The Internationalisation of English and its Effects on the ELF/EL2 Curriculum
Urs Dürmüller, University of Bern
_________________________________________________________
Abstract
English today is no longer the same subject it was fifty years ago. The internalisation of English has dramatically changed what once could be perceived as just one language and one literature. There is a new awareness of the international character of English, of the fact that teaching English, a language symbolizing globalization and westernization, is not unproblematic, that teachers should mind the ideological load of the dominant varieties, that World English and English as a Foreign/Second Language need to define their own standard(s), and that the literary canon has to be redefined to do justice not only to British and US literature but to all literature written in English.
English has become the global lingua franca and as such is being changed and simplified wherever it is used for special purposes, by scientists as much as by rappers, in discussion fora and in chat rooms.
All this means that the English studies curricula, at least in countries where English is not L1, have to be redefined. An example is the new curriculum for future teachers of English at secondary school level at the Teacher Training College of the Canton and the University of Bern (Switzerland). It does not only illustrate the desired openness towards English as a global auxiliary language, but also shows respect for the needs of students to become familiar with prestige varieties.
1 Introduction
The subject of English needs to be looked at from the outside as well as from the inside. By „outside" I mean the position taken by non-native speakers of English.
What I want to discuss is the subject of English as a Second or Foreign Language. I am thus not looking at English as a subject in a nation where English is a national and/or official language, but in the many nations where it is simply an additional language. And when doing so, I will rely on my first-hand knowledge of English in Continental Europe and there again of English in mutlingual Switzerland.
The reasons why the condition of the subject „English" is not the same everywhere in the world today are to be found with
-the spread of English and the ensuing internationalisation of the English language
-the use of English as a lingua frranca by non-native speakers
-the problematic nature of what English may stand for, i.e. its idelological and cultural load.
Outside the core-English nations, the subject of English is in need of redefinition, although its condition appears to be healthy. There are more students than ever before, willing and eager to take up the subject, particulary to learn the English language. But what exactly they want or need to learn is not so clear anymore. Questions like the following are being asked:
-What is English today to non-native speakers?
-Which of the many varieties of English should be the target of second language acquisition?
-Which of the numerous authors writing in English should students read and study?
-Which parts of English-speaking culture, civilization, lifestyle should they know something about?
In what follows I am going to rehearse the known facts about the spread of English and English as a lingua franca. Then I'll discuss questions relating to defining a standard for teaching English to non-native speakers, and to what „culture" might mean if English is seen as an international language.
Finally I am showing how considerations like these may be reflected in a new curriculum of EFL/EL2.
2 The Spread of English
The learning and teaching of English as a second language has generally been based on one of the two dominant varieties, Standard British and Standard American. There may have been discussions on whether American or British English was to serve as the teaching model, but other questions have hardly even been asked.
Such questions, however, cannot be ignored any longer. The voices of English today are many, and the values associated with the various varieties are quite diverse. Educators have to become aware of what it means today to speak English.
Outside English-speaking countries, it is becoming more and more obvious that it is not only British or American citizens that use English but people from all over the world, particularly also people from and in nations where English is not a national language. English today is used much more by people for whom it is an L2 than by people who speak it as an L1.
Nobody really knows how many speakers of English there are. Crystal (2002) suggests that 400 million people speak English as a first language and that another 400 million use English as a second language, while the number for speakers of English as a foreign language would reach a billion.
If today there are many more speakers of English as a second language and English as a foreign language &endash; the ratio appears to be at least one of 3 to 1 - , that is the result of the spread of English.
The global spread of English has been the result of totally different factors, namely political, military, economic (Crystal 2002), and cultural (Dürmüller 1991).
In the 19th century and the early half of the 20th century, Britain was one of the world's leading industrial and trading nations, the biggest colonial power of the world and one of the world's leading military powers. After World War Two this leadership role was taken over by the US. This has helped English to ensure its position as a world language.
Factors encouriging the spread of English in the second half of the 20th century were manily US related: the military and economical power of the USA, affiliation in large parts of the world with much of US culture, the concentration of technological and general scientific advances in US corporations and universities, and the development of the new communication technologies like wireless, telephony, telegraphy and the Internet (cp. Crystal 2002, Graddol 1997).
