What Do We Really Mean by ELF-Informed Pedagogy? An Enquiry into Converging Themes

Abstract

There have been two particularly prominent areas of research into the significance of ELF, both of which are relevant to the themes of this book. One explores how the study of ELF raises theoretical issues in sociolinguistics and pragmatics about the nature of communication, issues that have to do with such concepts as culture, identity, and creativity in the use of linguistic resources. The other area enquires into the implications of ELF for the concerns of language pedagogy and the extent to which it is desirable, or feasible, to realize these implications as implementations in the form of practical proposals for a different approach to the teaching of English. Although ELF research has tended to focus separately on these two areas, what is emerging is a close implicational relationship between them with each reciprocally informing the other. This indicates the need to think again about taken-for-granted pragmatic and pedagogic assumptions, and the “mono- and multilingual” practices based upon them, and in particular challenges the validity of the conventional distinction between language users and language learners.