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Оглавление2Models for Teaching English as an International Language
Pre-reading Activities
Think
What might a good EIL course look like? What could teachers do to ensure their students are prepared to use English in global contexts?
Discuss
Look at the components of the TESOL curriculum in Figure 2.1. For each component, discuss what a curriculum coordinator could modify in an English language course to ensure that it is EIL-oriented. Please note: Needs refers to the future needs of learners of the course to be able to use the language; Goals refers to the explicitly stated outcomes for a course; Syllabus refers to the materials used for teaching and way in which these are sequenced and organised; Methodology refers to the teaching approaches used; Assessment refers to ways in which students are evaluated as having reached the outcomes of a course; Evaluation refers to the way in which the quality of a course is monitored and modified according to feedback.
Introduction
The previous chapter outlined some of the main conceptual trends in English language education, which have been associated with the spread of English as a global language. All of these paradigms for thinking have highlighted a need to innovate current TESOL practices to better address the global sociolinguistic realities of how English is used in the 21st century. For example, World Englishes research has suggested that this new reality has clear implications for English language learning goals and, as a result, for the whole curriculum (see Kirkpatrick, 2012). The EIL paradigm argues that these new realities challenge some of the long-held fundamental assumptions underpinning TESOL, and that it requires teachers to revisit their teaching practices (see Matsuda & Friedrich, 2012). Even though many scholars argue for a paradigm shift in TESOL, it is now up to teachers and teacher educators to translate these ideas into pedagogical change. Therefore, this chapter begins to explore the implications and translation of EIL knowledge for (and into) EIL practices. It explores proposals and models that have been introduced by TESOL researchers and researcher-practitioners to help operationalise ideas into tangible approaches for curriculum innovation.
Key Concepts
Three key concepts that are essential to frame good teaching practice in general, and therefore good EIL instruction, are: curriculum development, needs analysis and teaching approaches.
Curriculum development
A key concept underpinning language teaching is curriculum development. Richards (1982) who is possibly the foremost scholar of curriculum theory in TESOL, explains ‘[l]anguage curriculum development, like other areas of curriculum activity, is concerned with principles and procedures for the planning, management, and assessment of learning’ (1982: 1). In short, a curriculum tells teachers what to teach, how to teach, what to assess, what the lesson goals are, and what the students need (Mickan, 2012). Typically, a curriculum incorporates the following components in its development: Needs; Goals/Objectives; Syllabus; Methodology; Assessment; and Evaluation (see Figure 2.1). Rose and Galloway (2019) have been instrumental in using these components of curriculum development to provide structure to curriculum innovation in Global Englishes (and therefore also EIL).
Figure 2.1 The TESOL curriculum (Richards, 1982)
In order to operationalise EIL change within the TESOL curriculum, Rose and Galloway (2019) argue that further questions can be asked within each component of the curriculum in order to adopt a global perspective. For example, additional questions might include:
(1)Needs: Who are the learners’ likely future interlocutors? Will they need to use English as a lingua franca?
(2)Goals and objectives: Do the goals of the curriculum need to prepare students to use English as a global language in global contexts?
(3)Syllabus: Is the syllabus organised to include EIL elements and globally oriented materials?
(4)Methodology: Is the pedagogy appropriate to achieving EIL-related goals, such as facilitating activities to improve students’ strategic competence for diverse types of communication?
(5)Assessment: Are the chosen assessments EIL-oriented, focusing on the use of language, rather than knowledge of it?
(6)Evaluation: Is the curriculum being revisited regularly, and evaluated against the dynamic benchmarks of global use? (adapted from Rose & Galloway, 2019: 31)
Although all parts of the curriculum are equally important to inform good pedagogy, we argue that all good EIL curriculum development must be underpinned by good needs analysis, hence we have placed needs at the top of Figure 2.1, and discuss it in further detail below.
