122234 AR Linguistics Course (interactive) (2014S)

English has become a global lingua franca, a means of international communication, and as such has taken on forms and functions other than those associated with native-speaker contexts of use. How far have these changes in the role and status of the language affected the way English is taught and learned as a subject? This course gives critical consideration to this question and explores and relates two main themes. One is sociolinguistic and concerns the nature of English as a lingua franca (ELF) as an adaptive process of linguistic variation and how it raises historical, social and political issues about the ownership of the language, linguistic imperialism and cultural identity. The other theme is pedagogic and has to do with the various approaches to English language teaching that have been proposed and the assumptions on which they are based, and considers how far an understanding of ELF challenges these assumptions and suggests alternative ways of thinking of English as a subject.
The unprecedented spread of English as both cause and consequence of globalisation indicates that teaching English nowadays is bound to be something rather different from teaching any other foreign languages, and this is a matter that future teachers of English should be given the opportunity to reflect upon.