Professor Farzad Sharifian: English as an International Language (EIL) 2011 Lecture

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.