Needs analysis
Needs analysis in EIL curriculum development is of particular importance, as it affects all other curriculum components. The needs of learners should inform a curriculum’s goals and objectives, which in turn inform the best way to structure lessons within a syllabus, as well as the best methods to achieve these goals. These needs-based goals also dictate what aspects of language use should be assessed, and how assessment should occur to accurately measure achievement against these benchmarks. In the evaluation phase, curriculum developers must always return to student needs in order the evaluate whether the curriculum is targeting the right language skills. If evaluation reveals an incongruence, or if student needs change over time, then appropriate modifications need to be made to all curriculum components. If the needs for EIL users cannot be met within a traditional TESOL curriculum, then this is an indication that the curriculum may need a complete overhaul towards EIL-oriented outcomes.
As the world has globalised and English has spread into different social domains and contexts, measuring students’ needs has become far more complex. Different students in different contexts (and even students within the same classrooms) might have vastly different requirements to use the language successfully in their futures. Fortunately, the growth in English has been accompanied by a boom in research which examines how English is used – often built on evidence from corpus linguistic methods. This research can help to inform the TESOL profession of the diverse ways in which language is used in a variety of global settings.
If resources permit, some educational institutions are able to conduct their own needs analysis by tracking their students after they graduation from a course. Needs analysis can aim to gather information on how well the course provided them with the necessities (knowledge and skills) required to successfully use the language. Needs analysis should also seek to understand where linguistic knowledge is lacking, as this can then be fed back into the curriculum via modifications to address these lacks. Further to this, Nation and Macalister (2010) state that good needs analysis should not only include necessities and lacks, but also consider learners’ wants. This is because not all language learning is instrumentally driven, and students may want to develop linguistic knowledge and skills in areas that might not be immediately applicable. For example, in an English exam preparation course, the learning of low-frequency vocabulary might be a necessity, knowledge of reading comprehension strategies might be a lack for many students, and student might want to engage in regular group work – and all of this informs the needs of the course.
When students are in a course which has situational or specific needs, such as an EAP course to prepare them for university postgraduate study or an ESP course to prepare nurses to use English in professional contexts, needs analysis is often easier to conduct, as it is targeted to these specific domains.
Teaching approaches
A further key concept for this chapter is realisation of the fact that throughout history, approaches and ideologies underpinning language teaching have always changed according to the sociolinguistic needs of learners (see Figure 2.2). As Rose (2018) observes, ‘Since the early years of mass language education, approaches have adapted according to the needs of the learner’ (2018: 6). Taking Europe as an example, Grammar Translation prevailed in the school system well into the 1900s, where language acquisition was seen as part of students’ academic development, and any communicative purpose would mostly be in the form of reading literature and writing papers or letters. As European mobility increased in the 1900s, some learners who needed language for use in politics, commerce, or travel turned to language schools that offered a more Direct Method such as the Berlitz Method, where language was learned via intense spoken communication with orally fluent (often native) speaking teachers. Then, wartime needs in Europe saw the rise in use of the Audiolingual Method by US military stationed in Europe, which aimed to teach phrases for communication to large groups of learners, so they could linguistically operate during their deployment. After the war, such methods were developed into teachable classroom methods such as structural-situational language teaching in the UK, which was seen as the first feasible replacement to grammar-translation in schools (as the Direct Method was too resource intensive, requiring small classes, native speakers, and motivated learners).
Figure 2.2 The relationship between changing contexts and approaches (adapted from Rose, 2018; Rose & Galloway, 2019)
In the 1970s, the growth of the European Economic Community and an increase in European mobility brought communicative needs of learners to the forefront, giving rise to communicative language teaching, which is still the current prevailing method in most European contexts. As communicative language teaching is an approach, and not a method, it exists in multiple forms. These include ‘weaker’ forms that follow a similar approach to structural-situational language teaching (such as utilisations of the present-practice-produce technique), and ‘stronger’ forms (such as task-based language teaching). Now, however, the explosion of English in the late 20th century has seen the establishment of English as a global language, which students need for global communication. This new reality, and the new needs that have accompanied it, are ushering in new ways to explore what teaching English as a global language should look like.
