English as an international language: implications for classroom teaching - Penny Ur

and

um uh as you heard my main experience is

actually in English language teaching um

and later on teaching methodology of

teaching but what I got really

interested in in recent years was the

use of English English as an

international language when I started

teaching um came to this country from

the UK and was teaching my students

British English um on the assumption

that that's what they wanted they wanted

English in order to speak with native

speakers um and for interaction with

native speaking communities this

situation has changed completely um over

the um 40 years I've been

teaching and um today it's very much not

English for as a foreign language in

other words a language which belongs to

someone else and you're learning in

order to talk to that someone else but

English is an international language

English which you are learning mainly

our students are learning mainly in

order to interact with other people for

whom English is not a mother tongue but

do not share um and means any other

means of

communication so um some initial

Concepts and assumptions before I come

on to the main point about uh

what the implications are for English

teaching and materials let me just check

time okay um probably I mean this number

is is pretty meaningless um it's

changing all the time in anyway nobody

can really know how many people speak

English and anyway what is speaking

English how what at what level do you

say someone is a speaker of English or

not a speaker of English but it's a lot

of people um the estimate is that

something like a third of the world's

population knows some English conob

English is a huge number um

and they have been traditionally defined

according to three circles devised by

Brat KATU um the Inner Circle which is

the native speakers from England Canada

um uh United States Australia South

Africa whatever Outer Circle where

English is spoken as an official second

language um but which is not typically

the mother tongue of of the people of

that country for example places like

Nigeria Singapore

India um and the expanding Circle which

is places like Israel France Spain um

Brazil Japan where English is taught as

an additional language but it has no

official status within the country um

this I'll give the references at the end

um and I hope that the uh presentation

as a whole will be available on the

internet if people uh need to check them

later um so today the majority of

English speakers are actually located in

the out or expanding circles in other

words the majority of people speaking

English today are not speaking it as a

another tongue um and it's used for all

these things okay I'm not going to read

them out but um for for all these

various purposes

worldwide um even people people who blog

normally even even if they are native

French or Spanish or Portuguese or what

other speakers they tend to blog in

English in order to get an International

International responses um academic

purposes um people need today to be

publishing in English in order to be

read in order to be quoted by other

academics and it's becoming increasingly

essential um so what's happening today

is that most educated speakers of other

languages are usually by lingual they

speak their own language plus English

the joke is what's the definition of a

monolingual and the answer is an

American because only the Americans and

the Brits I suppose and other people um

can manage on English alone everybody

else needs to know their own language

plus a working language of English and

the interesting thing is um that both

centri petal and centrifugal Tendencies

are developing in other words um the a

tendency Cent petal for everybody to

know some kind of Standard English that

everyone can understand in order to

communicate but at the same time there

are varieties local varieties of English

developing all over the world and what

we find is that even native speakers

quote unquote of English normally speak

two dialects of English they speak their

own local dialect Welsh English or

afroamerican English or cotney English

or Scottish English which may or may not

be mutually intelligible plus they speak

some kind of generally intelligible

International English so this thing

about most people educated uh people in

the world are bilingual does not just

apply to non-english speakers it also

very often applies to English

speakers um some general implications

then before I come onto implications for

teaching um I want to talk a little bit

about the user of English as an

international

language

um the user of English as an

international language May originally be

either native or non-native okay I'm was

originally a native speaker of English

uh most of my colleagues at orim um are

non-native but they speak English to a

very high level um typically bilingual

or multilingual increasingly

multilingual or bi dialectal as I

described just now um likely to be very

skill skill in communicative and

comprehension strategies and this is one

of the distinctions between um a speaker

of English as an international language

and a speaker of English as a

monolingual intralingual language um a

little anecdote here um I was at at a

conference in Turkey about

um uh about English as an inter English

as a ling franka and uh uh a Turk in the

audience got up and told the stories

that I was in London last year and for

some reason I needed needed to go to the

police station and I stopped someone in

the street and I said to him um can you

tell me the way to the police

station you can understand that right I

can understand it this guy couldn't

understand it after a little another few

seconds of exchanges he understood it Oh

you mean the police

station he pronounced the word as a

monos syllable

police and this guy was talking about

the police and and at first hearing the

cotney couldn't understand it he

understood eventually but um the the

typical thing about monolingual

inational English speakers is that they

typically understand their own dialect

