Global English and ELT Coursebooks

BUCKLEDEE, STEPHEN JOHN

2010-01-01

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Abstract

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are currently learning English, the majority of whom will subsequently use the language, not to communicate with native speakers, but with other users of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). This situation calls into question the appropriateness of employing teaching materials that present a native-speaker model of English to learners whose communicative needs entail or will entail interaction with fellow non-native speakers. At present the characteristics of English as a Lingua Franca are insufficiently codified to permit the design of course books based on ELF, but there is no rational reason why publishers should not begin to recognize some features of the perfectly intelligible non-native varieties of English. This paper reports the investigation of three recently published course books and their audio materials to see if any concessions to ELF were discernible. It was discovered that while the authors of the courses concerned have endeavoured to make the cultural and lexical content of their materials appropriate for learners from various linguistic backgrounds, at the phonological level they insist on native-speaker pronunciation models that are actually unattainable for most learners.