Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for English as a Lingua Franca

Abstract

Research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) has both stirred enthusiasm and raised concern in language teaching circles. From its early days in the late 1990s to date, questions have been raised about how exactly to apply ELF research to pedagogy, but answers have been few and far between. The problem is that there are no simple answers. ELF researchers are at times criticized for merely describing how English is used in lingua franca settings, but descriptive research is needed to make pedagogical suggestions that build on actual ELF use. Much of ELF research has also focused on people’s attitudes, but this, too, is important in order to see how receptive people would be to pedagogical practices drawing on ELF research. It takes time to develop viable pedagogical solutions. Bayyurt and Akcan’s edited collection of essays is a welcome contribution to pedagogical discussions around ELF. It aims to explicate the ways ELF research can contribute to practices of teaching and assessing English in different contexts, and importantly, some of the contributions in the volume provide readers with much-sought-after tangible solutions to the challenges of teaching and assessing English in the world today.