Penny Ur talks to ELT NEWS about English as a lingua franca

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Traditionally communicative language teaching has been designed to help learners to interact with native speakers and so has focused on the linguistic and sociocultural knowledge needed for such interactions.

Increasingly, however, the majority of learners use their English with other speakers for whom it is a second language rather than with native speakers. Such a change has implications for the strategies we encourage learners to develop, the materials we use and the outcomes we seek to achieve.

A great deal of what is written about teaching English focuses primarily on English-dominant contexts. This is also true for the literature on language teacher education.

Traditionally the purpose as well as the goal of English learning in the world is assumed to be to communicate with and to integrate into the native English speaking community.

Increasingly, however, it is not clear who or what that “native English speaking community” might be or, indeed, if learners will necessarily ever use their English language skills with such speakers.

The expansion of English in a globalising world and changes in classroom practices are blurring the traditional distinction between foreign and second language contexts and between language learners and users.

Three interrelated issues arise for language teachers and teacher educators as a result of such changes. These are:

•the implications for learner identity of the global status of English;

•the need for language education to develop the ability to negotiate cultural and social differences;

•the choice in classrooms of appropriate models or standards.

Penny Ur has been teaching English as a foreign language in Israeli schools since 1968, and has also been involved in teacher training for most of that time. She is at present teaching TEFL practice and theory at Oranim School of Education, Haifa University, Israel.

Penny Ur was late last year in Greece and more specifically in Thessaloniki for the TESOL Macedonia-Thrace Convention, where she delivered a plenary session as well as a professional presentation. ELT NEWS did not miss the chance to talk to the lady.

In her plenary session Penny gave an overview of the role of English as a global language. She pointed out that learning English should no longer imply the objective of ‘understanding the culture of the English speaking people’ but rather of promoting international communication.

ELT must therefore meet international criteria of intelligibility, grammatical acceptability and socio-cultural appropriateness.

∙What do we mean when we say ‘lingua franca’?

“The original lingua franca was a language spoken around the Mediterranean by merchants. In principle it is a language which is nobody’s mother tongue but which people speak in order to communicate with someone else with whom they do not share a mother tongue.

Regarding English one should ask whether it is somebody’s mother tongue. The immediate answer is ‘yes, of course it is a lot of people’s mother tongue’ but on the other hand the kind of English which is spoken as a lingua franca is not exactly the same as a mother tongue dialect. In a sense, English today is to some extent not a mother tongue of anybody. It belongs to all its speakers.”

∙Doesn’t it belong to the English or the Americans?

“Not any more. The majority of people who speak English today are not the people you mention. The majority of English speakers are located in the Outer and Expanding circle. These people use English as a Lingua Franca (ELF).

They use it for academic purposes, political negotiation, tourism, entertainment, business and finance, information, personal social interaction.Most educated speakers of other languages today are at least bilingual.

Both centrifugal and centripetal trends are developing: a proliferation of local ‘Englishes’, side by side with a generally comprehensible standard variety.

The most influential model of the spread of English has undoubtedly been that of Kachru. Kachru divides World Englishes into three concentric circles, the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle.

The three circles ‘represent the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition, and the functional allocation of English in diverse cultural contexts’, as the language travelled from Britain (the Inner Circle), in the first diaspora, to the colonies (the Outer Circle), and, more recently, to the rest of the world (the Expanding Circle).

The English spoken in the Inner Circle is said to be ‘norm-providing’; that in the Outer Circle to be ‘norm-developing’ and in the Expanding Circle to be ‘norm-dependent’. The problem with this model is that the Outer and the Expanding Circle accepts the inner circle as a norm. That is no longer true.”

∙Is English as a lingua franca a culture-free language?

“To a large extent yes, in that it naturally expresses the culture of its speakers, and therefore functions as a vehicle for a wide variety of cultures.

It is arguable that in certain areas of behaviour, an ‘international culture’ is developing, parallel with the development of ELF (hotels, dress, greetings, thanks and apologies, business letters, email formats, internet conventions …).

∙One should accept that the native speakers set the rules…

“You are right but this is changing very fast.”

∙In what way?

“In the sense that some norms of grammar and vocabulary which are acceptable in the native speaker community may not be acceptable internationally. Let me give you an example. The word ‘fortnight’ is British English but it is not used in the outer circle.”

∙How, then, should we know what to teach?

“You need to rely on your intuitions. At the moment there is no grammar and no dictionary of English as an international language. But there will be. It’s a matter of time. As far as I know there is no reference to look up but there will be.”

∙Doesn’t this make our job more complicated than it used to be?

“A little bit, yes. Before we used to say “I teach British English or American English” but today we say that we teach English as a lingua franca. Yes, you still say that you teach British English but you must be aware that certain usages may not be comprehensible internationally. The language is changing.

When you decide which usage to teach, then you have to think which is acceptable internationally. We need to teach for communication, and a lot of users of English as a lingua franca are communicating perfectly effectively without standard grammatical usages.

So maybe we shouldn’t worry too much about accuracy in our teaching, as long as the learners are making themselves understood.”

∙Which role model do we choose then? The native-speaker or the fully competent non-native?

“Many teachers and learners today still prefer a ‘native speaker’ model. But:

a)Native speakers are often limited to their own local dialect and may not be aware of international usages.

b)Many English speakers who were originally non-native are today ‘fully competent’.

c)Non-native fully competent speakers have the advantage of being an appropriate role model.

d)The language proficiency level of the non-native fully proficient speaker is, by definition, achievable.

So the argument about whether native or non-native teachers are better is rapidly becoming irrelevant. The important teaching qualities are: a) full competence in accurate and fluent English and b) teaching ability

∙Does lexis change along with grammar?

“Lexis is changing more slowly. Take as an example the language of Shakespeare and the language of Jane Austin. You have no difficulty reading Austin which came in the scene two hundred years after Shakespeare.

What is more important is that lexis is expanding with new words from technology, the media, borrowed words, coined words etc. Also the meaning of words is changing. Many words do not carry the same meaning as in the past.”

∙How can we know all these new words entering the English language? Some of them are not yet in the dictionaries.

“Dictionaries are keeping up. What is really good is that we have the internet. On line dictionaries are revised in real time. The problem with a new word is that you do not know if it’s going to disappear soon or stay longer.

The present American and British English grammars and dictionaries can continue to be used, provided teachers and materials writers are aware of international usages. But sooner or later, someone has to write reference books dealing with internationally acceptable usages.”

∙Time will tell…Will there be a time when people who speak world Englishes will not understand each other”

“No. People need to communicate. There is very high motivation in all sorts of fields -in politics, in business, in entertainment, in science, in academia- to maintain communication. Therefore there is even higher motivation to maintain an English which everyone knows and understands.

What we may see happening is the increase of local Englishes which are not fully comprehensible outside local communities.

You need to switch from your local English to international English when you are outside your community. In Wales for instance people use their local dialect when they talk to each other but they switch to standard English when necessary. But this applies to all languages.”

∙Do we have to redefine our goals as language teachers?

“Yes. Our goal is no longer to try and create native speakers. Our goal should be to create speakers who use a language internationally comprehensible.”

∙What about pronunciation?

“As long as we understand each other pronunciation is not a problem.”

∙You are a teacher, teacher trainer, author, researcher… you have a long experience…what advice would you give language teachers who enter the profession?

“Learn as much as possible. Read as much as you can. Attend professional conferences and meetings. Share experiences with colleagues. As soon as you find something new, share it.

The profession is developing through sharing. The classroom is a very private area and teaching can be a lonely experience if you do not exchange ideas.”

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