Raising awareness in teacher education: from the EFL course book to other ELF-aware sources

Abstract

English is currently a global lingua franca, through which communication mainly take place between non-native speakers of the language. Despite this reality, English Language Teaching (ELT) and ELT materials have continued to mainly follow the Standard English and British/American cultural paradigms. As a result, even though English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers may be aware of the international use of the language, the majority continue to blindly follow the models presented in the course books used in schools, without ever questioning the language, culture or even images that are depicted. Bearing this in mind, this paper proposes that it is crucial EFL teachers learn how to take a critical stance from early on; therefore, pre-service teacher education programs are viewed as the essential place for future EFL teachers to learn how to critically analyze course books. By doing so, they can take an informed stance on what matters most for their class and be able to develop their own materials that may be more in line with the students’ interests/needs, as well as reflect the global use of English. Finally, this paper ends with some suggestions on how teachers can develop more globally-oriented materials that reflect the actual use of English.