English became a very powerful language, attracting new speakers everywhere &endash; and has continued to do so. Kachru (1986a: 130) has presented some parameters which can be used to relate the spread factors to the power of English. Apart from the demographic parameter which indicates the numerically unprecedented spread across cultures and languages, these are:
- The functional parameter: on practically every continent English provides access to the most important scientific, technological, and cross-cultural domains of knowledge and interaction
- The attitudinal parameter: it symbolizes - certainly to a large group across cultures : neutrality, liberalism, status and progressivism
- The accessibility parameter: it provides intra- and international accessibility and mobility
- The pluricentricity parameter, which has resulted in the nativization and acculturation of English.
- The material parameter: English is a tool for mobility, economic gains, and social status
Also following Kachru ( The New Englishes , n.d.) the spread of English can be illustrated by using a model of three concentric circles representing different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used.
The Inner Circle would refer to the traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases of English in the areas where it is the primary language (e.g. UK, Ireland, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand). The Outer Circle would comprise regions colonized by Britain and cover the spread of English in non-native settings, where the language has become part of the country's chief institutions, and plays an important "second language" role in a multilingual setting (as in India, Singapore, Malawi).
The Expanding Circle would involve nations which recognize the importance of English as an international language, but do not have a history of colonization, or attribute English any special status in their language policy. In these areas, English is primarily a foreign language.
In the Outer and Expanding Circle „English" has been associated with native-speaker English and culture, and schools have based their courses on the prestige varieties of the core-English nations, or, rather, on what the English textbook industry offered them as the standard for English language teaching.
The fact that there are so many non-native speakers of English now that use English to interact with other non-native speakers casts some doubts on such programs. There are two questions that are being asked:
1) Does using English as a lingua franca make it necessary to know anything about the culture, say, of England, or the lifestyle of Americans? For to speakers of English as a Foreign/Second language English is not „English" in the restricted sense of 'relating to England or its people or language' (New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998), „but just a useful tool for communication between people of varying linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a variety of communicative contexts" (van Essen 2002). Indeed, some aspects of Anglo-American culture might even be considered harmful for international communication.
2) Is English as a lingua franca necessarily identical with one of the two dominant varieties, i.e. American or British English? Most students of English in the Expanding Circle do not take up the subject because they want to learn about the British or the Americans, but because they want to become fluent in the English language. They expect that they will be using English as a language for wider communication, both intranationally and internationally. If they are using English for communication with other non-native speakers, their medium will be English as a lingua franca, i.e., a variety of International English, not necessarily one of the varieties used as national languages in the core-English countries.
It is the internationalisation of English, its spread and breakup into new varieties, its use by non-native speakers, and the cultural and ideological weight carried by both the new as well as by the old and dominant forms of English, which has made it necessary for teachers and students outside the core-English nations to redefine what English is and what should be taught and learnt about it.
3 Engish as lingua franca
In the past EFL/EL2 courses used to take the national standard of Britain or the USA as their target language. That variety of English was accepted for the three funtions:
-wider communication ( lingua franca)
-specific purposes
-expressing one's identity
English has long been recognized as a Language of Wider Communication. But while until quite recently, teachers thought that they knew what English is, this is no longer so clear to them now. For what they have used as their standard and target language and what may be called "Standard American-British English" is spoken worldwide by a minority only. Where English is not L1, oral-vernacular Englishes have come into being. These are mixtures of "Standard American-British English", bits and pieces of English from advertising, music, films, trendy sports and other culture imports, and the local languages. In the profile of these new varieties, particularities can be detected in pronunciation, spelling, lexicon, grammar, semantics (word, phrase and text meanings), and in pragmatics, which make them differ, not only from each other, but also from the traditional standard varieties.
For Continental Europe Barbara Seidlhofer (2000) has discussed simplifications of English based on contact-linguistic, mainly interference, phenomena in second-language acquisition.
Together with Jenifer Jenkins, she is advertising English as a Lingua Franca in Europe (Jenkyns/Seidlhofer, 2001). The main maxim is: Teach only what is crucial for communication! This might mean allowing /th/ to be replaced by either /s/ or /z/ or /d/ or /t/, geting rid of {-s} as verb ending in the present, considering the relative pronouns who ,which ,that as interchangeable or getting rid of the correlation of the present perfect with for/since. It would mean no longer inisting on the use of articles, okaying words and phrases that are unique to European varieties of English as a Second Language, and doing without British or American idioms.
Such a form of English would certainly no longer be grounded in British or American uses of English, but in contexts where English is used as a foreign language, and it would recognize the fact that English is no longer the preserve of native speakers.
