Guidelines for extensive reading of texts on the use of ESP in European transnational education
Researchers and educators argue that the native-speaker-centred English language teaching model should be abandoned in favour of ELF or non-native-speaker-centred model. Ella Hujala’s study of ELF teaching in Finland finds that quite a few learners themselves express a wish to learn to speak English like the native speakers do. However there are many learners who claim they speak and always will speak a local variety of English.
EFL researches reveal that students’ attitudes fall into three main groups or clusters – the US friendly cluster, the pro-British cluster and the ELF cluster. Students, striving to improve their English, often mention that they are surprised at how many different ways there are to speak English, and how difficult it can be to understand all these varieties. Nevertheless, these people are extremely competent language users and are expected to get by professionally in multicultural work groups. Ella Hujala’s study seeks to understand how the actual ELF users experience English at the workplace, in relation to their own and others’ skills as well as their attitudes to ELF as a teaching and learning model.
Text 2-18. IN SEARCH FOR A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF FINNISH SPEAKERS OF ELF
(Based on Ella Hujala’s study of English as a lingua franca)