Proposals for Change
Suggestions for a change in TESOL in order to keep pace with the dramatic sociolinguistic changes in global English language use stretch back decades, and can be found sprinkled throughout linguistic and educational literature. In order to organise these calls into key areas that required the attention from TESOL practitioners, Galloway and Rose (2015) grouped them into six broad proposals for curriculum change. These proposals claim for a need to:
(1)increase World Englishes and ELF exposure in TESOL curricula;
(2)emphasise respect for multilingualism in TESOL;
(3)raise awareness of Global Englishes in TESOL;
(4)raise awareness of ELF strategies in TESOL curricula;
(5)emphasise respect for diverse culture and identity in TESOL;
(6)change English language teacher hiring practices in the TESOL industry.
Together, these proposals seek to achieve innovation with a TESOL curriculum, and within language learning institutions.
The first proposal seeks to rectify an imbalance in current language norms in TESOL (especially the spoken language norms), which are presented to learners of English. It increases awareness that the dominant educational norms of ‘British’ (i.e. received pronunciation) and ‘American’ (i.e. General American) are only spoken by a fraction of the global English-using population. In the 21st century, students need to understand a diverse range of speakers (McKay, 2012). The second proposal ties in with movements in the multilingual turn, and embraces an increased awareness that other languages can add efficacy and authenticity in the language classroom. The third proposal promotes the notion that students need to be educated in the language itself, and also with regards to how it is used, so that they can better prepare themselves as global English users. The fourth proposal sees the need to focus on the communication strategies that might help learners to successfully converse with interlocutors of varying Englishes and proficiencies. These include, but are not limited to, negotiation and accommodation strategies. The fifth proposal emphasises a global ownership of English, and seeks to situate English use in diverse contexts and cultures, rather than Inner Circle-situated ones. The sixth proposal lobbies for change in hiring practices, drawing on the work in NNEST movement (discussed in Chapter 1).
However, despite the push for pedagogical change in EIL, there have been relatively few models proposed that detail what such change should look like. This has led some scholars to observe that ‘the volume of such academic attention does not seem to have had a tangible impact on actual classroom reality’ (Saraceni, 2009: 177). Galloway and Rose (2015), alongside others, have described this mismatch as a theory–practice divide, which they define as both an ‘incongruence between what experts claim is the case (or prescribe should be the case) and actual practices’ and an ‘ incongruence between [substantial] theoretical-level discussions and a lack of practical, empirical research at the classroom level in relation to ELT’ (2015: 259).
Models to Innovate the Curriculum
In order to close the theory–practice divide, some researchers have specifically explored ways to operationalise theory into tangible practices, which can be implemented into classrooms. In this section, we explore three movements that have grown out of the three areas of EIL scholarship outlined in the previous chapter (World Englishes, English as a lingua franca and Global Englishes). Each of these fields has produced models, frameworks or blueprints for change, which can broadly be described as: World Englishes-informed ELT, ELF-oriented pedagogy and Global Englishes Language Teaching.
The EIL curriculum blueprint and World Englishes-informed ELT
Over the past two decades, Aya Matsuda has actively explored the implications for World Englishes research for TESOL in quite concrete ways. Together, this work could be seen to inform a pedagogical model for EIL. In 2011, Matsuda and Friedrich observed that much of the discussion surrounding the pedagogical implications of World Englishes had ‘remained at an abstract level and [had] not provided pedagogical ideas that [were] theoretically sound, informed by research, and at the same time specific enough to be useful in the classroom’ (2011: 332). In answer to this gap, Matsuda and Friedrich (2011) introduced their EIL ‘curriculum blueprint’, which was underpinned by World Englishes scholarship. The blueprint is presented according to its crucial components, which include:
(1)the selection of the instructional model(s);
(2)ensuring exposure to Englishes and their users;
(3)facilitating strategic competence;
(4)providing appropriate cultural materials;
(5)increasing awareness of the politics of Englishes.