An attempt towards determining not only a Pan-European, but an even more international model for English as a Second Language serving wider communicative purposes is Jenkins' (2000) Lingua Franca Core (LFC). Its aim is international intelligibilty among non-native speakers and no longer the imitation of native speaker speech habits. The model contains elements from Standard British, Standard American, and from various EFL/EL2 varieties comparable to the Pan-.European model mentioned above. One of its maxims is to keep sounds as close as possible to spelling and to insist on their distinctiveness, by, e.g.,making aspiration quasi-obligatory. Similarly, in suprasegmental phonoloy, so-called weak forms, which have usually have had an important place in EFL classes, are disregarded. Intonation contours, which tend to vary from variety to variety, are not included among the essential core features either.
As suggested above, International English means English as lingua franca, i.e. English as a language of wider communication, not first of all among native speakers, not even between non-native speakers and native speakers, but among non-native speakers above all.
Why that language should be the same as that used between native speakers in a particular English-speaking nation, it not obvious. A simplified, streamlined variety, stripped down to the essentials for communication, might do the job. This is also what is expected of the language when, as is very often the case, non-native speakers use English internationally in the shape of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Like other varieties of English as a lingua franca, ESP is chiefly learnt not to indulge in social talk with native speakers but to get access to various global communities of experts, e.g. engineers, medical doctors, bankers, airline pilots, business people, lawyers, scientists, etc. ESP varieties of English used internationally make it possible for people from all kinds of linguistic, cultural and political backgrounds to communicate with each other in the special language, the register, of that community, about topics that are the concern of them all.
Language, however, does not only serve the purpose of neutral, subject-centered communication but also the purpose of identification in interpersonal exchange across cultures where it might become necessary to express one's identity as a member of a particular cultural community. None of the non-native speakers needs to assume a native speaker identity. When using English as a lingua franca they remain what they are: German, French, Russian, Chinese ... . Emulating the speech habits, including accent and lexical idiomaticity, of an American or a British person might even send out wrong signals. English as lingua franca ought to be a neutral tool rather than an ideological protagonist.
But how can cultural background and personal identity be expressed in International English? Where English has been localized, i.e. where new varieties have arisen, as typically in Outer Circle nations, e.g. as Nigerian English or Sri Lankan English, the special local forms of these varieties, which are the result of long contact between English and non-English local languages, can give a lot of information about the speakers that can be interpreted culturally, socially or in other ways.
Expanding Circle speakers of English as a Foreign Language, e.g. from Continental Europe, say from Switzerland, do not have such localized varieties of English. The Seidlhofer/Jenkins Pan-European English (my term) has not developed naturally; it is - to put it negatively - a compromise of Standard American-British English with interference-caused errors produced by European EL2 speakers with different L1s.
Identity and cultural background can be expressed only if English as a Foreign Language shows traces of just one source language (the speaker's L1), not of several. That is also the reason why there won't be any one Swiss variety of English - as the ongoing Pan-Swiss English research project might suggest - but several, each marked by features of one of the contact languages, even dialects, that make up the Swiss language repertoire.
In the Expanding Circle, particularly in Continental Europe, localized forms of English are not what people want to speak anyway - even if many, inevitably, do speak them. Italian English, French English, German English are not accepted as targets of EL2 acquisition as such contact varieties are easily recognized as the result of imperfect L2 learning.
4 Cultural and ideological load
Finding a standard for English as an International Foreign Language is not as simple as it used to be. Simply opting for the dominant varieties - American or British English - has become problematic. For, apart from the regional diversification of English, it is also the ideologies associated with particular varieties that influence people's choice of English. Attitudes towards a language are important: i.e., what we think English will do for us and what others think of us when we use that language. The recent US and British invasion of Iraq has made this quite obvious again. Speaking like the US president may be attractive and worth imitating to some, but to others this is something they want to distance themselves from.
A degree of critical distance appears to be required. Just as there is no denying the superpower status of the USA, there is no denying the dominant presence of American and British based forms of English worldwide. But while international communication may still be served best if L2 acquisition continues to focus on standardized forms of British and US English, the accompanying teaching of English language culture does not have to focus on Britain and the USA exclusively, not even mainly.
Traditionally, quasi native-speaker proficiency has been a target for EFL/EL2 courses in the Outer and Expanding Circle area. Students would be encouraged to imitate prestige accents, use the idiomatic expressions of elite L1 communities, and to generally integrate themselves with these cultures and societies. Learning English thus has meant accepting the dominant Anglo-American mindset and supporting what Kachru (1986b) has described as „the power" of English
The internationalisation of English is giving EFL students now an opportunity to learn to speak (and write) English without having to become advocates of Anglo-Americanism at the same time.
