Author :
Abstract
Reform is not an easy process. It is by and large slow and painful. As English proves to be an efficient tool in the international arena, it is essential that the significance of ELF awareness be reconsidered with particular reference to language policy development, syllabus design, and teacher development. It is essentially the skill that L2 learners should acquire to adapt themselves into diverse situations.When the students who learn English as a foreign language in Turkey are considered, it could be seen that the real problem is not the different pronunciations and the different usages of the words but the different varieties of English that they are not aware of. Mostly, L2 learners have a strong desire to speak like a native speaker thus neglect the different usages, dialects and cultural norms of other Englishes. In addition to all these, a strong initiative for an extensive ELF curriculum including the application methods and techniques has yet to be introduced. Language teaching activities are carried out either by American or British based course books that contain a little bit of local elements sprinkled throughout the chapters for marketing purposes. Sociocultural, local, historical and international aspects of English are mainly neglected. Taking all these into consideration, this study focused on ELF awareness in EFL context in terms of language policy development, syllabus design, and teacher development. For this purpose, the researcher investigated how Turkish EFL teachers understand ELF and ELF awareness by means of a cross-sectional survey conducted with 19 participants. Follow-up, semi-structured interviews were carried out with four instructors for the purpose of obtaining content analysis and thus bolstering the quantitative results to reach fair and precise results pertaining to ELF awareness. On the whole, the results of the study revealed that although the transition from EFL teacher to ELF practitioner is not an easy task and clearly necessitates time and encouragement, making teachers aware of the ‘plurality of Englishes’ and the importance of multiculturalism proved to be valuable in encouraging them to revise their teaching practices within the new developments in English language teaching.
Keywords
Abstract
Reform is not an easy process. It is by and large slow and painful. As English proves to be an efficient tool in the international arena, it is essential that the significance of ELF awareness be reconsidered with particular reference to language policy development, syllabus design, and teacher development. It is essentially the skill that L2 learners should acquire to adapt themselves into diverse situations.When the students who learn English as a foreign language in Turkey are considered, it could be seen that the real problem is not the different pronunciations and the different usages of the words but the different varieties of English that they are not aware of. Mostly, L2 learners have a strong desire to speak like a native speaker thus neglect the different usages, dialects and cultural norms of other Englishes. In addition to all these, a strong initiative for an extensive ELF curriculum including the application methods and techniques has yet to be introduced. Language teaching activities are carried out either by American or British based course books that contain a little bit of local elements sprinkled throughout the chapters for marketing purposes. Sociocultural, local, historical and international aspects of English are mainly neglected. Taking all these into consideration, this study focused on ELF awareness in EFL context in terms of language policy development, syllabus design, and teacher development. For this purpose, the researcher investigated how Turkish EFL teachers understand ELF and ELF awareness by means of a cross-sectional survey conducted with 19 participants. Follow-up, semi-structured interviews were carried out with four instructors for the purpose of obtaining content analysis and thus bolstering the quantitative results to reach fair and precise results pertaining to ELF awareness. On the whole, the results of the study revealed that although the transition from EFL teacher to ELF practitioner is not an easy task and clearly necessitates time and encouragement, making teachers aware of the ‘plurality of Englishes’ and the importance of multiculturalism proved to be valuable in encouraging them to revise their teaching practices within the new developments in English language teaching.
