Language is a wonderfully dynamic, malleable tool to express human thought and creativity. As a global lingua franca, English is especially varied, enriched by a multitude of speakers’ own cultural and linguistic backgrounds while still enabling the effective exchange of ideas, information, and identity. Rather than reflecting this communicative reality, testing and teaching approaches have tended to force speakers into the straitjacket of standardisation, leading to negative consequences.
In response to Shohamy’s statement that “while ample research is available about [English as a lingua franca (ELF)], the language tests continue to overlook it and to use standard native criteria and goals” (2018, p. 586), this talk will explore ELF and consider how teachers and testers can help to move the needle towards comprehensibility-focused models to inform teaching, learning and assessment.
References
Shohamy, E. (2018). ELF and critical language testing. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker, & M. Dewey (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. Routledge.
