How WE, ELF, and EIL Affect EFL Curriculum Development
Dr. James Dean Brown
Abstract— This speech examines the assumptions that underlie traditional curriculum development practices and compares them to the ideas of World Englishes (WE), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and English as an International Language (EIL) as they could be applied to curriculum development. The speech does so for each of the following seven questions: What should the target language and culture be? Why do people learn English? Who should be included in the curriculum development process? What other situational factors should be considered?
How should the curriculum be delimited? What should the basic units of analysis be in the curriculum? And, what should be selected from among the basic units of curriculum? The speech concludes by discussing how WE, ELF, and EIL can be applied in actual curriculum development projects.
Keywords—WE, ELF, EIL, EFL, Curriculum Development.
J. D. Brown is Professor of Second Language Studies on the graduate faculty of the Department of SLS at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
I. INTRODUCTION
N Monday October 20th, 2014, I was honored to present a keynote speech at the National Symposium on ―Present and Future of English in Saudi Arabia: Research Concerns‖, which took place at King Khalid University in Abha in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That speech was based a single table (Table 1 in the Conclusion section) that compared the basic assumptions of traditional curriculum development practices with what I called English as an international language assumptions, which naturally included ideas from the subfields of world Englishes (WEs), English as a lingua franca (ELF), and English as an international language (EIL). The ideas contained in this speech drew primarily on what I have read and learned in writing Brown (2004, 2012, 2014) and McKay and Brown (forthcoming).
The central theme of the speech was that traditional and EIL curriculum practices differ considerably in fundamental and important ways that teachers and curriculum developers should take into account.
A. The central differences between traditional and EIL curriculum views
In the speech, I made the comparisons between traditional and EIL views of curriculum design in terms of seven central questions that often come up in curriculum development projects of all sorts: What should the target language and culture be? Why do people learn English? Who should be included in the curriculum development process? What other situational factors should be considered? How should the curriculum be delimited? What should the basic units of analysis be in the curriculum? And, what should be selected
O
from among the basic units of curriculum? I will address each of those questions in turn in terms of how the traditional and EIL views compare. Then in the Conclusion section, Table 1 I will summarize all of these points.
B. What should the target language and culture be?
In the traditional view of curriculum development, British and North American English were privileged with the native speakers of these dialects serving at the model and standard for teaching and learning English. In addition, when culture was taught, it was the so called big C (i.e., literature, opera, drama, classical music, etc. created by extraordinary people) cultures of the UK and USA that were taught rather than the small c (i.e., the family, work, education, etc. of ordinary people) cultures that were the focus. In addition, communicative language teaching was viewed as the most productive teaching method, especially insofar as it helped students communicate with native speakers.
In contrast, EIL approaches recognize the value of all Englishes including the inner-circle Englishes (of the native speakers of UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia), outer-circle Englishes (where English has official status and prestige in local varieties like Indian English, Singaporean English, etc.), and expanding-circle Englishes (where English is taught as a foreign language, but is nonetheless important and widely spoken as in Japan, Germany, etc.) (see Kachru, 1985, 1986). EIL is often the focus of teaching because it recognizes the importance of communicating, not just with native-speakers of English, but also outer-circle speakers of English as well as with non-native speakers (or rather, bilingual speakers) of English from expanding circle countries. Instead of a native-speaker model, EIL curriculum
tends to focus on bilingual speakers of English as the model and standard. In addition, local and international cultures are respected above and beyond the cultures of the UK and US.
And finally, EIL curriculum recognizes that local cultures of education are important and that they should inform all teaching and learning decisions.
C. Why do students learn English?
The traditional view of curriculum development tended to take the institutional or governmental view that students learn English for global reasons, that is, because it:
1) Is the principle means of communicating globally 2) Helps foster internationalism
3) Is important for gaining entry into higher education 4) Is the primary language for access to global information
in business, entertainment, diplomacy, international travel, publishing, science, and so forth
In contrast, EIL curriculum takes into consideration the more real-world local reasons that students have for learning English, which are to:
Communicate locally with local people who speak other mother tongues in social interactions, for business, for politics, etc.
Work locally with foreign tourists
Gain advantage over other local people in business dealings with foreign people
Speak with friends/family who speak English (and often mix languages)
Gain the prestige locally of speaking a foreign language It is important to note how different the global and local sets of reasons for learning English are and how the first set is most likely to match the reasons that institutions and governments give for teaching English and likely to
correspond to the aspirations of students who want to study at university and/or study abroad. Because the vast majority of students around the world have no intention of going to university or studying abroad, the second set, the local reasons, are probably more important to those sorts of students than are the global reasons..
