Riassunto esame Lingua inglese I, prof. Seidlhofer, libro consigliato Understanding English as a lingua franca, Seidlhofer

(CAF).

Complexity is defined ‘from the perspective of the L2 system or the L2 features’.

Accuracy as ‘the ability to produce error-free speech’, and fluency as the ability to process the

L2 with ‘native-like rapidity’ (Housen and Kuiken 2009).

In short, tasks are designed not to develop communicative proficiency as such but proficiency in

conforming to native-speaker norms. It is this view of proficiency that determines the

‘standards’ of achievement in language education more generally and is particularly evident in

measures of assessment. Even the Common European Framework of Reference for Language

(Council of Europe 2001), despite its overall objective of furthering a composite plurilingualism

in which individuals’ partial competences in various domains should be a desirable learning

goal, persists in its orientation toward native-speaker norms. ‘Intelligibility’ means being

intelligible to native speakers. This orientation is evident in the description of proficiency for the

Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio:

‘I can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with

native speakers quite possible. I can take and active part in discussion in familiar contexts,

accounting for and sustaining my views’ (Spoken Interaction/B2)

‘I have no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast,

even when delivered at fast native speed, provided I have some time to get familiar with the

accent’ (Listening/C2).

The European Language Portfolio is meant to apply to all languages and so of course fails to

acknowledge the unique role of ELF in that English cannot be a ‘foreign language’ like any

other. The CEF’s lack of differentiation between ‘modern foreign languages’ on the one hand

and ‘English’ on the other is puzzling, as the socio-economic roles of these two categories of

languages are obviously different that the objectives for learning cannot be the same

(Seidlhofer).

Of course English can be studied like other foreign languages but the role of English as medium

of intercultural communication , its function as a global lingua franca, is different. Even the tests

take a narrow ENL view of proficiency even if they are called international. For example let’s

look at the description of Pearson’s Test of English (PTA) in a teacher’s magazine and we see

lack of awareness of the role of ELF in the world:

‘To crate an international exam we started by hiring item writers from the UK, the US and

Australia…Because we are not using a single standard model of English we can grade all non-

native students on a single scale. The first thing we look for is comprehensibility - are they

understandable to the native speaker? ‘(EL Gazette, 2008).

What is achieved and put to use in ELF is not the English that has been taught, but the English

that has been learnt. In other words where there is a conflict between objective and process it is

the process that prevails. In current pedagogical thinking, there are two possible reactions to

this:

One is to see this non-conformist English as an interim and incomplete kind of (inter)language

that EFL learners produce in the process of moving towards proper competence, and which

gets carried over in fossilized form into ELF use. So ELF is just the manifestation of arrested

learning.

The question is: why does it get arrested and why is there so much arrested language about –

millions of people use it, far more than the ‘regular, not arrested’ English. Furthermore is seems

that they use it with success to achieve their communicative purposes. So how can a defective

language be so effective?

The non-conformities of EFL learner language are stubbornly resistant to correction, as every

teacher knows. SLA research proposes that what learners learn from the language they are

presented with depends on a mental state of readiness to learn, and that this is largely

determined by underlying acquisition processes beyond teacher control. Learners have their

own agenda and it is to this they are conforming to rather than to that of the teacher.

From this second perspective, learners’ non-conformities are to be categorized not as errors but

as evidence of successful learning. In this view we need improved ways of teaching that will

allow learners to move along the interlanguage scale to the desired end.

In this book I have been arguing that we should not set up native-speaker competence as valid

and viable objective, that ELF is not failed ENL, an arrested state of interlanguage, but the result

of learners putting their learnt language to use as an end itself. Rather than persisting in setting

ENL as the objective and measuring proficiency only in terms of degrees of conformity to NS

norms we should make reference to what people actually do with the language they have learnt,

how they actually communicate in English as an additional language. Learners pick up bits of

language, discarding others. What motivates their selective learning? SLA point of view is that

learning is a kind of self-generated mental process whereby the formal linguistic properties of

the language are internalized in accordance with underlying acquisition rules. One might also

say that what is most readily learnt is what learners intuitively recognize as having the greatest

valence. They intuitively do what Ogden does by rational analysis in Basic. Learners of English

as a foreign language assume the role of users of English as a lingua franca. As they move into

context of use outside the classroom, EFL learners become ELF users. If this is so the process

of acquiring this resource is a valid and viable objective. The problem of the disparity between

the objective and the process of learning effectively disappears: both involve the development in

learners of what Widdowson (in the quotation heading of this chapter) refers to as a capability

for realizing the potential for making meaning.

