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ARE TEACHERS READY FOR ELF? EVIDENCE FROM NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKING MA TESOL STUDENTS

This study aimed to explore whether non-native English-language teachers were aware of the existence of the English as a Lingua Franca paradigm and to examine their aspirations and preferences for themselves and their students as learners of English. Five research questions guided the study: 1) What variety of English do non-native teachers aspire to for themselves? 2) What variety of English do non-native teachers aspire to for their students? 3) What environments (native vs. non-native) do they consider to be most conducive for the acquisition of English? 4) Do they emphasize accuracy vs. intelligibility? 5) Is there a relationship between their aspirations and their preferences for accuracy and/or acceptability? The findings provided empirical evidence that non-native English teachers are aware of the different English varieties. The participating teachers seemed to put higher emphasis on intelligibility than on grammatical accuracy if they thought that certain utterances would not impede international communication. The results also revealed a dual orientation in participants' aspirations, where their awareness of the diversity of English varieties and their emphasis on intelligibility was paradoxically contradicted by their own strong preferences for native-like models of pronunciation and lexical knowledge.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:siu.edu/oai:opensiuc.lib.siu.edu:theses-2541
Date01 August 2014
CreatorsLopez Jaramillo, Maria Gabriela
PublisherOpenSIUC
Source SetsSouthern Illinois University Carbondale
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses

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