{"id":6377,"date":"2018-01-28T11:58:42","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T11:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=6377"},"modified":"2018-01-28T11:58:42","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T11:58:42","slug":"the-impact-of-elf-on-teachers-and-materials-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2018\/01\/28\/the-impact-of-elf-on-teachers-and-materials-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impact of ELF on Teachers and Materials Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Katherine<\/p>\n

\nThe Impact of ELF on Teachers and Materials Writers<\/strong>
by Katherine Bilsborough.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where are all the ELF books?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you write \u201cELT books\u201d in the search box of a well-known online bookstore, you\u2019ll get pages and pages of suggestions, from grammar books to resource books, course books to methodology books and everything in between. The same is true for \u201cESL books\u201d, \u201cEAP books\u201d and \u201cESOL books\u201d. But type in \u201cELF books\u201d and, perhaps unsurprisingly, you get a range of elf-themed picture books for very young children. And while \u201c101 Things to Do with Your Christmas Elf\u201d looks quite charming, it has nothing whatsoever to do with English as a Lingua Franca.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few questions about ELF from a teacher\u2019s perspective \u2026\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How does the growing acceptance of ELF impact on the role of a teacher? Do we have to focus on different aspects of the language? How do we know what we need to teach and what we don\u2019t need to teach?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u2026 and from an author\u2019s perspective<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What kind of things might need to change in teaching materials in order to make them appropriate for an ELF context? Do teachers need specific ELF materials? If not, how might they use traditional resources differently? Which aspects need to change? And how? Is there a need for self-published ELF materials to supplement resources that teachers create themselves?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A teacher\u2019s focus<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If I was working as a teacher today and my students were going to be mainly using English as a Lingua Franca, I\u2019d probably start each new course with these three steps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Step 1.<\/b>\u00a0Conduct a simple needs analysis and include a question asking your students who they think they are most likely to be using their English with in the future. In all likelihood you\u2019ll have at least some students who think they\u2019ll be mainly speaking English with people whose first language isn\u2019t English either:\u00a0students collaborating on joint university research projects from around the world, businesspeople at international conferences where English is the official language, or even would-be\u00a0travellers\u00a0who see English as a language of communication in destinations from Scandinavia to Patagonia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Step 2.<\/b>\u00a0After establishing that your students will most likely be using English with other speakers of English as a\u00a0second\u00a0language, set up a class discussion with a list of statements or questions to make them think about what would be helpful and what might be a waste of time.\u00a0 In my experience, students don\u2019t always\u00a0realise\u00a0what it is they need. They just remember and repeat what they\u2019ve heard others say over the years. This means their reasoning can be underpinned by a spurious premise. Some will be passionate about grammar. Others will insist on learning lists of vocabulary.\u00a0And\u00a0for many the goal will be to speak English like a native English speaker \u2013 whatever that might be.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some suitable discussion questions could be along the lines of:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

a)\u00a0Which is greater \u2013 the number of people who speak English as a first language or the number of people who speak English as a second language?<\/i>(More than a billion people speak English as a second language, while around 400 million speak it as their first language.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

b)\u00a0How many different accents are there in your language? Are some better than others? Should a learner of your language try and adopt a particular accent?<\/i>(When students think about people learning their language, they are able to step back and see learning English from a different perspective.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

c)\u00a0If communication is the ultimate aim of a language learner, which skills are important to develop in your English lessons?<\/i>(Hopefully, a discussion will help students\u00a0realise\u00a0that some things, like having perfect grammar, are less important than, for example, developing their listening skills so as to be able to understand a range of accents. While they need to learn how to speak clearly, they certainly don\u2019t need to have any particular accent.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Step 3.<\/b>\u00a0I\u2019d look for the best possible materials for my students. This might mean checking the audios that come with traditional course books to see what kind of speakers have made the recordings. I\u2019d choose the one with a variety of accents and reject the ones that only include native speakers of English. I\u2019d look at the pronunciation sections in the course book and see what kind of things are being taught and focused on. If I wasn\u2019t sure which features of pronunciation were important for speakers to communicate intelligibly, I\u2019d find out! The \u201cLingua Franca Core\u201d (LFC) has, along with a lot of other interesting content, a list of these features and it\u2019s a useful list for teachers to familiarize themselves with if they really want to help their students become competent communicators in English. You can find out some of the key points from the LFC and read more about it in a post on Katy Simpson and Laura\u00a0Patsko\u2019s\u00a0Elfpron\u00a0blog<\/i><\/b>\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0Robin Walker\u2019s book \u2018Teaching the Pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca\u201d is another excellent resource and a practical guide to the LFC. It comes with audio recordings of non-native speakers and lots of classroom suggestions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An ELT author\u2019s perspective<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In general, many of the teaching materials we write are based on native speaker models of English so parts of them might not be relevant for ELF.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. There is a need for Listening materials with a variety of accents in the audio components.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. We should write pronunciation materials after consulting the Lingua Franca Core to ensure that the aspects of pronunciation we are teaching are the most useful.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Digital materials might be better than print materials for ELF teachers because they can be more easily adapted for more specific needs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. There might be scope for writing \u201cwrap around\u201d materials that can be used alongside existing videos and audios1<\/span>\u00a0with speakers from different countries speaking English well. Some of these could be generic, others more specific.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    As the number of people who speak English as a second language continues to grow, it\u2019s inevitable that a growing number of teachers and students will turn to ELF as the most appropriate form of English to teach and learn. It\u2019s my belief that in a few\u00a0years time\u00a0when we write \u201cELF books\u201d in the search box of that well-known online bookstore, we\u2019ll start finding the kind of books we\u2019re looking for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Impact of ELF on Teachers and Materials Writersby Katherine Bilsborough.   Where are all the ELF books?\u00a0 If you write \u201cELT books\u201d in the search box of a well-known online bookstore, you\u2019ll get pages and pages of suggestions, from grammar books to resource books, course books to methodology books and everything in between. The … Continue reading The Impact of ELF on Teachers and Materials Writers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-as-a-lingua-franca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}