pronunciation and so on of English

they're not so good at being flexible

and understanding different accents

whereas people who speak English in

different situations around the world

are much more flexible and much more

open to understand the different uh

Expressions vocabulary pronunciation

whatever uh an interesting um

distinction which has been made in a

totally different context which is

relevant to this one is between Bix and

KP how many people have heard of Bix and

KP no okay cumins

2008 okay

and he makes a distinction between basic

interpersonal conversational skills

which is getting by and telling someone

on the street where they need to go and

so on where the police station is and

cognitive academic language proficiency

this is what you need if you are going

to use written and spoken English to a

higher academic

level um bicks often refer to in

derogatory fashion as globish or or bad

English or very the very limited English

that we get with sort of Street English

that people can speak to a minimal level

um in some situations obviously this is

a necessity if if the uh person has not

had the chance to learn English to a

high level but needs it just for

immediate ER oral communication and that

is the level of English they're going to

speak in others it's a stage in fact

this is how it was originally defined as

a stage on the way to the cognitive

academic linguistic ability um the point

I want to make here is that the a aim of

teaching and we're coming now to

implications for teaching the aim of

teaching is

predominantly the academic English the

good English the high level of English

without grammatical mistakes or limited

vocabulary which leads us to a

phenomenon which is developing in the

world called which I call the fully

competent speaker as opposed to what we

used to define as the native speaker a

sort of model the model today is is

rather what I would call the fully

competent speaker not necessarily a

native fully competent speaker then of

English as an international language is

a speaker with a wide vocabulary

accurate grammar easily understood

pronunciation may or may not originally

have been a native

speaker and therefore I think we need to

redefine these three

circles um in terms of level of

competence rather than in terms of

native speaker non-native speaker so we

go from the center of fully competent

speakers people who speak the kind of

English I'm speaking at the moment kind

of English you will hear later from

Miriam and Lana um and other people

speaking in English here um who speak

English at a very high level regardless

of whether they were or were not native

speakers

originally competent speak reasonably

well sort of the bridge between Bix and

CP if you like and finally in the Outer

Circle you've got limited a lot of these

are non-native speakers who simply have

not learned English to a very high level

but they also include some native

speakers who speak a very local dialect

which is not universally understood and

therefore need to learn a standard

version okay implications for teachers

then worldwide I'm going to start off

with which language should we be

teaching when I first came into um

English teaching um there was a lot of

controversy over should we be teaching

British English or American

English um this is to some extent p and

I'm going to look at the various options

here um one of the mainstream native

varieties I guess should we be teaching

to come back to English or American um

should we be teaching a variety of

models should we be teaching World

standard model um Native model um

the disadvantages of a native model are

that it is not a native British or

Native American is not what is used by

most fully competent English speakers

most fully competent English speakers in

the world are not coming from a native

background they are teach they are

speaking an English which they have

learned in school or learned in the

profession or learned at University um

and it is likely to be an English which

is international rather than based on a

particular native

model um it is not likely to be

appropriate for international context

I'll give some examples in a moment um

and there's a difficulty of deciding if

you're going to take a native model

which Native model am I going to

adopt um full competence if you're going

to say to your students I want you to be

like a native speaker that's a bit

unreasonable because nobody can ever be

like a native speaker of a language of

which they are not not a native speaker

I can my Hebrew is pretty good but I can

never be a native speaker of Hebrew and

so

on

um diverse flexible models um rather

than set up a code which all users of

English as linga franka have to follow

it is surely time says Luke prodo that

we recognize the diversity among un and

so on and so on we need to teach a

diverse set of of uh

englishes advantages ideologically

acceptable okay um it's uh you know

we're all for plurality and diversity

and it's very PC to talk about teaching

lots of different

englishes um allows for local variation

and S side steps the need for

codification if you if you say well any

dictionary will do I don't necessarily

would need one standard dictionary then

that simplifies matters in some sense

but

the disadvantages I think outweigh this

there's no clear

model which which word am I going to

teach which grammar am I going to teach

if they're all okay um very difficult to

teach very difficult to assess what's

right what's wrong um very difficult to

design a syllabus or uh

materials finally I want to come on to

what I think is developing and which is

the main uh the way we're going today

and that is a a standard variety of

English to be taught in schools based

probably If we're honest on one of or a

combination of the Native uh varieties

um but

eliminating local idiom or usages which

are only used within a specific native

Community for example andly variance and

etal World well for example fortnite two

weeks right it has to be two weeks

because fortnite is incomprehensible

outside the UK and believe me I've tried

