Abstract
For the past two decades, the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has been a topic of much debate among researchers in the global use of English, including those involved in English language teaching (ELT). While in many respects ELF may be viewed just as a new name for its predecessors, such as World Englishes (WE) and English as an International Language (EIL), in other ways it also provides some fresh perspectives for the function of global Englishes. In particular, having grown chiefly out of Europe, where English has traditionally been studied as a foreign language rather than a second language, the ELF paradigm is often suited for the needs of learners of English in the Expanding Circle. With Japan as a primary example, the present paper discusses the significance of the concept of ELF and of the studies within its framework for ELT in the Expanding Circle. An important argument of this article is that studies in the early days of ELF, seeking for elements to facilitate international intelligibility, are still highly useful for ELT in the Expanding Circle. They cater especially to ELT in the Asian Expanding Circle, where pedagogical models are of crucial importance, no less than current ELF studies focusing on the fluid and translingual nature of ELF do. This paper points to the need for ELT teachers to be eclectic and integrative, learning from multiple paradigms, including ELF, WE, and EIL, while even going beyond the newness and oldness of pedagogical approaches, in order to best serve their students.
Highlights
The present paper discusses the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) from an applied linguistics perspective, with special attention to the significance of ELF from the viewpoint of English language teaching (ELT) for the Expanding Circle (Kachru 1985, Proshina 2019), where English has only limited functions domestically
The emergence of the ELF school has revitalized the study of Englishes for international communication in response to today’s social needs, especially for the Expanding Circle, which has often been left behind in World Englishes (WE) studies in its relative focus on the Outer Circle, where English has important intra-national functions
The emphasis on the fluidity of ELF interaction is most evident in an argument by a representative of the ELF school, Henry Widdowson (2015), that ELF should be viewed in terms of “variation” in contrast to WE studies that deal with the issues of “variety”
Summary
The present paper discusses the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) from an applied linguistics perspective, with special attention to the significance of ELF from the viewpoint of English language teaching (ELT) for the Expanding Circle (Kachru 1985, Proshina 2019), where English has only limited functions domestically. In this undertaking, Japan is employed as a sample from the Expanding Circle. Pedagogical implications of those shifts will be analyzed here
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