background of each speaker.
• Ask how the students feel when they hear their mother tongue
being spoken by non-native speakers.
• They can visit the Speech Accent Archive at the Internet, which
provides audio clips of speakers from a wide variety of native and
non-native backgrounds. The speakers all read the same text, which
allows the students to compare different accents.
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9. Students should begin to understand:
• Accent variation is completely normal.
• In some countries one accent has become the
standard for various reasons, usually social, political,
or economic.
• Attitudes to different accents may be personal, and
are more often based on feelings than on rational
arguments.
• Attitudes to different accents may also be based on
social prejudices and stereotypes.
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10. Didactic considerations
• Re-thinking goals.
• Modifying classroom practice.
• Individual sounds are important.
• Prepare students for significant variation.
• Awareness of how English functions in the world today.
• Bring out the idea of how accents variation is normal.
• Accents and intelligibility are not the same.
• Using both receptive and productive skills.
• Modifying English according to the different grades.
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