The authors also note that these steps are just a starting point for further curriculum innovations and development.
In terms of selecting an instructional model, the authors state that teachers can decide from three options, and that ‘such a decision needs to be based on various factors such as students’ goals and needs, teachers’ expertise, and availability of materials and resources’ (Matsuda & Friedrich, 2011: 334). These include choices between the selection of: An international variety of English; The learners’ own variety; An established variety; and A dominant instructional model, which is salient to the learners. These are discussed further in Chapter 3. Whatever model is selected, the authors emphasise the second component of the blueprint should ensure that learners also receive exposure to other Englishes to better prepare them for future communicative success with a wide range of English speakers.
The third item in the blueprint emphasises the importance of teaching communication strategies to facilitate students’ communicative competence. The authors note that ‘it is crucial that students are equipped with – and be aware of – both the linguistic and strategic repertoire that they can draw from in situations where they use English to communicate with those who do not share their first language and culture’ (Matsuda & Friedrich, 2011: 340). Further to this, the fourth component in the EIL blueprint highlights the importance of appropriate depictions of culture in the curriculum and in materials. These cultures need to move beyond a traditional focus on Inner Circle cultures, and also beyond stereotypical depictions of culture. The final component emphasises the need to explicitly discuss the politics of English with learners so that they are critically informed on issues that affect the way it is globally used. That is, successful EIL instruction should entail not only the teaching of language, but teaching about language, so that students are able to read, watch, discuss and write about global issues surrounding the English language (Matsuda & Friedrich, 2011).
In Matsuda and Matsuda (2018), the authors introduce a World Englishes-informed paradigm for English language teaching, exploring how the field of World Englishes has enriched, challenged and complicated multiple facets of the TESOL profession from theory to practice. Much of this model expands on Aya Matsuda’s earlier work on the EIL blueprint.
ELF-oriented pedagogy
Scholars in the field of ELF have also been relatively active in their promotion of an ELF-informed, ELF-aware or ELF-oriented pedagogy. In his conceptual paper on the topic, Dewey (2012) asserts that raising teacher awareness of ELF is an important first step to making adaptations to existing pedagogy so that it is more ELF-oriented. He argues that teachers are able to apply this heightened awareness to aspects of their existing professional knowledge. More specifically, he suggests the following types of innovations:
•Investigate and highlight the particular environment and sociocultural context in which English(es) will be used.
•Increase exposure to the diverse ways in which English is used globally presenting alternative variants as appropriate whenever highlighting linguistic forms.
•Engage in critical classroom discussion about the globalisation and growing diversity of English.
•Spend proportionately less time on ENL forms, especially if these are not widely used in other varieties; and thus, choose not to penalise non-native-led innovative forms that are intelligible.
•Focus (more) on communicative strategies. (Dewey, 2012: 163)
He further asserts that the adoption of an ELF perspective does not need to entail a radically different approach to teaching, but rather take the form of smaller modifications to TESOL materials and syllabi in response to ELF.
The closest model of an ELF-oriented pedagogical approach is Dewey’s ‘post-normative approach’, in which he depicts as six questions that teachers must ask themselves in a systematic way in order to inform their practices. The model is depicted in Figure 2.3.
Figure 2.3 Post-normative approach (adapted from Dewey, 2012: 168)
Unfortunately, ELF-oriented pedagogy is currently lacking in substantial research which reports on its proposed innovations in action. Upon inspection of the bulk of research emerging under this banner, one soon discovers that much of the extant research has focused on teacher education, as opposed to investigating pedagogical innovation itself. The closest thing to a framework might be Sifakis’s (2017) ELF Awareness continuum, but once again the focus remains on teachers as the source of change rather than a framework to help inform the curriculum or to raise awareness of the students themselves. Indeed, Dewey (2012) notes that ‘[u]nderstanding what teachers might do in order to incorporate ELF research in practice is not immediately obvious’ (2012: 162), and that ‘there has been relatively little in-depth exploration of what teachers might reasonably do to incorporate an ELF perspective in practice’ (2012: 167). In more recent years, however, we have seen a few classroom-based studies emerge that could be described as adopting an informed ELF perspective – three of these are discussed later in this chapter: Baker (2012), Vettorel (2013) and Sung (2015). The field of ELF is still missing a concrete framework within which to frame innovation in ELT.
