Today English has become the Lingua Franca or common language of many people, regardless of their being native or nonnative speaker of English all over the world. Therefore, it has become necessary to educate pre-/in-service teachers with an awareness towards the significance of the involvement of an "English as a lingua franca" (ELF) perspective in their language teaching practice in multilingual/multicultural contexts. In a rapidly changing world, many English language teachers and teacher trainers are cognizant of the impact of migration in their teaching contexts. However, it is still not very clear to what extent and in what context they are integrating ELF related issues in their language teaching practice. In this study, we make an attempt to unveil in-service teachers' beliefs about ELF in pedagogical practice in three different countries -Poland, Portugal and Turkey. In order to do that we have adopted a questionnaire from an earlier study investigating the involvement of culture in ELT in expanding circle contexts. The findings of the study revealed that although teachers in these contexts are aware of the significance of the inclusion of an ELF-aware perspective in ELT, they are still hesitant about its applicability in their own teaching context. This study has implications for raising English language teachers' awareness in conceptualizing how an ELF-aware pedagogical approach can be implemented in a multilingual/multicultural context.
The international role of English has made it the most taught foreign language in the world. As a result, standard native varieties have thrived as models within the field of English language teaching, particularly Standard British English and Standard American English, and alongside, the cultures associated with them. Although the majority of English language learners are part of Kachru’s Expanding Circle, teaching materials have continued to focus on native speaker models, neglecting many of the times other examples of successful communication among non-native speakers. Bearing this in mind, it is critical that teaching materials take on a more ELF-aware perspective, where intercultural communicative competence and intercultural awareness are fomented. In view of this, a comparative analysis was conducted between coursebooks in Portugal and Turkey. A locally published (LP) and an internationally published (IP) coursebook of the first year of secondary education from each country was analyzed. The aim of this analysis was twofold: to identify the similarities and differences between (1) Portuguese and Turkish EFL coursebooks and (2) LP and IP coursebooks in Portugal and Turkey, as far as an ELF-aware approach is concerned. After comparing the coursebooks and verifying that much can still be done for a more ELF-aware pedagogy, various implications are put forth for the sake of a more critical approach towards materials development.
This study investigated the role of language aptitude for participants with extensive instructed L2 English learning experience in judging the grammaticality of sentences in auditory and written modalities. Partially replicating a naturalistic L2 learning study, we administered written and auditory grammaticality judgement tests in L2 English and the LLAMA aptitude tests to 37 students at an English-medium state university in Turkey. The participants were divided into higher and lower aptitude groups based on LLAMA scores, and their accuracy/response time scores in early/intermediate/late-acquired structures were examined. The results showed that aptitude was significantly associated with performance only in late-acquired structures in the written modality. Additionally, aptitude distinguished response time rather than accuracy scores, suggesting a qualitative processing difference. The explicit and analytic nature of language aptitude was discussed for adult learners, which is more relevant for the Turkish context where English is taught as a foreign language in academic settings.
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