Even if they are not going to take any of the „new" varieties (say Kenyan English) as their target for EL2 acquisition but stick to Standard British-American English because that is more widely used, they will not concentrate on culture elements that are specifically British or American, but try to familiarize themselves with as many cultures that find expression in and through English today as possible.
Much of what is transmitted through language, whether this has a referential or a social/expressive function, is culture-bound. That is why in European foreign-language education there has always been a component labeled „Landeskunde". But what is that to be if English today is no longer just the language of Britain or the USA? For it is impossible to identify and isolate an "English" culture that is common to all speakers of English.
Using English as an international language means communicating with speakers from various and differing backgrounds.
The majority of ELF interactions worldwide take place between speakers for none of whom English is the mother tongue and for none of whom English is a cultural symbol. For example, if a Swiss person conducts business in China, English is likely to be used. Cultural elements will most probably not enter the conversation at all (House 1999:84). What EFL/EL2 speakers need today is not information about traditional Britishness and Americanness, but the teaching of transcultural politeness strategies that are part of the pragmatics of International English.
In order for students to acquire some knowledge about the identities and the social and cultural lives of speakers of International English, the literatures (and other culture products) from the Outer and Expanding Circle must be given more and more weight. Reading English still means reading Inner Circle authors, but no longer exclusively so. In the chorus of World English, their voices may be the loudest, but they may no longer indicate the rhythm and melody.
What American and British English symbolize today, may be quite contradictory. We all know that English has spread as a result of exploitation and colonisation. But Anglo-American English has also become a language of support and liberation. English represents the success of a certain economic model, but also the egoism of capitalism, it stands for human rights and charity, but also for the perversion of democracy and christianity.
English involves both positive and negative cultural values: economic development yet exploitation, political and cultural ideas and institutions, enrichment of English but possibly this at the cost of indigenous languages, opportunities to communicate with readers around the world yet at the expense of one's own language (Bailey 1991:165).
Thus, it is possible for many learners of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles to both love and loathe that language, something which, on the level of specific cultural interest, is quite obvious. While young learners of English, for example, may radically distance themselves from the discourse of the present US government, they may want to identify as much as possible with the rap of certain music culture stars.
5 Effects on the EL2/EFL curriculum
How can all this be integrated into an EL2/EFL curriculum? How does it affect the condition of the subject „English" where English is taught outside the Inner Circle area?
In the following I am outlining how the new modules of the English program of the Teacher Training College of the Canton and the University of Bern, Switzerland, reflect what I have said about the internationalisation of English so far.
Generally, the curriculum of English as a Second/Foreign Language should put some weight on instrumental neutrality. This means accepting Standard American-British English, or Mid-Atlantic English, as Modiano (1998) calls it, as the basis for teaching. But it also means keeping a certain distance from the values associated with it, the ideologies carried by it, the economic models propagated by it, and the lifestyle advertised by it.
English Today :Since 2001 students of English are offered a survey of what English means today. The course deals with the spread of English, the number of speakers of English as a first and second language, the new varieties of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles, the cultural and ideological load of English and its lingua franca function.
If teachers of English in Switzerland choose a certain variety as their standard, they are expected to know why they are choosing one rather than another. When they are using British or American textooks, they are encouraged to approach these materials critically.
EL2 Acquisition : In EL2 Acquisition the choice of a standard &endash; for pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar above all - is discussed in detail, as is the acceptability of interlanguage forms. The viability of compromise varieties like Jenkin's Lingua Franca Core or Seidlhofer's „Pan-European English" (my term) is discussed and then the criteria for the selection of a standard variety are listed and examined in detail. Communication among non-native speakers is contrasted to communication among native speakers.
English for Specific Purposes: An important aspect of English as a lingua franca is its use for communication within trans- and international special intertest communities. Students need to raise their awareness of the existence of different text varieties with vocabularies suiting different topics and situations. They have to learn how to decode and encode English texts for specific purposes in the appropriate styles.
English-Speaking Cultures : This module examines characteristics of communities and lifestyles in the English-speaking parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and America. Thus it is not restricted to learning about traditional British or American features like cricket, high tea and semi-deatched houses or high school graduation, baseball and big breakfasts. While British and American cultures are, of course, not excluded, other cultures are included on purpuse. These reflect the internalisation of English: aspects of modern life in Africa and Asia that can no longer do without English; the dependence of various transnational communities &endash; like those of business people, researchers, scientists, indeed all kinds of professionals &endash; on English and the ensuing forms of English as a language of wider communication and English for specific purposes.