Global Englishes Language Teaching
Galloway and Rose’s (2015) Global Englishes Language Teaching framework, hereafter the GELT framework, is arguably the field’s most comprehensive endeavour to synthesise calls for TESOL innovation. The attraction of the GELT model is that it builds on proposals for change across a diverse range of scholarship, and organises these changes into specific categories. While many other models of teaching EIL are rather theoretical in nature, the GELT framework is underpinned by a substantial amount of classroom research, which was conducted by the authors when they worked as language teachers in Japanese higher education. Another appeal of the framework is that it is the product of more than 10 years of development. Earlier iterations of the framework appeared in Galloway (2011), having emerged from her doctoral research. A more fleshed out version of the framework then appeared in Galloway and Rose (2015), which incorporated updated theorisation and additional research. The framework appeared again in Galloway and Rose (2018), with slight alterations in terminology. Finally, an expanded version of the framework appeared in Rose and Galloway (2019), which drew on additional curriculum perspectives, making it more relevant to inform classroom practices.
The current version of the GELT framework is displayed in Table 2.1. It is important to note that that the authors emphasise that even though items in the table are organised into columns, the framework labels of ‘traditional ELT’ and ‘GELT’ are conceptualised as being at either end of a continuum. The idea, then, is for teachers to work towards developing their curriculum to help them move more towards GELT typified practices. The authors also indicate that the framework does not embody an ‘all-or-nothing’ ideology. It might only be feasible for teachers to innovate some aspects of their curriculum at any given time. Indeed, this is the case for the authors themselves, who report on only some of the innovations they implemented in their own classrooms in Japan, with the hope that other researcher-practitioners will follow in their footsteps. So far, the authors’ own work has addressed the following areas of the GELT framework:
Table 2.1 Global Englishes Language Teaching framework (adapted from Rose & Galloway, 2019: 21)
| Traditional ELT | GELT | |
| Target interlocutors | Native English speakers | All English users |
| Ownership | Inner circle | Global |
| Target culture | Static NE cultures | Fluid cultures |
| Norms | Standard English | Diverse, flexible and multiple forms |
| Teachers | Non-NE speaking teachers (same L1) and NE speaking teachers | Qualified, competent teachers (same and different L1s) |
| Role-model | NE speakers | Expert users |
| Source of materials | NE and NE speakers | Salient English-speaking communities and contexts |
| Other languages and cultures | Seen as a hindrance and source of interference | Seen as a resource as with other languages in their linguistic repertoire |
| Needs | Inner Circle defined | Globally defined |
| Assessment criterion | Accuracy according to prescriptive standards | Communicative competence |
| Goals of learning | Native-like proficiency | Multicompetent user |
| Ideology | Underpinned by an exclusive and ethnocentric view of English | Underpinned by an inclusive Global Englishes perspective |
| Orientation | Monolingual | Multilingual/translingual |
| Note: NE = Native English |
(1)The classroom-based study in Galloway and Rose (2014) focuses on challenging norms in the classroom by increasing exposure to diverse English language forms by changing the source of materials used in a homework activity.
(2)The classroom-based study in Rose and Galloway (2017) focuses on shifting students’ ideology on standards in English.
(3)The curriculum innovation in Galloway and Rose (2013) facilitates a shift in teachers through the hiring of teaching assistants of varied L1 backgrounds and, as a result, the target interlocutors with whom the students engaged.
(4)Innovations reported in Rose and Montakantiwong (2018) discuss ways in which teachers can influence views of ownership as well as role models.
