Abstract
Teacher education represents an essential step to raise awareness of the sociolinguistic changes brought about by the current pluralization of English and by its lingua franca role. Within the pre-service teacher education programs run at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona, Italy, part of the English language course focused on issues related to World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF), aiming at fostering awareness of and active reflection upon their pedagogical implications. After taking into consideration recent developments in WE- and ELF-aware teacher education, we will report on findings from a research study involving trainee teachers attending the aforementioned courses for English in academic years 2012-13 to 2014-15. The main aim of the study has been to investigate whether, how and to what extent trainee teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and reasoning about a WE and ELF-informed perspective in teaching practices may undergo a change after attending these courses. Drawing upon different sets of data (questionnaires, reflections in e-learning discussion forums, interviews and final reports), the trainees’ increased awareness of and readiness to include a WE- and ELF-informed didactic approach after attending the course will be discussed, together with implications for foreign language teacher education.
Highlights
The plurality into which English has developed has been extensively documented by studies in World Englishes (WE) and, more recently, English as a lingua franca (ELF)
Both during classroom discussions and in the e-learning forums, comments related to the textbooks that were analysed during the module highlighted that: “No effort has been made to make the students perceive what English has become in our globalized society: a language rich in varieties and used/accepted by nonnative speakers,” stressing that “no contexts have been created and no tips/prompts have been given to permit ELF communication to be experienced by learners” (PTPAS2-F)
The trainee teachers who attended the Tirocinio Formativo Attivo (TFA) and Percorso Abilitante Speciale (PAS) courses described in this paper considered the topics covered in Module 1 as a positive opportunity to develop knowledge and awareness of the current plurality of English and of its lingua franca role
Summary
The plurality into which English has developed has been extensively documented by studies in World Englishes (WE) and, more recently, English as a lingua franca (ELF). 234-235) remarks, EFL teachers are “language and teaching specialists” who attend university courses to enter the profession; they should be informed about the most relevant key aspects both regarding the language and the methodological approaches to teaching English today This would entail taking into consideration current studies in sociolinguistics (Bayyurt, 2013) of WE and ELF discourse (Sifakis, 2007, 2014), both at a theoretical level and, even more importantly, through reflective practices (Seidlhofer, 2011, Chapter 8), allowing teachers to “become more aware of the variety/ies of English they master and teach” It could possibly encourage more flexible attitudes, not least towards a critical appraisal of prevalently norm-focused methodological approaches; this could in turn lead towards pedagogic choices that can be locally tailored and attuned to the students’ (present and future) needs and contexts of use for English, valuing and sustaining a view oriented at what can be “done” with language (Seidlhofer, 2011; Widdowson, 2003, 2012, 2015) from a communicative “outside-the-class” oriented perspective, rather than seeing it “only” as a school subject, both in language and in (inter)cultural terms
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