Questão de Língua Inglesa

Read the excerpts written by John Robert Schmitz, from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, taken from his article entitled “To ELF or not to ELF? (English as a Lingua Franca): That is the question for Applied Linguistics in a globalized world”: The realization that there are today more nonnative speakers than native speakers of English in the world with institutionalized and nativized varieties as well as their own specific communicative, cultural and pragmatic competencies has led to the rethinking of present-day practices in teaching, teacher preparation, and the writing of textbooks. Jenkins' publications (2000, 2003) dealing with the phonology of English and material for teaching English as an international language along with her book English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) (2007) call for the disengagement of the language from Anglo-American native speaker norms. This line of research presents serious questions for Applied Linguistics (AL) and English Language Teaching (ELT) that will, if implemented, entail major changes in that endeavor. The winds of change may indeed be beneficial for some and a threat to others. I argue in this paper for an open mindset with respect to the issues and to the new state of affairs in this globalized world today. [...] The appearance of Lingua Franca English has contributed to rethinking the role of language assessment and testing (ELDER; DAVIES, 2006) along with reasoned debate (TAYLOR, 2006) with Jenkins (2006a, 2006b). In addition, the field of Second Language Acquisition has also been questioned (FIRTH, 1990, 1996), FIRTH; WAGNER, [1997] 2007) with regard to its dependence on native speaker standards as the measuring rod that determines successful learning. Finally, House (2003, p. 575) calls for continuing research on ELF in Europe and elsewhere, but concludes that it is "(...) not, for the present time, a threat to multilingualism". Source: Schmitz, J. R. (2012). “To ELF or not to ELF?” (English as a Lingua Franca): that’s the question for Applied Linguistics in a globalized world. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, 12(2), 249–284. https://doi.org/10.1590/s1984-63982012000200003