(5)The two experimental studies reported in Galloway (2013, 2017a) saw the creation of a new course, which re-assessed student needs and goals of learning, thus drawing in numerous other aspects of the framework during implementation.
(6)Rosenhan and Galloway (2019) report on creative tasks to challenge ideologies surrounding ownership of English.
What Does the Research Tell Us?
In this section, we introduce some of the classroom-based research which reports on putting EIL ideas into pedagogical practice. An overview of the studies is provided in Table 2.2.
Table 2.2 Examples of studies that report on EIL classroom activities
| Researchers | Topic | Participants | Research design | Data collection method |
| Sung (2015) | Global Englishes exposure | University students in Hong Kong (N = 25) | Classroom interventions | Focus groups |
| Sung (2018) | Provision of ELF opportunities | University students in Hong Kong (N = 25) | Out-of-class intervention | Learner log, and reflection papers |
| Rose and Galloway (2017) | Global Englishes exposure | EFL learners in Japan (N = 108) | Classroom intervention | Reflection papers |
| Vettorel (2010, 2013, 2014) | Provision of ELF opportunities | School children in Italy, Poland, Latvia and Slovakia (N = 540) | Classroom intervention | Corpus analysis of exchanges |
| Baker (2012) | Raising intercultural awareness | Students (N = 31) and teachers (N = 6) in Thailand | Out-of-class intervention | Questionnaires and software usage tracking |
The study by Sung (2015) reports on a pilot study phase of a larger project, where a Global Englishes component was integrated into the curriculum of a 13 week-long EAP course in a university in Hong Kong. Sung collected data from his participants via two focus group interviews with 25 students in total. His study found that students’ perceptions of the added components were ‘overwhelmingly positive’ (2015: 44), although the activities did ‘not result in a radical change in the students’ attitudes’ (2015: 47).
A further study by Sung (2018) reported on an out-of-class activity in Hong Kong, where 18 students in his EAP class were encouraged to seek out and engage in ELF communication for a homework assignment. Sung analysed students’ written reflections, and logbooks in which they recorded the details of their ELF interaction. The author concludes that the activity provided students with new insights and a raised awareness of ELF.
The group of three studies by Galloway and Rose (Galloway & Rose, 2014, 2018; Rose & Galloway, 2017) represent a body of classroom intervention work, which the researchers conducted with 108 English language learners in a Japanese university. The first study reported on the use of a listening task where students were exposed to, and then reflected on, a variety of the World Englishes. The second study reported on a task which challenged students’ perceptions of standard language by getting them to engage in a debate on issues surrounding the Speak Good English Movement in Singapore. The final study, with the same group of learners, reported on a presentation task, in which students researched and presented on the historical development of one variety of English. All studies reported positive results including heightened awareness of Global Englishes and self-reported increase in student confidence as L2 users of English. The researchers also reported that in some cases negative stereotypes were reinforced, which they attributed to superficial engagement with some of the tasks.
Vettorel’s (2013) study was a longitudinal classroom intervention in which 540 school children in Italy, Poland, Latvia and Slovakia engaged in a long-lasting project where they engaged in ELF interactions with each other via written and online communication. The project analysed a corpus of these interactions and suggested the activities had good pedagogical value for the learners to develop their pragmatic strategies and linguistic resources in order to communicate with their peers. This is one of the largest ELF classroom intervention projects we have uncovered in the literature. Other aspects of the project are reported in Vettorel (2010, 2014).
The study reported in Baker (2012) sought to raise awareness of intercultural communication and Global Englishes in Thailand, via the introduction of a 15-hour independent study online course. The 31 students and six teachers who took part responded to the materials positively, reporting favourable attitudes towards the Global Englishes content of the course.
