Lecture
Reflections
The Lecture:
Professor Farzad Sharifian: English as an
International Language (EIL) 2011 Lecture
In the lecture, Pro. Sharifian provided the historical background
of the paradigm of English as an International Language. Then, he pointed out several issues regarding
to renationalization of English, use of English as a lingua franca, politics of
EIL, identity and EIL, attitude towards EIL, ownership of English, teaching
EIL, proficiency in EIL, and native-speakerism.
Based on those issues, Pro. Sharifian also provided reviews of others’
works to further elaborate those topics.
First of all, Pro. Sharifian stated that we used to apply English
as a tool to connect the inner circle countries. However, English is now used to express
cultures from outer circles countries as well as expanding circles countries. And,
English as an international language serves as a new paradigm, which has linked
to the world. Since English is no longer
connected to specific countries, Countries, such as China, are undergone through
the process of being renationalized. Even
though a few researchers argued that renationalization causes people using
English to express the wrong cultural values, people continues to use varieties
of English to express their local identity to others and to communicate at the
international level so as to project their global identity.
Second, the issue of English as a lingual franca lies on
politics of EIL. Robert Phillipson (1992), published a book called Linguistic
Imperialism, which mainly talks
about how English is used as a tool for imperialism and how English becomes a
threat with the spread of certain ideologies.
In addition, he argued that English teaching used to reinforce the dominance of English in the world. For the questions of attitude, most of people
have positive attitudes toward English, which results from people glorify native
speaker as identities they want to be. Then
predictably, some people have negative attitudes due to viewing English as a
product from western country.
Later on, Pro. Sharifian proposed the question of the
ownership of English. The question of
the ownership of English, meaning that people who have use English as an
international communicative language, and who have the right to change it,
rises when concerning the majority of communication has the right to change the
language, which they don’t wait for clarification, and which is what is
happening. According to David Crystal,
as long as English is used, especially by non-native speakers, they feel unnecessary
to check whether they use the correct features of English or not.
Furthermore, that issue leads to another controversial issue
that is the necessity of standardization of English, and for sure, that would
have an influence on English teaching. Then,
the proposal of using lingual franca as a model will form a new set of committee
strategies, which yet comes up with other debatable such as, the necessity of the
model, the success of adapting this model, and the way to instruct learners by
using this model. Based on speaker’s suggestion,
ideologically, people develop their own varieties of English, and a teacher
should get students to exposure in such variations and teach them that they
exist actually. Besides, since native
speakerism as an ideology disadvantages students, two competences are need
which one is the multidialectal competence that should be used to understand
the variety of English, and the other one is the metacultural competence that would
be used to express various systems of cultural conceptualizations.
In
conclusion, in this lecture, there are a few important points that as a future
teacher should be aware of. First of all,
English as an international language is no longer a statement or a saying, but a
phenomenon that is actually happening around the world. Then, a teacher needs to not only catch up this
trend but also provide students with ideas of EIL. Secondly, it is important for teachers to
teach students to have positive and open-mined attitudes toward accented
English. In fact, it is also a great
chance to break the myth that the value of Standard English has a higher status
than accented English. In terms of multiculturalism,
they should share the same value.
Furthermore, the way that is used to measure learners’ competence should
be modified as well. Because learners
nowadays are facing people from different culture with different accent, the
intercultural communication ability should gain much attention rather than the
ability we used to focus on. Finally,
the key point to those issues is to change.
In other words, putting theories or ideas into practice are far more
important than knowing or understanding about it. Probably, it has something to do with the countries’
policy of education or simply unwilling to change. However, the fact is that the world is
changing, and could anyone stand still so as to stop it?
References
Crystal, D.(1997). English as a global
Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes:
Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
