Session 2 First and Second Language Speakers of English

Warm Up Activity 2

Extract from a journal article on students using their English learned in school to communicate internationally

Bieswanger, M. (2008). Varieties of English in current English language teaching. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 38(1), 27-47.

Please read the extract below and make notes on the following question: 

1. Do you think your students currently learning English might have similar problems when traveling or communicating with foreigners? 

The original motivation for this paper stems from many years of teaching English to adults in the context of evening classes, intended to refresh the knowledge of English they had acquired in secondary school. The intermediate and advanced learners of English in my classes, who had all received between five and nine years of English foreign language education in German secondary schools, frequently reported frustrating experiences they had had in English-speaking environments at home and abroad. They often complained about situations in which their native or non-native interlocutors had been speaking "so strangely" [i.e., employing a variety of English with which they were not familiar] that their "school English" [i.e., the English they had learned in secondary school] did not enable them to take part in certain English-language conversations. More precisely, these learners of English could not cope in situations in which they either had to speak English in a native-speaking context or use ELF with other non-native speakers of English. The conversation failed because their interlocutors did not speak the type of standardised English they had themselves learned in secondary school, but used a variety they considered "strange". Additionally, the encounter with more or less intelligible varieties of English obviously added to the so-called "culture shock" generally caused by foreign environments. The above reports indicate that many years of English foreign language education in secondary school had not prepared these speakers for the sociolinguistic reality in an increasingly globalised world and had failed to create any kind of awareness of the considerable regional variation in the use of English. This violates the basic principle of English language and foreign language education as formulated in Klippel and Doff's (2007: 36) handbook of English foreign language education: "school is supposed to prepare children andteenagers for successfully coping with their lives" (my translation)

from (PDF) Varieties of English in current English language teaching. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268364132_Varieties_of_English_in_current_English_language_teaching [accessed Dec 10 2024].