Implications for Teachers in Global Contexts
EIL innovations do not mean that teachers must radically abandon their current teaching practices in order to adopt a different approach, but rather we encourage teachers to make modifications to their current practices to be more inclusive of EIL issues. Teachers, as educated professionals, understand the appropriate adaptations they can make within their own teaching contexts. In making each of the innovations outlined in the GELT framework accessible for teachers, we provide some example ideas of how small innovations may lead to positive steps towards teaching EIL in global classroom contexts. For example:
(1)Target interlocutors: A good EIL curriculum could depict other L2 English users as target interlocuters for their learners to raise awareness that ELF communication may likely be a norm for their future English interactions.
(2)Ownership: Materials in EIL curricula should be included to raise awareness that English is a global language in the form of readings, debates, or even assignments.
(3)Target culture: Tasks and role-plays in the classroom should depict a diversity of English-using cultures, without always linking to native speakers and Anglophone contexts. For example, the role of an ‘American’ tourist could be re-assigned as L2-using tourist in a role play, or an assignment given to a learner in France requiring them to write an email in English to a fictitious host family in the UK, could be written to a fictitious host family in the Netherlands.
(4)Norms: A good EIL curriculum should expose students to a diverse range of Englishes, thus instead of relying on audio materials provided by commercial textbooks, authentic examples could be drawn from TED talks and YouTube videos (discussed further in Chapter 4).
(5)Teachers: EIL-oriented schools could evaluate their hiring practices and the language used in job advertisements to ensure they are targeting suitably qualified teachers, regardless of their L1 status. If teachers are part of a professional network, where jobs are advertised, they could ensure that no job advertisements are distributed which promote inequality for NNESTs.
(6)Role-models: A good EIL curriculum will seek ways to introduce students to expert L2 users as potential role models, such as inviting competent L2 speakers to deliver guest lectures in an EAP course.
(7)Source of materials: Materials could be drawn from both local and global origins to help learners understand that knowledge surrounding English language does not always need to emanate from ‘native’ English speakers.
(8)Other languages and cultures: Teachers could permit the use of other languages in their class to fulfil certain pedagogical functions, without limiting opportunities for target language use.
(9)Needs: Old curricula should be frequently re-assessed according to learners’ needs for future English language use.
(10)Goals of learning: The goals of any curriculum should be communicated to learners in terms of ‘can-do’ statements, thus focusing on their linguistic development as opposed to linguistic deficiencies.
(11)Assessment criterion: Where appropriate to the goals of the curriculum, assessments should focus on the communicative competence of learners rather than adherence to grammatical standards.
(12)Ideology and orientation: A good EIL teacher should always be cognizant of their own ideologies and biases, which underpin their teaching decisions. Teachers could also directly engage in discussions with their learners to instil a global perspective of English, and raise their confidence as multilingual speakers.
This chapter has outlined key concepts surrounding the TESOL curriculum, as well as explored proposals and models for EIL innovations within such curricula. It has also introduced a handful of published research papers which have reported on EIL activities in classrooms around the world, while emphasising the fact that such research is currently scarce. This leads us to pose the questions: why is research into the teaching of EIL currently lacking, despite all of the calls for change? Is it because putting EIL research into practice is ‘not immediately obvious’ for teachers, as Dewey (2012: 162) has observed? Is it due to the theory–practice divide noted by many EIL scholars? Is it due to a lack of awareness among teachers of the various frameworks for innovation that have been proposed in recent years? Or is it due to a lack of reporting of innovations that are actually taking place in classrooms around the world?
We suspect that the lack may be a result of a combination of all of these, but for readers of this book, the final reason might be of particular relevance in terms of future pedagogical implications. We can assume that any teacher who is engaging with the content of this book is becoming acutely aware of the need to teach EIL and is developing ideas of how to teach EIL in their educational contexts. What is needed now is for teachers to report on these innovations to help build professional knowledge of what good EIL innovations might look like.
