Global TESOL for the 21st Century. Heath Rose

and six teachers who took part responded to the materials positively, reporting favourable attitudes towards the Global Englishes content of the course.

      Implications for Teachers in Global Contexts

      EIL innovations do not mean that teachers must radically abandon their current teaching practices in order to adopt a different approach, but rather we encourage teachers to make modifications to their current practices to be more inclusive of EIL issues. Teachers, as educated professionals, understand the appropriate adaptations they can make within their own teaching contexts. In making each of the innovations outlined in the GELT framework accessible for teachers, we provide some example ideas of how small innovations may lead to positive steps towards teaching EIL in global classroom contexts. For example:

      (1)Target interlocutors: A good EIL curriculum could depict other L2 English users as target interlocuters for their learners to raise awareness that ELF communication may likely be a norm for their future English interactions.

      (2)Ownership: Materials in EIL curricula should be included to raise awareness that English is a global language in the form of readings, debates, or even assignments.

      (3)Target culture: Tasks and role-plays in the classroom should depict a diversity of English-using cultures, without always linking to native speakers and Anglophone contexts. For example, the role of an ‘American’ tourist could be re-assigned as L2-using tourist in a role play, or an assignment given to a learner in France requiring them to write an email in English to a fictitious host family in the UK, could be written to a fictitious host family in the Netherlands.

      (4)Norms: A good EIL curriculum should expose students to a diverse range of Englishes, thus instead of relying on audio materials provided by commercial textbooks, authentic examples could be drawn from TED talks and YouTube videos (discussed further in Chapter 4).

      (5)Teachers: EIL-oriented schools could evaluate their hiring practices and the language used in job advertisements to ensure they are targeting suitably qualified teachers, regardless of their L1 status. If teachers are part of a professional network, where jobs are advertised, they could ensure that no job advertisements are distributed which promote inequality for NNESTs.

      (6)Role-models: A good EIL curriculum will seek ways to introduce students to expert L2 users as potential role models, such as inviting competent L2 speakers to deliver guest lectures in an EAP course.

      (7)Source of materials: Materials could be drawn from both local and global origins to help learners understand that knowledge surrounding English language does not always need to emanate from ‘native’ English speakers.

      (8)Other languages and cultures: Teachers could permit the use of other languages in their class to fulfil certain pedagogical functions, without limiting opportunities for target language use.

      (9)Needs: Old curricula should be frequently re-assessed according to learners’ needs for future English language use.

      (10)Goals of learning: The goals of any curriculum should be communicated to learners in terms of ‘can-do’ statements, thus focusing on their linguistic development as opposed to linguistic deficiencies.

      (11)Assessment criterion: Where appropriate to the goals of the curriculum, assessments should focus on the communicative competence of learners rather than adherence to grammatical standards.

      (12)Ideology and orientation: A good EIL teacher should always be cognizant of their own ideologies and biases, which underpin their teaching decisions. Teachers could also directly engage in discussions with their learners to instil a global perspective of English, and raise their confidence as multilingual speakers.

      This chapter has outlined key concepts surrounding the TESOL curriculum, as well as explored proposals and models for EIL innovations within such curricula. It has also introduced a handful of published research papers which have reported on EIL activities in classrooms around the world, while emphasising the fact that such research is currently scarce. This leads us to pose the questions: why is research into the teaching of EIL currently lacking, despite all of the calls for change? Is it because putting EIL research into practice is ‘not immediately obvious’ for teachers, as Dewey (2012: 162) has observed? Is it due to the theory–practice divide noted by many EIL scholars? Is it due to a lack of awareness among teachers of the various frameworks for innovation that have been proposed in recent years? Or is it due to a lack of reporting of innovations that are actually taking place in classrooms around the world?

      We suspect that the lack may be a result of a combination of all of these, but for readers of this book, the final reason might be of particular relevance in terms of future pedagogical implications. We can assume that any teacher who is engaging with the content of this book is becoming acutely aware of the need to teach EIL and is developing ideas of how to teach EIL in their educational contexts. What is needed now is for teachers to report on these innovations to help build professional knowledge of what good EIL innovations might look like.

      As Rose and Montakantiwong (2018) have observed, ‘Although the Applied Linguistics research community has consistently voiced a growing need for a more EIL-oriented teaching approach, it is surprising how the very voices of the teachers who are supposed to be the megaphone for that message remain unheard’ (2018: 99). This reporting needs not always be in the form of research papers in research journals, but also in professional journals, teacher newsletters, professional conferences, blog posts, or staff common room conversations. While research papers do help feed back practice into the research community to ensure research is teaching informed, other professional outlets can more quickly spread ideas within the teacher community. If innovation is to be achieved on a global scale, we will need both top-down and grassroots movements to operate with synchronicity to meet our aims.

      Post-reading Activities

      Reflect

      Many EIL scholars point to a lack of research on teachers putting EIL activities into practice. Think about why this is lacking, and what can be done to fix the situation to bridge the noted theory-practice divide.

      Discuss

      (1)All of the models of EIL innovation presented in this chapter (post-normative approach, WE-informed ELT, EIL curriculum blueprint, GELT framework) emphasise a need to increase exposure to a variety of Englishes in the classroom. How can exposure be provided by teachers, and at what stage in a learner’s language development should this exposure begin?

      (2)Vettorel’s (2013) study used online communication to connect learners in different countries to provide real life ELF opportunities, which is something that teachers couldn’t do 20 years ago. In what ways can technology facilitate the connection of learners on a global scale?

      (3)In small groups, each choose a different study from Table 2.2 to read and critically evaluate, and to prepare a group discussion around its findings. First, provide an overview of what the researcher-practitioners did in their classrooms, and what they reported as a result of their intervention. Then lead a discussion on how feasible or effective the intervention might be for other EIL classroom contexts, and discuss ways in which the EIL activities could be improved to achieve better results or overcome any stated limitations.

      Apply

      Looking at the GELT framework, and the example suggestions in the section ‘implications for teachers in global contexts’, apply this model to a specific teaching context or a curriculum that you are familiar with. If you do not have detailed knowledge of a real-life course, you may draw on an English language textbook to inform you of some elements of a hypothetical curriculum (most textbooks usually explicitly outline their goals, objectives, syllabus and sometimes a methodology). According to each of the dimensions in the framework, make an explicit suggestion for modifications which could help to transform the curriculum to better match the descriptions of GELT.

      Resources for Further Reading

      Rose, H. and Galloway, N. (2019) Global Englishes for Language Teaching. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

      This