Sociolinguistic Issues : This module takes a closer look at the factors that have promoted the spread of English in continental Europe; it tries to define the place English occupies within the language repertoire of a multilingual nation like Switzerland; it investigates the changes English is undergoing when used by speakers of other languages. And it asks questions like: How are varieties of Oral Vernacular English created and who makes use of them, when and where? Advertisements and graffiti are examined as examples of particular text types that integrate English language elements, while Black slang is studied as a source of borrowings into local (European) languages.
School Literature in English: What is important here is reading and the place of reading in second language acquisition. Students become familiar with the processes of language simplification that are the basis of graded readers. And they develop an understanding for the differences between originals and various types of adaptation.
Selected Literature in English : Here the idea of going through the classical canon of English literature is totally given up. Passing on the English literary heritage is understood as a task for schools in countries where English is a national language. It is literature in English, written by authors from all over the world, which is selected, based on its relevance with regard to contents and form. It is a course about texts that are hoped to find the interest of the students and to strengthen their attachment to reading literature in general. Of course, such a course will not exclude British or American authors. But it will not prefer them over Indian, Eygptian, Nigerian, Caribbean, or, indeed, Swiss (e.g. Alan de Botton) authors writing in English.
Cambridge Advanced/Proficiency : Finally there is the swing back to traditional mainstream English. This is what students and employers want &endash; a course preparing them for a language certificate that has wide recognition and promises material benefits, an advanced level, or if possible a proficiency level certificate.
This means that the linguistics of English as a foreign language, in grammar, spellings, vocabulary, and also in pronunciation, is favoring models of what has been called Standard American-British English or Mid-Atlantic English (Modiano 1998) and not any simplified lingua franca models.
6 Conclusion
The internationalisation of English is challenging not only the hegemony of Standard American and British English, but also the way English as a foreign or second language is taught in the Expanding Circle. Native-like proficiency based on what is considered the standard in Inner-Circle nations - especially Britain and the USA - and integration within the dominant L1 speaker communities cannot be the main goal any longer. Instead, English must be perceived as a truly international language, increasingly expressive of many and differing cultures, literatures and lifestyles, not necessarily congruent with the Anglo-American worldview.
References
Bailey , Richard W. (1991). Images of English. A Cultural History of the Language. University of Michigan Press
Crystal, David. (2002): English as a global language, Cambridge, CUP , 2nd edition .
Dürmüller, Urs (1992): The Changing Status of English in Switzerland", in Status Change of Languages, ed. U. Ammon and M. Hellinger. Berlin/New York: deGruyter, pp. 355-370.
Essen Arthur van (2002), English is not English Babylonia 1/02
Graddol, David. (1997): The Future of English?. London, The British Council.
House, J. (1999): Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: Interactions in Eng-lish as lingua franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility, in: Gnutzmann, C. (ed.): Teaching and Learning English as a Global Language, Tübingen, Stauffenburg Verlag, p. 73-89.
House, J. (2001): English as a lingua franca for Europe, in: Pulverness, A. (ed.): IATEFL 2001, p. 82-4.
Jenkins, J. (2000): The Phonology of English as an International Language, Oxford, OUP.
Jenkins, Jennifer and Barbara Seidlhofer (2001).Bringing Europe's lingua franca into the classroom- The Guardian Weekly, 18th April
Kachru, Braj. (1985). 'Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: the English Language in the Outer Circle.' In Randolph Quirk and H. G. Widdowson (eds). English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11-30.
Kachru, Braj B. 1986a. The Alchemy of English. The Spread, Functions and Models of Non-Native Englishes. Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd.
Kachru, Braj B. 1986b. "The power and politics of English." In World Englishes, Vol. 5, No. 2/3: 121-140.
Kachru, Braj B. [n.d.]. Paper: The New Englishes.
Modiano, Marko. (1998). 'The Emergence of Mid-Atlantic English in the European Union.' In Hans Lindquist, Staffan Klintborg, Magnus Levin, and Maria Estling (eds). The Major Varieties of English: Papers from MAVEN 97. Vaxjo, Sweden: Acta Wexionensia, pp. 241-248.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. (2000). "Mind the gap: English as a mother tongue vs English as a lingua franca." Vienna English Working Papers 9.1 (August).