it and I'm I'm looked at as if I'm crazy

uh what's a fortnite so that's only

Britain um cheers also meaning thank you

meaning thank you is only

Britain um haven't met it anywhere else

outside and and I myself when someone

said to me cheers in in the UK cuz it

came in after I had left England so when

I came back and someone said cheers to

me meaning thank you I didn't know what

they meant I thought they you know why

doesn't he say thank

you um aluminum American okay not un

unacceptable worldwide worldwide it has

to be spell with an eye aluminium and

there's actually a committee of of

scientific usage which decides how these

things shall be spelled and it should be

spelled with an ey and pronounced with

an eye uh billfold also something which

I don't understand but the Americans

don't understand why I don't understand

it um because it's an Amic usage which

is not used outside the UK and I could

go on and on what we what we need to do

is make sure that when we are teaching

English as an international language we

use usages vocabulary grammar which are

universally understood and accepted and

take out those particular items which um

are specific to a uh a local

community so the advantage of that would

be that it comprises a range of

acceptable forms

um based on usages of fully competent

speakers comprehensible and acceptable

worldwide and

achievable because you're not asking

students to be native speakers you're

asking them to be fully competent which

has been done has been achieved by a

number of people and um will continue to

be

achievable um the disadvantages are

basically some people claim that it

doesn't exist well if it doesn't exist

it's rapidly coming into existence I

think um and it's ideologically

unacceptable to many because many people

see the word standard and they think o

this is really you

know uh this is imposing external

authorities and it's denying diversity

and so on and so on um but actually in

my opinion um diversity you really need

a solid basis in order to have diversity

you can't diverge unless you've got

something to diverge from and and and I

think um the basis of a standard is

extremely important for that as yet not

defined or

codified um there's no dictionary as far

as I know of international English um

and what's going to happen eventually

has to happen as a Wiki dictionary which

which is constantly updated is there

El a

diction okay yese with it yeah I but I

think elf is yeah the the Vienna School

yeah um uh I think we want something

which is international which is

constantly updated and contributed to BU

speakers of English

worldwide okay um I'm going to skip a

bit here if I can get

this no okay implications for teacher is

worldwide too um culture and cultural

awareness here's a rather provocative

question one is used to thinking that

language and culture have to be

synonymous that you cannot have a

language without

culture um but at least one scholar um

out taken from um turkey claims that

English is a cult International English

is a culture-free language and it's

certainly a question which needs asking

um in my opinion and this is personal

opinion I think to a large extent it is

it's tending to become a chameleon of a

language it takes on the color of

whoever is speaking it so I can an

African can use English to express their

africanness um I can use it to express

my own identity someone else can use it

to express theirs English is becoming

increasingly flexible and able to

represent a number of cultures there are

some some International cultural norms

developing I don't want to go into that

at the

moment um it's in school

teaching um English needs to be used as

a vehicle to raise awareness of three

types of culture the home culture um the

culture of all those who are able to

speak English World culture and the

culture of English-speaking people's

query the last one used to be the most

important it's now the least important

what we're using English for now is to

express our own home culture and to talk

about International cultures and that's

really what needs to be um in the

materials and in the

classroom Intercultural competence is

becoming extremely important for English

teaching raising students awareness of

different Norms sensitizing them to the

different ways people behave dress speak

and so on in different cultures and able

to respect those differences and be

aware that they're going to come up you

can't can't teach them all there's too

many of them but at least raise

awareness the third um implication for

English teaching I would say the English

the model of the ideal English speaker

I've already said what I think this

should be the uh although many people

still prefer language schools prefer an

English native speaker um native

speakers are not

so um appropriate for the reasons I'm

giving

here and non-native speakers may

actually be a better model provided of

course they uh fully competent speakers

basically um the question of whether

someone is a native speaker teacher or

not is increasingly irrelevant and what

matters is that they speak good English

and they're a good

teacher um fourth one I want to talk

about is

materials a couple of aspects here

content the culture will will be source

and international culture rather than

just British or American more

International situations characters also

more International and texts more

International including incidentally

translations of text from other

languages into English the language I've

already said based on International

usages rather than any particular native

dialect and more acknowledgement and use

of the Learners L1

to summarize then teaching of English as

a linga franka or as an international

language implies a change in the goals

of English teaching full competence

rather than native speaker

imitations um acknowledgement of the

place of the fully competent user of

English as a lingua franer as the model

A change in criteria for selection of

language and language items to be taught

and a change in criteria I for the

content of materials thank

[Applause]

