Migrant families often invite grandparents to move to Australia when babies are born. In order to provide support to their families, many of these grandparents have to retire from their own professional careers and migrate to Australia to start new lives. Some speak English as an additional language, with or without formal education, prior to…

This cross-sectional study attempts to investigate the impacts of linguistic landscape (LL) tasks on EFL teacher candidates' understanding of English in local and global contexts. To this end, three cohorts of student teachers carried out LL fieldwork, uploaded images of English signage to an LL application, Lingscape, and submitted a mini…

With the expanding role of English medium instruction (EMI) worldwide there has been an increasing use of English to teach content subjects at tertiary level. In implementing EMI a common assumption has been that the primary issue affecting successful EMI is the English proficiency level of the EMI instructor. This paper reviews this assumption by…

This study explored multilingual students' attitudes towards translanguaging after the practice was introduced in group activities aimed at improving their English language skills and classroom engagement. A cohort of students taking a pre-sessional English course at a college of technology in Rwanda were initiated into translanguaging. They were…

In recent decades there has been a growing interest in the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), for example identifying the lingua franca core (LFC), or pronunciation features important for intelligibility in ELF contexts. While some analyses of course books (CBs) have shown ELF research findings are not yet reflected in these materials, few…

The unprecedented rise of English to become a global lingua franca has sparked a growing academic interest with numerous research publications on global Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and English as an international language. Although this research has led to numerous informative findings concerning pronunciation, pragmatics, and…

There is a relationship between language and the environment. Languages shape worldviews, inform behaviours, and are not disconnected from local political, sociocultural, and ecological contexts. English has an enduring colonial, imperialist, and assimilationist legacy and can be easily delinked from context, culture, and place. In this article,…

At many universities, English serves as a lingua franca (ELF) between teachers and students for whom English is not their L1. Despite the spread of English-medium instruction (EMI), empirical research on the nature of teacher-student interactions in EMI classrooms remains limited. This study examines the use of ELF in EMI engineering classes at a…

"Changing English" is a new feature in "ELT Journal" which aims to illustrate the diversity of English in the world today and to ask whether, and how, ELT practitioners might accommodate such variation. Focusing on a particular language issue in each article, the series will explore how English varies between places and spaces,…

This article reports on the implementation of an out-of-class communication component of a university ELT course in Hong Kong to raise students' awareness of the pluralistic nature of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Drawing on students' written reflections as part of the coursework, the study investigated how out-of-class ELF communication…

This article examines certain aspects of the debate surrounding English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). It argues that in some ways, neither ELF nor its opponents have come to terms with the complexities of English in a globalized world. By defining ELF according to how it differs from native-speaker language use, ELF researchers have tended to…

In an effort to curtail native-speaker dominance of global English, and in recognition of the growing role of the language among non-native speakers from different first-language backgrounds, some academics have been urging the teaching of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Although at first this proposal seems to offer a plausible alternative to…

This article explores whether the perception of learner autonomy that is promoted in language pedagogy is suitable for preparing students to perform successfully in the changed circumstances of the use of English. Recent developments, which include the growing role of English as a lingua franca and computer-mediated communication (CMC), give rise…

In reacting against prescriptivism of language purists, applied linguistics has often advocated a descriptivism that assumes the existence of an unproblematic world that is neatly referenced by words in a language. It is argued that pronouns such as "we,""you," and "they" are in fact very complex and political words,…

Argues against the thesis put forth in Phillipson's "Linguistic Imperialism," that the relationship between core English-speaking countries and periphery-English countries is one of dominant and dominated languages, as it applies to Nigeria. It is maintained that the sociolinguistic and sociocultural realities of the country have not…