D. Who should be included in the curriculum development process?
In traditional curriculum development, it was generally assumed that native speakers (NSs) of English should control English language curriculum development. NSs typically did so either by writing the textbooks or, if the curriculum was being designed and developed at the institutional level, by guiding and controlling the local curriculum development. In a sense, the NSs were viewed as the keepers of the language, so they should guide the curriculum—or so the story went.
In the process, the views of local students and teachers were largely ignored or denigrated and downgraded in importance because it was felt that their views were likely based on
―backward ideas.‖
In EIL curriculum development, the view is taken that all stakeholders should be involved in the curriculum including local communities, students, textbook writers, English teachers, content course teachers, institutional administrators, politicians, and other decision makers, external testers and testing organizations, influential inner or outer circle people, and/or anyone else who has a true stake in the curriculum. By the same token, the EIL view would be that Bilingual teachers should control the curriculum including its design and development because (for 20 different reasons explained below), they are especially qualified to understand the viewpoints of all the stakeholders
listed in the previous sentence.
E. What other situational factors should be considered?
Because of factors explained in the previous section, traditional curriculum developers largely ignored the many student-related, teacher-related, and institutional factors that could constrain curriculum development either because they didn‘t understand them or didn‘t care about them. In contrast, EIL curriculum developers must face the many student-related, teacher-related, and institutional factors that may constraint curriculum development. Naturally, they will have to learn about those factors in the process of developing curriculum from the appropriate stakeholder groups.
F. Who should teach English?
Traditionally, since native speakers of English were seen as the best models for English and viewed as knowing English better than local ―non-native‖ teachers of English, the NSs were also taken to be the best teachers of English. However, in an EIL curriculum, the ideal model for English and English learning may well be the bilingual teacher of EIL, who also has the following 20 advantages over NSs in terms of teaching students in the EIL context. Bilingual teachers:
1) Know their students' culture
2) Know their students' first language
3) Know what it is like to have made the English their own 4) Can draw on the L1 for efficient explanations
5) Can code switch in class
6) Serve as models of successful second language learners 7) Know what it means to learn English because they have
done it
8) Remember and understand the influences of L1
interference on learning English
9) Can simplify English {perhaps without even realizing it) for more comprehensible input
10) Understand the roles of English in the local community 11) Understand how local varieties of English have
developed and how they compare linguistically
12) Understand that the different varieties are legitimate and complete linguistic systems
13) Can evaluate teaching methods and materials for local suitability
14) Know the educational expectations of students, parents, and administrators
15) May have more realistic expectations 16) May be more empathetic with students
17) May be able to better understand and attend to the students' real needs
18) Understand the local educational system and classroom culture
19) May be more committed to the local educational system 20) Can contribute to their institution's extra-curricular life.
Underestimating the value of bilingual teachers of English has long been a problem—the arguments for this stance are no longer justified.
G. How should the curriculum delimited?
The project of learning all of English is not tenable. In particular, the idea of an L2 learner trying to become a native speaker (particularly in six years of English classes in junior and senior high school) is ludicrous and unattainable. Any attempt to make students think they can and should do so will only provide them with a crushing sense of failure.
Many traditional curriculum developers (including me) have tried to use English for specific purposes (ESP) as a way of
delimiting the amount of English that students needed to a manageable subset of English for academic purpose (EAP) or English for occupational purposes (EOP) language. And, ESP does help delimit the material that students must learn.
Importantly, such ESP curriculum developers derided other curricula as Teaching English for No Obvious Reason (TENOR), which was really just another way of describing the hopeless project of L2 learners trying to become native speakers.
EIL provides an additional way to delimit the amount of English learners must learn or acquire. By focusing on those specific subsets of English that are necessary and useful for communicating internationally, EIL, especially the ―locally defined EIL that I advocate in Brown (2012), provide manageable amounts of English that can be learned in a course or series of courses.
H. What should the basic units of analysis be in the curriculum?
Traditionally, the design of English curriculum has been founded in research and theory that justified the use of an ever expanding list of syllabuses including structural, situational, topical, skills-based, functional, notional, lexical, and task-based. These syllabuses have most often been used in combinations, either layered one on top of the other, or alternating with each other (for more on this, see Brown, 1995).
In contrast, EIL has to date tended to explore and follow what is known about EIL phonology, syntax, lexis, and pragmatics with some basis in research. In addition, new syllabuses have appeared in the EIL literature that open new possibilities including suggestions made for using EIL topics, discourse units, and genres as the units of analysis in
EIL materials and curriculum.
I. What should be selected from among the basic units of curriculum?
In terms of selecting form among the basic units of curriculum described in the previous section, traditional curriculum developers tended to promote the language and cultural of the UK, USA, etc. They also advocated for knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to communicate the students‘ own meanings with native speakers in the form of functions, notions, tasks, etc.