As Rose and Montakantiwong (2018) have observed, ‘Although the Applied Linguistics research community has consistently voiced a growing need for a more EIL-oriented teaching approach, it is surprising how the very voices of the teachers who are supposed to be the megaphone for that message remain unheard’ (2018: 99). This reporting needs not always be in the form of research papers in research journals, but also in professional journals, teacher newsletters, professional conferences, blog posts, or staff common room conversations. While research papers do help feed back practice into the research community to ensure research is teaching informed, other professional outlets can more quickly spread ideas within the teacher community. If innovation is to be achieved on a global scale, we will need both top-down and grassroots movements to operate with synchronicity to meet our aims.
Post-reading Activities
Reflect
Many EIL scholars point to a lack of research on teachers putting EIL activities into practice. Think about why this is lacking, and what can be done to fix the situation to bridge the noted theory-practice divide.
Discuss
(1)All of the models of EIL innovation presented in this chapter (post-normative approach, WE-informed ELT, EIL curriculum blueprint, GELT framework) emphasise a need to increase exposure to a variety of Englishes in the classroom. How can exposure be provided by teachers, and at what stage in a learner’s language development should this exposure begin?
(2)Vettorel’s (2013) study used online communication to connect learners in different countries to provide real life ELF opportunities, which is something that teachers couldn’t do 20 years ago. In what ways can technology facilitate the connection of learners on a global scale?
(3)In small groups, each choose a different study from Table 2.2 to read and critically evaluate, and to prepare a group discussion around its findings. First, provide an overview of what the researcher-practitioners did in their classrooms, and what they reported as a result of their intervention. Then lead a discussion on how feasible or effective the intervention might be for other EIL classroom contexts, and discuss ways in which the EIL activities could be improved to achieve better results or overcome any stated limitations.
Apply
Looking at the GELT framework, and the example suggestions in the section ‘implications for teachers in global contexts’, apply this model to a specific teaching context or a curriculum that you are familiar with. If you do not have detailed knowledge of a real-life course, you may draw on an English language textbook to inform you of some elements of a hypothetical curriculum (most textbooks usually explicitly outline their goals, objectives, syllabus and sometimes a methodology). According to each of the dimensions in the framework, make an explicit suggestion for modifications which could help to transform the curriculum to better match the descriptions of GELT.
Resources for Further Reading
Rose, H. and Galloway, N. (2019) Global Englishes for Language Teaching. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
This first four chapters of this book are entirely devoted to the topic of exploring Global Englishes innovations in language classrooms. The first chapter explores key constructs underpinning the field, and also contains a detailed overview of the most up-to-date version of the GELT framework. Chapter 2 adopts a highly accessible curriculum approach in its exploration of the implications of Global Englishes for TESOL, which our book summarises much of our content from. The fourth chapter in the book then explores educational innovation models, which will be of interest to teachers in management roles who are able to exert force to introduce top-down changes to curriculum within larger educational institutions. Overall, this book provides a state-of-the-art overview of the field. The second half of the book will also be of relevance to researcher-practitioners, as the focus moves from practice to research.
Selvi, A.F. and Yazan, B. (2015) Teaching English as an International Language. TESOL Press.
This book outlines the various facets of teaching EIL, including chapters on materials and methods, assessment, culture and curriculum development. It is published by TESOL Press, and accordingly squarely positions teachers as its target readers, making ideas very accessible. Much of the content in Selvi and Yazan’s book is covered in similar books (including this one). However, one advantage of Selvi and Yazan’s book is its concise format of just 50 pages. Thus, the book is likely to appeal to busy teachers, and may be a good resource to use in professional development workshops and short teacher-training courses.
Richards, J.C. (2017) Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This is a new edition of Jack Richards’ very popular book on curriculum development. Although it does not deal at length with many of the issues we have raised in this chapter on teaching EIL, it does go into considerable depth regarding the various facets and considerations for developing and innovating a curriculum. The book covers all of the various stages in the process of curriculum development including situation analysis, needs analysis, goal setting, syllabus design, materials development and adaptation, teaching and teacher support, and evaluation. Jack Richards has been the authoritative scholar on curriculum development for more than 40 years, and this book is a consolidation of that knowledge.
