Introducing English as a Lingua Franca: an Online Tutorial

Table of Contents

1. What is English as a Lingua Franca?
2. The tutorial: who it's for and what it aims to do
3. The tutorial: how it works
4. Analysing talk (the slightly theoretical bit)
5. Recording and transcribing: why record, why transcribe, what to transcribe
6. Notation
7. Three examples of classroom talk with accompanying transcripts
8. The activity - section one: form a group
9. The activity - section two: select your recording equipment
10. The activity - section three: record your discussion
11. The activity - section four: transcription and analysis
12. The activity - section five: discuss your transcript
13. Photos of the project team
14. References
15. Further reading
16. Acknowledgements
17. How to print and cite this resource
18. Creative Commons Licence

What is English as a Lingua Franca?

Introducing English as a Lingua Franca by Rachel Wicaksono is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a medium of communication between peoples of different languages. We include as potential ELF users both those who speak English as an additional language and those who speak English (in any of its social, regional and national varieties) as their main language. So, if you are speaking English with another student who speaks English as an additional language, whether or not English is your main language, you are both using ELF (VOICE/FAQ, 2009).

ELF has been studied by linguists interested in how its grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation is different from other varieties of English (Seidlhofer 2005). Other linguists have focussed on ELF as a process, rather than a product; noticing how speakers in multilingual situations are able to monitor each other's response and work out the grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, rate of speaking, volume, gestures, eye contact and so on that help communicate the messages needed to achieve a specific task (Smith 1983, Canagarajah 2007). Process-oriented ELF analysts are interested in how speakers monitor and adjust their language to meet their needs and the needs of the task they are engaged in.

If you have grown up speaking English, shouldn't ELF be easy? A number of linguists have suggested that this isn't necessarily the case (Graddol 2006, Rajagopalan 2004, Smith 1983). If English is your only language, you may not have had much practice in thinking about and trying to avoid the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation that speakers of other languages may not be familiar with. If, however, you have grown up or lived in a multilingual community, or put a lot of effort into learning an additional language, you might have had more practice at monitoring and accommodating speakers of other languages and be better at ELF (Canagarajah 2007).

For more about who this tutorial is for and what it aims to do, click here.