This study investigates Taiwanese university students' experience of English use, aims of learning English and attitudes toward English as a lingua franca (ELF). The notion of ELF has been researched in the field of English language teaching. However, English teaching practice targeting native-speaker (NS) norms is still prevailing in English…

This paper deals with the problems of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) and as a lingua franca (ELF) in the Italian educational system and, in particular, with introducing language variation in the English class. After briefly illustrating how English teaching has changed in the last few decades, an outline is drawn of what happens in…

Pragmatic competence is an indispensable aspect of language ability in order for second and foreign language (L2/FL) learners to understand and be understood in their interactions with both native and nonnative speakers of the target language. Without a proper understanding of the pragmatic rules in the target language, learners may run the risk…

Explicit instruction in strategies for interlanguage pragmatic learning is fundamental to the development of a comprehensive set of pragmatic abilities in the target language. In this article, we begin by providing an overview of previous work in the area of language learner strategies directed at the teaching and learning of pragmatics. We then…

Teacher education represents an essential step to raise awareness of the sociolinguistic changes brought about by the current pluralization of English and by its lingua franca role. Within the pre-service teacher education programs run at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona, Italy, part of the English language…

This paper examines the status of European English (EE) in current linguistic theory, in particular the hotly debated issue of whether or not it is possible to treat EE as an endonormative linguistic variety in its own right. Alternatively, EE may remain a form of English as a foreign language (EFL), and the decision has far-reaching…

This article aims to explore whether well-attested findings in the fields of World Englishes (WE) and of English as a lingua franca (ELF) have determined a shift in perspective in the overall approach to English language teaching (ELT), and how far this shift has permeated teaching materials and coursebooks. The research study was carried out in…