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