1-1. ELF Intro — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hello, I'm Nicos Sifakis. In this presentation,  I'm going to talk about the concept of English as
2. 0:09a Lingua Franca. Let's begin with a definition of  English as a Lingua Franca or ELF. In its simplest
3. 0:20orientation, English as a Lingua Fanca  can be considered to be any interactions
4. 0:27involving non-native speakers of English. Now,  English should be the main vehicle but it goes
5. 0:35without saying that other languages can be used  as well. It's also important to remember that
6. 0:43native speakers can also be  part of such interactions,
7. 0:47as long as there are non-native speakers involved.  The so-called non-native speakers, this means that
8. 0:53the interaction can be an ELF interaction. So  the definition that Seidlhofer offers ELF is any
9. 1:01use of English among speakers of different first  languages for whom English is the communicative
10. 1:08medium of choice and often the only option.  In other words, there are no other means of
11. 1:17understanding one another, so they use English.  The important characteristic of ELF is that it
12. 1:24is defined functionally in terms of its usage and  it's typically used in intercultural communication
13. 1:31which means that it is not really used with  reference to native speaker norms, essentially
14. 1:36because native speaker norms are not relevant in  this case. What are the central aspects of ELF in
15. 1:44its use? Well, it's essentially to do with a means  of interaction that involves a lot of pragmatics.
16. 1:52You have, in other words, you have to understand  the communicative context who is involved in which
17. 1:59circumstances of interaction takes place. So the  importance here is on the function rather than
18. 2:07the form, in other words, the use rather  than things like grammatical or syntactical
19. 2:14accuracy. The important things to be  understood when you communicate with others.
20. 2:20So communicative efficiency is much much  more important than linguistic accuracy,
21. 2:25sometimes when we are linguistically accurate,  we are not making ourselves understood
22. 2:33to other non-native speakers, so that's the most  important thing to be understood. That's why
23. 2:40ELF interactions are entirely flexible  and entirely fluid, in other words, we use
24. 2:48accommodation strategies. Strategies that  allow us to be understood, like paraphrasing,
25. 2:55rephrasing, repeating what we say, using other  words, other languages even, or other semiotic
26. 3:02systems, the notion of translanguaging or code  switching, anything that can make our message
27. 3:10understood by our interlocutors. The  important thing is that ELF focuses
28. 3:16on making yourself intelligible, in  other words, making your discourse
29. 3:23understood, the words that you that come out  of your mouth understood by your interlocutors
30. 3:28and of course, being comprehensible, in other  words, making your interlocutors understand the
31. 3:34meaning of what you want to say. But what is the  relevance of ELF to CLIL or bilingual contexts?
32. 3:44Well CLIL is, as we know, most importantly about  the teaching the content, language comes second,
33. 3:52so in that way, it's the same with ELF, it's  the function, it's the content, it's not so much
34. 3:58what you say, it's being understood when you say  it. It's the same thing in other words with ELF,
35. 4:05it's the function, the communication getting the  message across. As we said, form comes second.
36. 4:12So understanding the importance of ELF in everyday  interactions involving non-native speakers
37. 4:18will help us lower the stress of  teaching to a standardized test,
38. 4:26these high-stakes exams that sometimes we prepare  our students for. And in this way, we can promote
39. 4:35through ELF, real-life interactional skills,  like accommodation strategies, and also raise
40. 4:42self-awareness and self-confidence of  our learners which is extremely important
41. 4:51because our learners will be users of English in  today's global society and are much more likely
42. 4:57to communicate and interact with other non-native  speakers across the globe. You can stop the video
43. 5:02here and consider the following questions. You  can also discuss these questions on this slide
44. 5:08with your tutor. As you can see, these questions  refer to your own personal understanding of ELF,
45. 5:16and its relevance to your teaching context.  Its usefulness in incorporating it in your own
46. 5:21teaching and the advantages of looking  at function as we do with CLIL over
47. 5:29form. Now a few words about the features of  the lexical grammar of ELF. This is based on
48. 5:40actual research from Corpora, that is large  databases of text, spoken text primarily
49. 5:48around the world. And this particular one  comes from the Voice, the Vienna Oxford
50. 5:52International Corpus of English. We have  invariant question tags, for example,
51. 5:59you're very busy today, isn't it instead of  aren't you, that's a typical example of ELF usage.
