Martin Dewey, King's College, London

Martin Dewey is based at King’s College London, where he lectures on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes, and also supervises PhD students working in areas related to the globalization of English and English language teaching. His research interests lie predominantly in ELF, especially regarding the implications of ELF for pedagogy, including, in particular, contemporary practice in language teacher education. He is co-author with Alessia Cogo of Analyzing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus Driven Investigation (Continuum, forthcoming, 2010).

Everything you always wanted to know about ELF… Incorporating a Lingua Franca perspective in language teacher Education

ELF research is gradually beginning to have an impact on current practice in ELT, at least if only for the moment at a policy level. In 2008, Cambridge ESOL, the main UK provider of teaching awards, revised its longstanding Diploma scheme. Among the additions to the new curriculum are the inclusion of World Englishes, Global English, and English as a lingua franca. The main tenets of ELF have therefore clearly started to enter public discourse in ELT methodology.
In light of this, I address current practice in language teacher education, with a particular focus on the (un)suitability of conventional frames of reference for learning/teaching English as well as traditional assumptions about the nature of language itself. Up to now teacher education has been primarily concerned with approaches and methods, with very little attention to the actual subject matter ‘English’.  I will therefore also report on an ongoing research project that investigates teachers’ and teacher educators’ understanding and uptake of recent theoretical/empirical debate and curriculum changes regarding ELF.
My paper examines what it is teachers need to know about ELF (especially as part of their broader language awareness), and how an ELF perspective might be incorporated in the teacher education curriculum.