ELF-sensitive teaching from the perspective of Polish trainee teachers

Abstract

The advance of English as a lingua franca (ELF) is believed to carry implications for English language teaching and language assessment. The present contribution is an attitudinal study carried out among trainee teachers of English in a Polish university setting. The study sets out to investigate whether trainee teachers have a positive attitude towards ELF-sensitive teaching and whether their receptiveness (or lack thereof) to the concept in question is reflected in how they approach correcting language forms regarded as regular features of ELF. The findings show that there are elements of ELF pedagogy that respondents seem to be enthusiastic about – they readily acknowledge the importance of accommodation skills and they want students in the classroom to be exposed to many different non-standard English varieties. As regards the correction of non-standard English, respondents display a norm-driven approach, especially when teaching a student who they need to help pass an examination in the near future. In the conclusion of the paper, it is stated that respondents react positively to some aspects of ELF-sensitive teaching, but they show strong attachment to native-speaker norms, accuracy and the traditional notion of error, which is reflected in their approach to correcting nonstandard language items.