you

question the Flor to ask

guess well thank you very much uh I

found this was a welcome and refreshing

change from the elf uh as propagated by

the likes of the Barbara Zer uliana

house Jennifer Jen

and so on and so forth and in that sense

I find the concept of international uh

English uh uh in many ways Much More

Much More sensible uh I I do have a

couple of questions however uh I'll try

to limit myself to a few and then the

rest let's go for coffee uh the first

one is uh your claim that uh by the

distinction between the fully C speaker

and the ne speaker uh ultimately to the

extent the fully competent speaker is

fully competent I fail to see any actual

difference with the with the native

speaker except the native speaker is in

terms of actual language realizations

and uh uh it may be that you teach

someone to become a fully CET speaker by

leaving out pruning some colloquialisms

and so on so forth uh which a native

speaker would have but apart from this

that the fully cant speaker will acquire

those possibly in a half hasive way but

nevertheless the distinction is probably

going to dissolve into insignificance

that would be my first uh question query

the second one is the claim that uh the

majority of fully CED speakers are

non-native speakers now on what data

what criteria basing this depending on

you know the Criterion of course the

difference between the NS and the Cent

speaker which I think is very Elusive

and the native speakers are right now

something like 400 million so do we have

act proof positive that uh fully C

speakers or non- native speakers are

more than those 400 million I would have

a couple more more things in particular

the notion that Intercultural component

can be achieved uh uh uh uh

independently of multilingualism I doubt

it uh uh we have now we're now working

on a database with over 50,000

observations uh which tell us that there

is a strong correlation between

Intercultural openness Intercultural

competence on the one hand and the

extent of multilingualism in terms of

the range of languages and the level at

which they're spoken uh so uh uh for

that reason it seems that empirically I

do have a lot of uh questions with uh

lot of queries but we can perhaps

address some of them later over lunch

coffee yesterday saying

thatf sense doesn't exist yeah um yes I

would I would agree with you I think I'm

also have a lot of problems with the

with the Vienna School of of of Elf um

but uh to take your second question

first about the predominance of the the

numbers of um non-native fully competent

speakers

um I think I'm wrong on that and I don't

have the data and I should not have made

that claim so thank you very much for

pointing that out I I retract on that

one um there all I can say is that there

are a lot of them out there there's

several in the audience um and there's a

lot of them worldwide um I think

eventually they will outnumber but I

certainly have no evidence at all that

today they they do out number so I

apologize for that you're quite right um

as far as the difference between native

speakers uh uh and fully competent

non-native speakers um as far as the

English that they speak I think the the

difference is minimal and and and very

often um you can um uh not hear the

difference or not certainly not see the

difference in in the text that they

write um and uh the difference is merely

in whether they were originally uh

brought up speaking English or not

brought up speaking English um but um I

don't know whether this answers your

question onor um and I think that um we

need to Define people's competence in

English what what I'm trying to say is

we need to Define people's people as

English speakers not as where they were

born and how they were brought up but

how they speak English today this is my

main point and if they speak it to a

very high level whether you call that

native speaker level or you call that

fully competent level whatever if they