In contrast, authors writing about EIL advocate using some or all of the following ten strategies in designing successful EIL curriculum:
1) Include successful bilinguals (with their local knowledge and intercultural understanding) as English language and pedagogic models
2) Foster English language and cultural behaviors that will help students communicate effectively with others and achieve friendly relations with English speakers from any culture
3) Help students achieve intelligibility when they are among other English speakers
4) Enhance students‘ access to and capacity to contribute to the international body of information
5) Support learning English efficiently and help students feel better about their English learning
6) Provide students with awareness of linguistic and cultural differences in the various contexts in which English is learned and used, as well as furnish them with strategies for handling such differences
7) Use ―global appropriacy and local appropriation‖
(Alptekin, 2002, p. 63) to help learners be ―both global
and local speakers of English‖ who can function both at home in their national culture as well as internationally (Kramsch & Sullivan, 1996, p. 211)
8) Provide curriculum that respects the local culture of learning and promotes a sense of ownership and confidence in the local varieties of English
9) Include materials and activities based on local and international situations that are recognizable and applicable to the students‘ everyday lives, pertaining to NS with NNS interactions, as well as NNS with NNS interactions
10) Use models of outer-circle and expanding-circle users of English so students realize that English does not belong exclusively to the inner circle
In my view, using even a few of these 10 strategies will move any curriculum in the direction of EIL.
II. CONCLUSION
This speech compared traditional and EIL curriculum development in seven different areas: the target language and culture; why people learn English; who needs to be included in the process; other situational factors that need to be considered; strategies for delimiting what needs to be studied; the basic units of analysis be in curriculum; as well as, selecting from among those basic units. The speech thus discussed how WE, ELF, and EIL can be applied in actual curriculum development projects, using examples from my own curriculum development experiences. I hope that you have found something of interest in these remarks that will help you to develop more effective and interesting EIL curriculum for your students (see Table 1).
Thank you all for your kind hospitality. I have very much enjoyed my stay in Abha so far and look forward to working
more closely with some of you in the coming week. So as we say in Hawai‗i, MAHALO!
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James Dean Brown ("JD") is currently Professor of Second Language Studies on the graduate faculty of the Department of SLS at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His areas of specialization include language testing, curriculum design, program evaluation, and research methods.He was educated at California State University Los Angeles (BA French), University of California Santa Barbara (BA English Literature), and University of California Los Angeles (MA TESL and PhD in Applied Linguistics)For two years, he was senior scholar in the UCLA/China Exchange Program at Zhongshan University in the People's Republic of China. For three years, he was an assistant professor at Florida State University and Academic Coordinator for the FSU/ARAMCO MA Program that was delivered on site in Saudi Arabia. In 1992, he was a Fulbright scholar at Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro. He has been invited to conduct workshops and teach courses in places as divers as Brazil, Cuba, Cyrpus, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Fiji, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, Venezuela, and the former Yugoslavia. He has served on the editorial boards of the TESOL Quarterly, Language Testing, Language Learning and Technology, RELC Journal, and JALT Journal, as well as on the TOEFL Research Committee, the TESOL Advisory Committee on Research, and the Executive Board of
TESOL. In addition to over 200 book chapters and articles in publications like TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Newsletter, Language Learning, Language Testing, Modern Language Journal, System, JALT Journal, The Language Teacher, and RELC Journal, he has published a number of books: Understanding Research in Second Language Learning: A teacher's guide to statistics and research design (Cambridge, 1988); The Elements of Language Curriculum: A systematic approach to program development (Heinle & Heinle, 1995); Language Testing in Japan (with Yamashita,JALT, 1995);
Testing in Language Programs (Prentice-Hall, 1996); New Ways of Classroom Assessment (TESOL, 1998); and Using Surveys in Language Programs (Cambridge, 2001); as well as a Chinese editions of his Cambridge 1988 book (The People‘s Education Press, 2001) and his Heinle & Heinle 1995 book (Foreign Langauge Teaching and Research Press, 2001); a Japanese translation of his 1996 testing book (translated by Wada, Taishukan Shoten Publishers, 1999); a second much revised edition of his 1996 testing book (McGraw-Hill, 2005);
two books with Hudson and Detmer on testing pragmatics (NFLRC, 1992, 1995); two with Norris and Hudson on performance testing (NFLRC, 1998, 2002); two others edited with Hudson on developing language tests (NFLRC, 2001), one other edited collection on developing rubrics (NFLRC, 2012), and Kondo-Brown on teaching connected speech (University of Hawaii Press, 2006); and two co- authored books, one with Rodgers entitled Doing Second Language Research (Oxford, 2002), and the other with Hudson entitled Criterion-Referenced Language Testing(Cambridge, 2002).
