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Course Introduction
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Unit 1: Defining English
This unit introduces the idea of alternative monolithic and plurilithic conceptions of English.
- 1.0 Introduction
- 1.1 Monolithic vs Plurilithic Concepts
- 1.1.1 Monolithic Concepts of Language
- 1.1.2 Plurilithic Concepts of Language
- 1.2 ‘Standard English’
- 1.2.1 ‘Standard English’: History
- 1.2.2 ‘Standard English’: Beliefs
- 1.2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of ‘Standard English’ for ELT
- 1.3 Rules of English
- 1.3.1 The ambiguity of the word rule
- 1.3.2 Rules of English: The Monolithic View
- 1.3.3 Rules of English: The Plurilithic View
- 1.4 Four Dimensions of Monolithism
- 1.5 Check Your Understanding
- 1.6 Reflect and Discuss
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Unit 2: Using English
This unit explores the plurilithic usage of English in diverse global settings.
- Unit 2: Using English
- 2.1 Introducing Lingua Franca Usage
- 2.2.1 Native speaker Variation
- 2.2.2 Native speakers: Accommodation
- 2.3 Englishes in the British Isles
- 2.4 World Englishes
- 2.4.1 Englishes in Your Part of The World
- 2.4.2 Owning a language (Part 1)
- 2.5 ELF
- 2.5.1 Intelligibility
- 2.5.2 ELF in Your Part of The World
- 2.6 Translanguaging with English
- 2.7 Check Your Understanding
- 2.8 Reflect and Discuss
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Unit 3: Learning English
This unit discusses how English is learned as a first or additional language.
- Unit 3: Learning English
- 3.1 First Language Acquisition
- 3.2 Back to Rules
- 3.2.1 Rules as Patterns in the Mind (Part 1)
- 3.2.2 Rules as Social Markers
- 3.2.3 Rules as Mental Representations
- 3.2.4 Rules in Schools
- 3.2.5 Rules as Patterns in the Mind (2)
- 3.3 Models and Targets
- 3.4 Learning Contexts
- 3.5 Owning a Language (Part 2)
- 3.6 Learners and Users
- 3.7 Check Your Understanding
- 3.8 Reflect and Discuss
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Unit 4: Teaching English
This unit examines the teaching implications of plurilithic conceptions of English.
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Unit 5: Changing English
This unit suggests ways to share your learning on the course with others.
- Unit 5: Changing English
- 5.1 The Challenge
- 5.2 Changing Learners’ Beliefs About English
- 5.3 Changing Teaching Colleagues’ Beliefs About English
- 5.4 Changing Policy-Makers’ Beliefs About English
- 5.5 Changing the Public’s Beliefs About English
- 5.6 Check Your Understanding
- 5.7 Reflect and Discuss
- Course Finish
2.1 Introducing Lingua Franca Usage
Concept
English is now used predominantly as a lingua franca
English is now used predominantly as a lingua franca: a bridge language between individuals who don’t share a common first language. In many diverse contexts around the world—in tourism, higher education, hip-hop, business, science, aid work, sports, etc.—global participants communicate in English, without native-speaker involvement. Lingua franca English is also becoming increasingly common in the large urban centres of Anglophone nations, where communities and schools are characterised by ethnic and linguistic ‘superdiversity’ (Blommaert, 2010).
Governments too are beginning to recognise the utility of English as a Lingua Franca and the futility of insisting uniquely on the use of their own ‘national’ languages for international communication. English, for example, is the official working language of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the language in which its charter was written. And although in the European Union ‘relay translation’ through English is quite regularly used between less common languages like Estonian and Greek, non-native English speaking officials are increasingly drafting documents directly in English, and hold informal discussions and meetings in English without the need for interpreters.
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Figure 2.2: Relay translation, for example Estonian to English, and then English to Greek [Source: adapted from tableatny]
Yet the monolithic myth of native-speaker English still holds sway, with non-native speakers invariably referred to as learners rather than users of English, and native speakers assumed to be the best teachers because, as such, they use the language ‘correctly’. Learners (and non-native speaker teachers) who visit Anglophone nations are often amazed and disconcerted by the variation they encounter in local ways of using English. Most ELT material conceals the fact that there are many ways of using English in the Anglophone nations, and that individuals can vary widely in the repertoires they employ.