speak it to a very high level it doesn't

really matter where they were born or

what they were born that that's my main

point

um uh Intercultural competence I defined

not as being able to interact in a

variety of cultural context but being

sensitive to the need and I think in

this sense it can be taught um if if our

aim is to give our students maybe three

four examples of places where you need

to change the way you behave or the way

you relate to people because of there

are different um cultural norms in in

different situations and thereby

sensitize them to the fact that they're

likely to come up against others um then

I don't think you necessarily need to be

M multilingual but you do need to be

sensitized and that's one thing which

English teachers do need to to teach in

the classroom this

sensitization

that question not a question I I i' just

like to propose uh uh an integral of the

question of uh uh the distinction

between the native speaker and the fully

competent speaker and franois other

other point in terms of uh uh culture

that

uh I would toly agree with you that uh

uh in terms of what it sounds like

there's probably not a big difference

between the fully competent and and and

and a native speaker but I think the the

dividing line might be actually in that

area of of culture pragmatics take take

take us back to the uh imersion work

that was done uh in Montreal uh

and there there was there remained uh

even with all the uh uh full competence

of of uh of French speakers of English

and English speakers of French there was

always a a pragmatic difference uh that

took expression

uh this this is the kind of thing that I

would like to propose that maybe uh uh

you could uh look a little bit more

deeply at those cultural kind kinds of

uh things as a way of defining full

competence um I think in the immersion

schools to which you're referring yes

pragmatic competence would remain but

that was a native pragmatic competence

competence okay the ability to behave

appropriately and with appropriate

pragmatics within the Canadian native

speaking English speaking or Frenching

whatever the target language was culture

and we're talking about here using

English as an internation language and

therefore the pragmatics of uh Native uh

behaviors is is not relevant to to what

I'm trying to say because um the kind of

behaviors which we want our students to

um to be able to use English to use

could be uh worldwide and therefore what

we want them to do is to be sensitive to

the need to adapt behaviors or to accept

different behaviors rather than learn

themselves a particular set of behaviors

uh appropriate to a particular

Community

okay yes I'd like to relate this to

Academia uh many of my colleagues who

are non-native speakers but very very

highly competent resent the fact that

they are asked to write academic Pros in

N at Native level and we who edit

journals are forever confronting the

problem of problem quote unquote of

people from Spain China Etc who write

highly competent English but it ain't

quite what it ought to be and if we are

being so open to a very broad gamut of

englishes maybe in Academia too the time

has come to be a little bit more

tolerant of a broader variety this is

controversial but maybe you have a view

on the

topic

do I have another 15

minutes it's it's a it's a very big and

important question

um short answer is up to a point I think

we have to continue to be fussy about

Norm normal grammar okay normally

acceptable grammar and precise

vacabulary where there are certain

idioms that are coming in from another

language and which will you know which

are which are expressive and and and

useful I would accept them but it's it's

really really difficult to to make any

kind of of overall pronouncement here on

the whole I would stick to being fussy

about uh academic Pros because I think

it the the main thing is that it should

be universally acceptable readable to

the one