TABLE 1
COMPARING THE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF TRADITIONAL AND EIL CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
What should the target language and culture be?
British, USA, etc.
with NS‘s as the model & standard;
big C and small c cultures of UK, USA, etc.; CLT most productive
Inner, outer, &/or expanding circles in various proportions;
ELF; often with bilingual speakers as the model and standard; include source and international cultures; local cultures of teaching and
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
teaching method. learning should be included, or even dominant.
Why do students learn English?
Global reasons like:
English is the principle means of communicating globally
English helps foster
internationalis m
English is important for gaining entry into higher education
English is the primary language for access to global
information in business, entertainment, diplomacy, international travel, publishing, science, and so forth
Local reasons like:
To communicate locally with local people who speak other mother tongues in social
interactions, for business, for politics, etc.
To work locally with foreign tourists
To gain advantage over other local people in business dealings with foreign people
To speak with
friends/family who speak English (and often mix languages)
To gain the prestige locally of speaking a foreign language
Who should be included in the curriculum development process?
NS of English have controlled the curriculum either by writing textbooks or guiding/control
Who should be involved in the curriculum: Local communities; students;
textbook writers; English teachers; content course teachers; institutional administrators, politicians,
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
ling local curriculum development
The views of local students and teachers ignored or downgraded in importance because they held so-called backward ideas.
and other decision makers; external testers and testing organizations;
influential inner or outer circle people
Who should control the curriculum: Bilingual teachers who (for 20 different reasons) are especially qualified to understand the viewpoints of all the stakeholders listed in #1
What other situational factors should be
considered?
Curriculum developers have ignored the many student-related, teacher-related, &
institutional factors that may constrain curriculum development
Curriculum developers must face the many student-related, teacher-related, &
institutional factors that may constraint curriculum
development
Who should teach English?
Native speakers of English provide the best models and know English better than NNS of English.
Bilingual teachers of EIL have the following 20 advantages:
Know their students' culture
Know their students' first language
Know what it is like to have made the English their own
Can draw on the L1 for efficient
explanations
Can code switch in class
Serve as models of
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
successful second language learners
Know what it means to learn English because they have done it
Remember and understand the influences of L1 interference on learning English
Can simplify English {perhaps without even realizing it) for more comprehensible input
Understand the roles of English in the local community
Understand how local varieties of English have developed and how they compare linguistically
Understand that the different varieties are legitimate and
complete linguistic systems
Can evaluate teaching methods and materials for local suitability
Know the educational expectations of students, parents, and administrators
May have more realistic expectations
May be more empathetic with
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
students
May be able to better understand and attend to the students' real needs
Understand the local educational system and classroom culture
May be more
committed to the local educational system
Can contribute to their institution's extra- curricular life.
How should the curriculum delimited?
ESP (especially EAP & EOP), but not TENOR
ELF - a new focus
What should the basic units of analysis be in the curriculum?
Basis in research
&/or theory for using an ever expanding list of syllabuses including structures;
situations; topics;
skills; functions;
notions; lexical items; tasks
To date, EIL Phonological,
Syntactic, Lexical, &
Pragmatic have some basis in research
Suggestions have been made for research on EIL Topics, Discourse units, & Genres, etc.
What should be selected from among the basic units of
curriculum?
Recently, that which promotes language and cultural (typically, those of the UK, USA, etc.)
knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to communicate the students‘ own
Include successful bilinguals (with their local knowledge and intercultural
understanding) as English language and pedagogic models
Foster English language and cultural behaviors that will help students
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
meanings in the target country in the form of
functions, notions, tasks, etc.
communicate
effectively with others and achieve friendly relations with English speakers from any culture
Help students achieve intelligibility when they are among other English speakers
Enhance students‘
access to and capacity to contribute to the international body of information
Support learning English efficiently and help students feel better about their English learning
Provide students with awareness of linguistic and cultural
differences in the various contexts in which English is learned and used, as well as furnish them with strategies for handling such differences
Use ―global
appropriacy and local appropriation‖
(Alptekin, 2002, p. 63) to help learners be
―both global and local speakers of English‖
who can function both
Curriculum Development Question
Traditional Assumptions
EIL Assumptions
at home in their national culture as well as internationally (Kramsch & Sullivan, 1996, p. 211)
Provide curriculum that respects the local culture of learning and promotes a sense of ownership and
confidence in the local varieties of English
Include materials and activities based on local and international situations that are recognizable and applicable to the students‘ everyday lives, pertaining to NS with NNS interactions, as well as NNS with NNS interactions
Include models of outer-circle and expanding-circle users of English so students realize that English does not belong exclusively to the inner circle