52. 6:05Treating ‘who’ and ‘which’ as interchangeable  relative pronouns, for example,
53. 6:11the picture ‘who’ instead of the picture ‘which’  or a person ‘which’ instead of a person ‘who’.
54. 6:20Shift of patterns of preposition use, for example,  we have to study about, so the interjection of
55. 6:29the preposition about which would be typically  incorrect in native speaker English. Preference
56. 6:35for bare and or fully infinitive over the use  of gerunds, for example, I look forward to see
57. 6:41you tomorrow instead of seeing you tomorrow. You  can still get the message across even without the
58. 6:46gerund. Extension to the collocation of field of  words with high semantic generality, for example,
59. 6:53take and operation, take being a kind of  generic word that non-native speakers of English
60. 6:59typically use instead of in this case, have  an operation, take an operation would be fine.
61. 7:06And finally increased explicitness, for example,  how long time instead of how long. These are
62. 7:12the things that we usually talk about when we  refer to the ELF lexicon grammar. So, what are
63. 7:18the issues that we focus on when we think  about ELF? And these are the issues that
64. 7:25we're going to raise in this and the following  presentations. One of the important features that
65. 7:31we have to discuss is the function and status  of native speaker English. How important is it?
66. 7:42Now when we think about native speaker English,
67. 7:46we typically in an EFL or English as a foreign  language or a CLIL context, in our minds, we
68. 7:54think of one variety of English and that  would be the standard English variety,
69. 8:02in British English or the general  American variety, in American English,
70. 8:08so that's one of the things that is really  really important to consider when you think about
71. 8:13ELF. Another thing to consider, and this is  linked with the question of standard English,
72. 8:19it's the question of ownership, in other  words, who owns English or who is allowed
73. 8:29to be considered as a legitimate user of the  English language? Is it the native speakers
74. 8:37with their own native speaker varieties and among  all these varieties of course the standard English
75. 8:44varieties or could the non-native speaker  who is a successful speaker when they use
76. 8:53ELF in many different interactional settings?  Could the non-native speaker also be considered
77. 9:01for ownership of this global or international  aspect of English, ELF? That's a very important
78. 9:10question to ask. The third issue to consider  and this is a major issue that we will also
79. 9:17raise in the next talks is the question  of attitudes. There have been many studies
80. 9:24in the past 20 years that have focused  on attitudes towards ELF. How do we
81. 9:32react to ELF interactions? What do we think when  we consider an ELF interaction, do we focus on the
82. 9:41success or efficiency of these interactions  involving non-native speakers or
83. 9:48are we annoyed to some extent or to even to a  large extent by the mistakes or deviations made
84. 9:57by these speakers from standard English? Attitudes  are very very important and they play a major role
85. 10:05even of course in the teaching of English as a  foreign language. And this is where we have to
86. 10:13consider the link between ELF, English as a Lingua  Franca and EFL, English as a foreign language. Can
87. 10:23there be link? How important is it for ELF to  be incorporated within EFL? To what extent, is
88. 10:30EFL relevant or even important in today's English  language learning environments? Do we really need
89. 10:38to learn EFL to learn standard English and do we  need to get all these high stakes certificates
90. 10:48that are very important of course in  many different contexts around the world?
