English As a Lingua Franca and the Implications of ELF for English Teachers in Italy
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Master's Degree programme in Language Sciences Final Thesis English as a Lingua Franca and the implications of ELF for English teachers in Italy Supervisor Prof. David John Newbold Assistant supervisor Prof. Graziano Serragiotto Graduand Matteo Pontello 858576 Academic Year 2019 / 2020 Acknowledgments I would like to express my utmost gratitude to all those people who have given their invaluable support and assistance during my master’s degree and during the preparation of this thesis. Their contributions are sincerely and gratefully acknowledged. First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and highest respect to my supervisor, Professor David John Newbold, for providing me useful guidance and constant support throughout this study and to my assistant supervisor, Professor Graziano Serragiotto, for his precious advice and help at any time I needed it. Next, I would like to express my appreciation towards my parents - my mother Irene, my father Flavio and my brother Marco. Thank you for always supporting me, encouraging me in all of my pursuits and inspiring me to follow my dreams. Thank you for always being there for me. Without you, this day would not have been possible. Finally, a very special thanks to my friends Angela, Maria and Anna for always listening, offering me advice and supporting me through this entire process and to all those who have been around me and supported me in every possible way during these years. Without each of you, my dream would never have come true. Matteo Pontello 1 Contents i. Acknowledgments......................................................................................................... 1 ii. Abstract........................................................................................................................ 4 iii. Introduction................................................................................................................ 5 1. English as a Global language...................................................................................... 7 i. Presentation......................................................................................................... 7 1.1 The spread of English in Italy and within the Italian language....................... 8 1.1.1 Language Spread............................................................................... 8 1.1.2 Language Adaptation...................................................................... 13 1.2 English foreign language education in Italy.................................................. 17 1.3 Proliferation of English around the world..................................................... 23 1.3.1 Business and Economy;.................................................................. 25 1.3.2 Commerce and Advertisements;..................................................... 26 1.3.3 International Institutions;................................................................ 27 1.3.4 Science, Technology & Research;.................................................. 28 1.3.5 Internet and Social Networks;......................................................... 29 1.3.6 Entertainment (Movies and Music);............................................... 32 1.3.7 News and Press............................................................................... 33 1.4 The journey from English as a Global Language to ELF.............................. 34 2. English as a Lingua Franca...................................................................................... 38 2.1 What is this thing called Lingua Franca?....................................................... 38 2.2 Lingua Francas throughout history............................................................... 40 2.3 Why we can talk about different “World Englishes”.................................... 43 2.4 New World Englishes Hypothesis................................................................. 48 2.5 So how many Englishes have we got?........................................................... 50 2.6 Who owns the English language?.................................................................. 52 2.7 So what does it mean to “learn English”?...................................................... 54 2.8 Towards “Neutral English”............................................................................ 57 2.9 What consequences does all this have for English language education?...... 62 3. A survey on ELF and teaching ELF (Methodology).............................................. 64 3.1 Summary........................................................................................................ 65 3.2 Objectives...................................................................................................... 67 3.3 Questionnaire Structure................................................................................. 68 3.4 Survey Methodology...................................................................................... 70 3.5 Survey Sample............................................................................................... 72 2 4. A survey on ELF and teaching ELF (Discussion of results).................................. 74 4.1 Teachers’ Perspective on ‘World Englishes’................................................. 74 4.2 Teachers’ Perspective on ‘English as a Lingua Franca’................................83 4.3 Teachers’ Perspective on teaching ELF......................................................... 92 4.4 How ELF could be taught.............................................................................. 98 4.5 Students’ Perceptions of ELF...................................................................... 113 5. Final results and conclusion.................................................................................... 118 5.1 Final reflections emerging from the data..................................................... 118 5.2 Conclusions and future perspectives............................................................ 122 Websites........................................................................................................................ 129 Bibliography................................................................................................................. 132 Appendix....................................................................................................................... 138 3 Abstract The recent phenomena of globalization and digitalization have enabled the English language to spread globally and to proliferate across every social sector of the world and across many countries of the planet. The English language, after having spread globally, started to be assimilated and appropriated by many countries and many linguistic systems on earth and this rapid and pervasive linguistic proliferation has led to a new linguistic phenomenon: the appearance of different "World Englishes." English later started to be adopted by speakers of different languages as the lingua franca of the world and this has entailed many challenges inside the English language teaching environment, both in Italy and across all the world, where only Standard English seems to be the reference point of the didactics of English teachers. For this reason, a questionnaire survey was addressed to first-grade and second-grade secondary school English teachers of the Veneto region. The survey aimed at understanding whether teachers are aware of the new challenges that English language education in Italy has to face today as regards the appearance of new world Englishes and English being used as the lingua franca of the world. The survey also contributed to getting a picture of the situation regarding ELF teaching inside Italian classrooms to discover what teachers think about ELF teaching and what strategies they would adopt in these environments to enable students to tackle ELF in their future. I recenti fenomeni della globalizzazione e digitalizzazione hanno fatto proliferare la lingua inglese in ogni settore sociale del mondo e in molti paesi del pianeta. La lingua inglese, dopo essere proliferata nel mondo, è stata assimilata e appropriata da molti paesi e da molti sistemi linguistici sulla terra e questa rapida e pervasiva proliferazione linguistica ha portato alla nascita di un nuovo fenomeno linguistico: la comparsa di diversi ‘Inglesi del mondo’. In seguito, i parlati di diversi inglesi del mondo hanno iniziato ad usare l’inglese come una lingua franca e questo ha provocato molte sfide all’interno dell’insegnamento della lingua inglese, sia in Italia che nel resto del mondo, dove solo l’inglese standard sembra essere il punto di riferimento della didattica degli insegnanti. Per questo motivo un questionario di ricerca è stato indirizzato agli insegnanti di inglese delle scuole di primo e di secondo grado della Regione Veneto. La ricerca ha voluto scoprire se gli insegnanti siano consapevoli delle nuove sfide che l’insegnamento della lingua inglese deve affrontare oggi per quanto riguarda la comparsa di nuovi inglesi del mondo e di un inglese usato come lingua franca. La ricerca ha contribuito a creare una panoramica della situazione dell’insegnamento dell’ELF nelle classi italiane e a scoprire cosa gli insegnanti pensino dell’insegnamento dell’ELF e quali strategie adotterebbero in questi ambienti per permettere agli studenti di affrontare l’ELF nel loro futuro. 4 Introduction In recent years, the expression “English as a Lingua Franca” (ELF henceforth) has emerged to describe the use of English