The focus is in the words of Richard, on the ‘how’ – with what understanding – the language is

learnt, rather then on ‘how much’ of it is picked up’. This can have a liberating effect on

learners: they are released from the strict confinement to conformity and enabled, empowered

to appropriate the language for themselves. Often it has been said that teaching should be

learner centred so as to encourage learner initiative and autonomy. Often in a language class

the learner will tend to make the foreign language less foreign by translating. The typical

pedagogic response is to discourage the tendency to translate. But the class cannot be

monolingual. The English they produce results from an entirely natural exploitation of their

previous linguistic experience. The English they produce often is erroneous and it can be

considered as such if we assume that the only possible objective for learning is the acquisition

of ENL norms. But if we consider the alternative I have suggested, and think of the objective in

different terms, as the capability for exploiting linguistic resources, then the so called ‘errors’

can be seen as positive signs of effective learning, learning with a view to functioning in

whatever English works for the purpose it is used for. From this perspective, what learners are

doing, and should be encourage to do, is engaging in the same strategic process of

appropriation and adaptation that typifies the language of ELF users. They are learning how to

‘language’, how to exploit the potential in the language for making meaning.

It is commonly assumed that language use and learning are two different processes, and that

the first Is dependent on the second. You first learn a language and then use it, and if you don’t

learn it properly, you cannot use it effectively. Learning and using are not consecutive but

simultaneous processes. My assumption is that learners learn the language by making use of it

in their own terms and that in using it they develop the capability for further learning. Users of

ELF, having learnt ‘how to mean’ (Halliday) make communicative use of the language they have

learnt. They are languaging, ‘having a go, trying to make sense and getting somewhere against

all odds’ (Phipps)

As Swain puts it ‘Languaging …refers to the process of making meaning and shaping

knowledge and experience through language. It is a part of what constitutes learning’. This

further learning will then take different routes determined by the language users’ needs

(academic or business for example) but these are not predictable during schooling.

So it seems perverse to discourage the development of this capability through ELF use and to

persist instead in attempting to get learners to reach some undefined level of competence that is

For the most part, unnecessary and unattainable.

8.5 English as a subject and the relevance of ELF

There is little desire to consider ELF in government, ministries of education and employers. The

same conservative attitude is seen also in teachers. In most cases ignoring the pervasive reality

of ELF is not a deliberate act but rather a general lack of awareness. In the Oxford Advanced

Learner’s Dictionary there is some recognition that English exists outside of UK and the USA.

Some concession is made to Outer Circle varieties of English (words like dwaal in South African

English and prepone in Indian English). But for the grammar or usage of English it is rigid on

standard ENL norms. For example the Dictionary says: you cannot say ‘discuss about

something’, or ‘Thanks I really enjoyed’, even if these forms are used in ‘World Englishes’.

The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture is even more explicit in its promotion

of ENL. The slogan on the cover reads: ‘Gets to the heart of the language’ and by language is

meant the language as used to express the culture of its native-speaker communities, more

specifically those of Britain and North America.

‘No matter how advanced your level of English, it’s difficult to understand the language unless

you understand the many cultural references that you see when reading books or newspapers.

This dictionary gives you a deeper insight into the questions students might ask you about

British and American culture’ (Pearson and Longman Catalogue)

Here English is clearly taken to be property of its native speakers and so inextricably bound up

with their culture that understanding this culture is a necessary condition for ‘fully’ understanding

‘the language’. So either ELF is not considered or considered negatively as a threat to the

established pedagogic order. It should be a stimulus for reflection. Here are some harsh ways of

considering the use of ELF: ‘bringing the ideal down the gutter, with no check point on the way’

(Sobkowiak); ‘inventing a new variety’ and ‘installing a fledgli