an interview with jennifer jenkins (podcast)
the lives of teachers
I talked to Professor Jennifer Jenkins about English as Lingua Franca, what it is and what it means to us as teachers. As usual, a google scholar search turns up quite a lot of good reading in this area, but I would recommend this short article as a good starting point.
Barbara Seidlhofer’s name came up in the discussion too, and I recommend this article as a very important one in the development of the field.
Seidlhofer B. (2004) ‘Teaching English as a lingua franca’. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics Vol.24: 209–239
The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English is an ongoing attempt to build a sample of non-native interaction in English.
Here is a review (mine!) of her 2007 book ‘English as Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity’
And finally, some commentary on David Graddol’s book (and a free pdf download of the whole thing) which we mention later in the podcast.
From this particular conversation? I am still in agreement with the philosophy behind ELF… but it ELF doesn’t need my permission, as a native speaker, to exist and thrive. The fact is that non-native speakers are now driving the language forward. My difficulty, as a teacher, is what I do about it. What is a mistake, and what is just a difference? How does this impact on my writing class? How long have I got to become fluent and fully literate in another language, before I become obsolete? Listen, enjoy, and comment please. But play nice – I know this topic can get particularly feisty….
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Excellent interview. Thank you, Darren.
I was especially interested to hear Jenny laying emphasis on the importance of accommodation and appropriacy in ELF. This quote resonated with me:
“It’s probably less about intelligibility and more about being appropriate and relevant for who you are speaking with”.
Thanks Vicki… actually, I thought of you a couple of times during this interview. I suppose at the heart of ELF is the unfortunate fact that many native speakers of English don’t expect to accomodate non-native speakers, whereas two non-native speakers may have trouble at first, but will meet in the middle (phonologically, grammatically, and pragmatically). The trouble for we native English speakers is that we are a) monolingual and b)outnumbered. So if the rest of the world wants to pick up its ball and go play elewhere, we are stuffed!
Yeah, I think it means we have to be super duper nice and accommodating, so they’ll want to play ball with us.
Very interesting interview. Loaded with input to use for any and all current ELF research. Her opinions on interlanguage had me at the edge of my seat, not to mention: “The most disadvantaged will be the monolingual English native speakers.” International communication trainers (for native and non-native English speakers) take note!
[...] a terrific interview with Jenny over at Darren Elliott’s superb ‘the lives of teachers’ blog. And very excitingly Jenny has [...]
Hi Darren,
I’m making a video ad for the fothcoming BESIG’s forthcoming webinar and I’d like to use some clips from this podcast in it. Would that be OK with you? (I’ll send you a copy before we publish, and of course seek Jenny’s permission.
Thanks a lot,
Love,
Vicki
Vicki, that sounds great! If Jenny is happy with it, then so am I. Looking forward to seeing what you put together ; D
We have gone live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU9pCIujugM
Thanks very much, Darren!