English as an International Language
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English as a tool for international communication, focus on intelligibility.
Communication with people from different L1 backgrounds, dealing with different kinds of accents.
Globalisation in art, education, commerce, tourism.
More and more, people interact with each other in English, even if neither of them are native speakers (-> lingua franca)
Older idea of the goal being to achive native-speaker accents (that being British or American).
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Communicative approaches and later the intelligibility principle questioned these ideas and put a greater emphasis on international communication.
Intelligibility = how easily a listener understands what the speaker is trying to say.
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Related are to this are...
- Comprehensibility: How much/little effort/ concentration it takes the listener to understand you (-> eventhough you are intelligible, if you have low comprehensibility your language skills may still be judged as poor)
- Actedness: how "standard" the speakers accent sounds to the listener. This does not hinder intelligibility, unless the listeners bias against the speakers accent makes them not listen properly.
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Intelligibility is more objectively measurable, while comprehensibility and actedness are more subjective.
Helping students to become intelligible in international communication. Effective and efficient communication.
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CEFR (common European Framework of Reference) now also defines successfull pronunciation in those terms, wheras (older idea) EFL (English as a foreign language) assumes that "good pronunciation" equals "near-native-speaker accent".
Transcribing speech.
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Turns out, even texts spoken with heavy accents can be transcribed sucessfully.
-> Actedness doesn't need to be a barrier to intelligibility.
- 1. Native-speaker models, as already exists in lots of study materials
- 2. Expert users of EIL, provided online
- 3. The teacher. As long as they are internationally intellgibile, any teacher is a suitable model.
A selection of pronunciation features recommended as a basis in teaching of English as a lingua franca.
(The essentials of pronunciation for effective communication)
+ Fast, immediate (no sheduling needed)
+ Portable (accessible from anywhere)
+ Wide range of speakers of different backgrounds
+ Cheap, computers don't get tired
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- No face-to-face feedback
- quality of feedback is limited by technology (though some apps have human instructors)
- Often natvie-accent normative, rather than focusing on intelligibility
- Feel unfit to properly teach pronunciation
- As role models, they feel they should have native-speaker accents, even when they are aware of EIL ideas
- Perceived inadequacy of their own accent (due to stronger focus on those ideals by previous generations of teachers)
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BUT:
- Students put less emphasis on those ideas.
- Having the experience of being a non-native speaker, thereby relating to their students, can be seen as an advantage for teachers too!
- Time pressure: Pronunciation practice can be integrated into existing lessons (grammar and vocab), and it's a foundational skill that can improve listening, speaking, even reading. It will accelerate their learning in general, so it's worth it!
- Class size: Exercises with the whole class as a start, then students work in pairs to correct each others mistakes. If there is a disagreement, the teacher can join.
- Student goals: Students often want to sound native. EIL does not hinder that; good intellgibility and the Lingua Franca Core are a solid foundation toward their goal!
- Teacher accent: Since the goal is intellgibility, the teacher's own accent is not a hinderance, and the students are to come into contact with many different accents anyway.
(up to you lmao)
- Potential of computer-assisted teaching
- Accent-anxiety of teachers
- How social/inclusive of an approach to language it is
- The growing relevance of english as a global language and lingua franca
- That non-native speakers can have an advantage as teachers in an EIL context
Their own accent might be tied to their sense of identity and heritance, which they might not want to lose.
In the attempt of changing one's accent, there is a certain implication of a "superiority" of one accent over the other, and, thereby, one culture over the other.
- They understand where you're coming from/ relate better to your experiences & strugggles
- Demonstrates to students that you do not have to be a native speaker to be a competent, even very competent, speaker of a language, as well has normalising the idea of having a noticable accent to the learner
Intellgibility = How clearly you are understood
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Comprehensibility = How easy you are to understand (how much effort it takes)