ELF - and other fairy tales!

Hugh DellarThe University of Westminster

Heinle Cengage

Your surname’s Jones, isn’t it?

> Yes, it is.

And you’re 27, aren’t you?

> Yes, that’s right.

You weren’t at home last night at 8, were you?

> No, I wasn’t. I was at the pub.

But you don’t have any witnesses, do you?

> Yes, I do. My brother was with me.

Your brother wasn’t with you, was he?

> How do you know?

Because he was at the police station. We arrested him last night.

Native speaker dominance?

It must be very strange to be back home after such a long time.

> Yes, it is. I … I mean, it’s lovely to see everybody and I really appreciate my bed.

Let’s have a look at these photos, then.

> Well, they’re all mixed up at the moment. I’ve got to sort them out.

Um, this looks nice. Where is it?

> Where do you think it is?

Ah, well … it must be somewhere really hot. It looks like paradise. I suppose it could be Thailand or Bali, or it could even be India.

> No. I’ll give you a clue. It’s an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Hawaii.

No, I didn’t go to Hawaii.

Oh right. I thought you’d been everywhere. It’s probably Fiji, then.

Native speaker dominance?

1 Andy Kirkpatrick and /th/

2 “In international contexts, the simpler, the better”!

3 Doublespeak: good, ungood, plusgood, doubleplusgood

4 Jennifer Jenkins: “I like chilling out.”

5 Luke Prodromou and the corpora of non-native-speaker English

The backwash

Excuse me. Is there an ATM machine near here?

Please?

A cash machine? To get money?

Sorry. I no English.

Money?

Oh! Yes! Yes!! Go there.

Meanwhile … back in the real world!

1 The reductionism of ELF-ers.Great / boiling / Do you mind if I …? / I can’t stand

it /I love it / spare time-key-room /unemployed

2 We assume competence - to avoid being patronising!

3 We can all accommodate ourselves - and grade down.

4 The concept of ‘native-like’ is all relative . . . and depends on L1.

The can of worms!

5 Students themselves often seek out ‘native-like’ language.

How long your tail! / Were you born in a barn? / I felt like a fish out of water.

6 Students also often translate expressions directly.

Do you think I have cucumbers on my eyes? / Do you think I was born yesterday?

7 Are we stifling creativity? He drinks like a horse/I felt like a fish IN the water/I

felt like a bird out of the sky.

8 Level!

Further complications . . .

• Just because many conversations are between non-natives, it doesn’t mean people won’t also talk to natives.

• Many non-natives already speak near-native level English.

• Whose ELF is it anyway?

• What students really want.

• Ebonics and similar debates.

The issue of models

• Jennifer Jenkins and ELF pronunciation

• Barbara Seidlhofer and grammatical errors which do not hinder communication:

Dropping the 3rd. person -s/who and which/tag questions/redundant prepositions

• Collocational errorsThe environment is a large theme in my thesis.

• Talking like me doesn’t mean being me!

• Are ELF-ers just opposed to bad teaching?

Is comprehensibility enough?

• Native-like does not mean NATIVE.

• Reuseability is central

• Teaching standards doesn’t mean IMPOSING them.

• Knowledge is power.

• Language teachers teach language.

In conclusion

Visit the Heinle stand and claim a free book!

E-mail me at:

hughdellar@mac.com