91. 10:55So that's a really important question to  ask yourselves. What we have here is a very
92. 11:03interesting phenomenon because we have the EFL  world that we know in the classrooms and this is
93. 11:11a major thing even in CLIL environments because  CLIL of course may be focusing on the content,
94. 11:18but the language as far as English is concerned,  the language would be standard English, that would
95. 11:24be the language we would be aiming for. On the  other hand, ELF with its own idiosyncrasies, could
96. 11:33perhaps be in certain environments more relevant  and even more interesting and even more important
97. 11:41than EFL, so you have to consider the context of  use since use is so so so much more important than
98. 11:50anything else. As you can see, these are some of  the major international domains where English is
99. 11:56used and you have from international organizations  and conferences, to scientific publications,
100. 12:03to international banking, to advertising, all  these are areas where English as a global language
101. 12:14would be more relevant of course, audio-visual  cultural products, international tourism,
102. 12:21tertiary education where you have English  as a medium of instruction or EMI,
103. 12:27and then you have areas that are more  specific like international safety,
104. 12:32the language used in translation, especially in  literary translation. English is very important
105. 12:39in technology, the internet majorly and of course  any communication and English is very important as
106. 12:48far as technology is concerned and the internet.  So these domains are really really important,
107. 12:53and they are often used as proof for raising  the importance and status of ELF as well as of
108. 13:02course EFL. The next two slides are proof for  the important status of English as a global
109. 13:10language. So the first one comes from McArthur  in 2005, you see that English occupies a level
110. 13:16of its own with the English language complex and  then you have the huge languages, like Chinese,
111. 13:23Spanish or Hindi and of course after that you  have all the other languages that are as you go up
112. 13:29the levels you have more and more you get to, you  categorize smaller languages. And then this slide
113. 13:39presents the similar categorization by de  Swaan from 2001 and again you see that English
114. 13:48takes a very important place being called  a hypercentral language, a global language,
115. 13:55and then you have all the other languages starting  from Arabic and Chinese, and then you have the
116. 14:00central languages which would be the national,  let's say the nationally spoken languages and
117. 14:06of course after that the peripheral languages  that occupy the main volume of languages spoken
118. 14:13around the world. This special role of English has  been characterized by Braj Kachru who attempted
119. 14:21to describe it in a very simple way through  the use of three concentric circles that
120. 14:28you can see on the left hand side of this slide,  starting from the inner circle which would be the
121. 14:36native speaker varieties of the  UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and
122. 14:44of course the numbers are not correct here, but  they're not very far off, especially for the
123. 14:49inner circle. Then you have the outer circle which  refers to the countries that used to be colonies
124. 14:58of the of the British and to some extent of the of  the Americans. In this circle, you have countries,
125. 15:05like Nigeria, in Africa, you have Bangladesh,  Ghana, the Philippines, countries like that.
126. 15:13The expanding circle has of course all the other  countries around the world where English is used
127. 15:18as a foreign language, and in this case, you  have places like Taiwan, China, Egypt, Korea,
128. 15:30and so on. Of course this is a rather simplistic  way of looking at the geographical orientation
129. 15:36of English today from the inner to the outer to  the expanding circle. On the right hand side,
130. 15:42you can see an alternative orientation put  forward by David Grudel, who proposed that
131. 15:50we keep an inner circle of native speakers and  then we refer to the use of English as a second,
132. 15:58third or additional language and by people who  are non-native speakers and in this case what
133. 16:04is important is the communicative efficiency of  proficiency of these speakers. We mentioned a few
134. 16:10minutes ago the difference between the EFL and the  ELF way of looking at the English language and we
135. 16:18noted a mismatch between the two. On the one  hand, in the EFL environment, you look at
136. 16:25students who are learners of English and in this  way English is perceived as a foreign language
137. 16:32that is as a language that is completely distant  from the learners from the students that's why
138. 16:38they learn it, it's a foreign language to them,  and typically it's an exam oriented situation in
139. 16:44EFL. On the other hand, with ELF students you have  to consider that these students to a large extent,
140. 16:51especially if we're talking about adolescents  and adults or even younger learners these days,
141. 16:57these students have a familiarity with English  outside of the EFL classroom. That's why
142. 17:04they would be international users of the  language and they would be aware of the
143. 17:11function of English as a global language, and of  course as a multicultural way of communicating
144. 17:17between them. So this distinction between the EFL  way of looking at English and the students and the
145. 17:24ELF way of looking at the same people is very  very interesting, and it's a question to pose
146. 17:31in this presentation. We're going  to finish this presentation with
147. 17:36a discussion topic that refers to a number of  concepts and terms that are often used. Have
148. 17:44a careful look at these terms, as you can  see, some of these of course there are no
149. 17:50right answers to this. It's just an opportunity to  reflect about these issues and at least reach some
150. 17:56conclusions that have to do with your own attitude  and knowledge about English as a Lingua Franca.
151. 18:05Thank you for watching this presentation. I hope  you enjoyed it and found it useful. Goodbye.