Instigating a paradigm shift in the 21st century ELT classroom: Critical perspectives on ELF in English language teaching and learning: A guidebook for teachers

The growth of English as an international lingua franca has resulted in a shift in usage of the language. As a global language, English is used alongside other languages for the purpose of communication in diverse and flexible speech communities. The spread and diversity in usage of English has resulted in the emergence of a number of fields of research that showcase the use of English as a global language. Researchers in the independent, but overlapping fields of English as an International Language (EIL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and World Englishes (WE) and translanguaging, which have been grouped together under the one umbrella term of Global Englishes, have explored both the diverse use of English as well as its implications for language teaching. It is these shared agendas, ideologies and increasing calls for a change to pedagogy that forms the basis of Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT), which also resonates with similar movements in second language acquisition (SLA), such as the multilingual turn (e.g. May, 2014), and key ideas emerging from critical applied linguistics. This chapter examines the growing research in these fields and the accompanying shifts in the needs of those learning the language to use as a global lingua franca. The rise of English as a global language has changed the foundations of how the language should be taught and learned and the chapter ends with an examination of the pedagogical implications of Global Englishes research and the need for a paradigm shift to reframe language teaching to ensue it matches the new sociolinguistic landscape of the 21st century. The chapter ends with a consideration of some of the potential ‘barriers’ to implementing successful and sustainable GELT curricula innovation.