World Englishes: Lesson 11

Hi everyone, 

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good vacation. We just have a few more weeks left in our course. In today's lesson, we finished our last chapter from our textbook: English as a Lingua Franca.

Definitions:
At the beginning of our lesson, we reviewed some key terms connected to ELF. 

ELF is a medium of communication between people of different L1; and it includes speakers from inner, outer and expanding circles
 
EIL (English as an International Language) is a standard variety used by educated speakers for writing and speaking; variety students learn as a ESL/EFL during formal instruction
 
World Englishes is a label for all varieties of English; it does not include ELF since it does not have ownership in any of the three circles.

English as a Lingua Franca:
Although ELF is technically not a variety since it doesn't belong to one culture. There are some distinguishing features that common among ELF used in the EU and ASEAN. These include:

1. dropping third person present tense ‘s’
2. confusing relative pronouns ‘who’ and ‘which’
3. non-L1 use of the definite and indefinite pronouns
4. not using correct tag questions
5. inserting redundant prepositions
6. overuse of certain verbs (‘do,’ ‘have,’ ‘make,’ etc.)
7. overdoing explicitness (e.g. ‘black color’)
8. /f/ and /p/ tend not to be distinguished
9. simplification of final consonant clusters
   
10. syllable-timing

Indonesians Fear for their Language:
We then looked at how English can threaten local languages, such as the case in Indonesia where English is preferred to Bahasa Indonesian with some groups of people. Indonesia's case showed us how language can be used to unify a country, such as when Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch. We also saw how democratic reforms often lead to an increase in the use of English.  

Presentations:
For the last part of our lesson, you got a chance to meet with your presentation groups to discuss your preparations for our presentations on January 12 and 19. Please review the Presentation Reminders that I handout out in class. 

Homework:

1. Listening Task #8: English as a lingua franca
2. Presentation Preparation

Presentation Reminders
File Size:	571 kb
File Type:	pdf

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