English as a Lingua Franca

Who does English belong to?

     I will start this post with an anecdotal experience. Here's a little piece of conversation I have recently witnessed between two of my students;

 Student A: " I have gone to Kharabakh last summer.  KHARAbakh, no ...KharaBAKH...  What's the right way of saying it?"

 Student B: "And is it right to say "have been" or "went"?" .

 Two questions standing in the queue of my thoughts. But before I can process either of them, it dawns on me that two of my students have just stopped the natural flow of their conversation because of their over-obsession with accuracy. It is one thing that an Armenian has to put his tongue twice between his teeth to pronounce an English word like "thousandth",(or "cenicero" in Spanish")  but why would an Armenian worry so much about the English pronunciation of an Armenian land? Is it KHARAbakh or KharaBAKH...? Who decides this? The English?

  After a brief pause I answered the first question, saying that past simple is preferable when speaking about a specific past event and, turning to the first student, I said smth that an English teacher would not normally say;

  "I think it's up to us to decide how to pronounce Kharabakh".

   Now, as you think of it, the truth is that English has long ceased to be confined to the English of the former British colonies, nor is it now restricted to any geographical location or nationality. The widespread use of English as a lingua franca  (ELF) has led to a change of perspectives as to what should be the model of language in learning English. Traditionally, we followed the model of the native speaker, supposing that the ultimate aim of the language learner is to communicate with the native speaker. However, such a perspective can no longer function. English is now used everyday between non-native speakers as a common tool for communication without any interaction with a native speaker. In fact, many EFL learners never ever meet the "perfect native speaker" in their lives! Keeping this in mind, how reasonable is it to promote the standard English in all circumstances ? Say an Armenian, Russian and a German work in the same office and interact in English, should it trouble them that their intralanguage deviates from the Standard English  as long as the communication is successful?
   Coming back to the question of "KHARAbakh or KharaBAKH" mentioned in the beginning. Not only has English successfully escaped from the British colonies and spread all over the world as a lingua Franca, it has also started to be shaped by the world. Whether English teachers accept it or not, billions of non-native speakers make "mistakes" (deviation from the accurate forms of standard English) every day all over the world. Is it right? Is it wrong? It is a fact. A non-native induced erroneous form "I am loving it" (EFL teachers, put your red pens in your scabbards. I know that "love" is a stative verb) became the slogan for McDonalds. Coincidence or a reflection of a tendency?
  In conclusion, I would like to say that whatever the case is, it's time for EFL teachers to stop blindly following the native model and prioritize the needs of their students in making decisions on what to teach, what to correct and what to leave as it is.
   

Paradigm controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences

  The vast ocean between theory and practice

    Some articles related to Applied Linguistics make me doubt whether they were written by humans. An article published in 2005 by Guba and Lincoln, called "Paradigm controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences" is a vivid example. The article raises some controversial issues among the practitioners of new and emergent paradigms, who are looking for key elements that would distinguish their paradigms from those of the others. An average reader, let's say an average language teacher, looking for some guidance for his teaching, will probably need some psychological help after reading this article. Abstract terms, ideas and theory without a hint of its applicability all flood together and leave the teacher clueless as how to improve his teaching the next day, how to make his lessons more effective. While it is clear that such articles might be useful for a narrow circle of researchers that speak the same language in which the article is written, the question is for who, in the long run, is all the research done? If it's ultimately intended for teachers, I am afraid, it will find its readers frustrated and will probably lose them after the first few pages.  
 P.S. I read Loudres Ortega's article called "For What and for Whom is out Research" after writing this post. The author brings up the issue of the "lack of relevance of SLA research for teachers". Research, as author states, is useful when it serves societal needs. Otherwise, it may face the issue of being useless.

Welcome to the Grey world of Applied 
 Linguistics 
Feel the Greyness

  5 multiplied by 5 is 25. Now try and say the opposite. Try to prove that in Europe numbers work in a different way than in Asia or that cultural differences, individual variables, the peculiarities of setting or participants involved may have an influence on a mathematical equation. Your chances, to say the least, are non-existent. Now step out of the black and white universe of natural sciences and go through the threshold of Applied Linguistics.There you are, embrace the Greyness.

      Here's the world where phrases like "take it with a grain of salt", "tentative claims", "non-conclusive data", etc come into play. In fact, they are much more common than words as "proven", "enough evidence", "generalizable", etc. Fortunately, linguistic research tries to shed some light on the overwhelming greyness.

  One issue, for example, that every teacher asks himself/herself at least once in life is how to give feedback.  In what form? How often? Recently I have read a 2009 article on Written Corrective Feedback by Bitchener and Noch. The article, based on a thorough longitudinal experimental study, shows that some  Corrective Feedback (CF) is a must in language teaching but does not distinguish any difference of efficiency between different types of CF (written/oral, direct/indirect). The study, focusing on a 10-month teaching experiment targeting on a single grammatical form (a/the in English), provokes obvious questions on its validity and practicality in day-to-day teaching. Here are a few questions that were raised during our class discussion of the article:

1) Both forms of corrections direct or indirect may lead students to improve their work (correct revision), but do they allow them to retain the information long-term?

2) Was the written corrective feedback the only means of imroving the students' skills for using ''a/the'' during the research period (remember that they had long intervals between the tests)?

3) Is it and if yes, how practical is it to apply WCF on a single-error category throughout a long period of teaching-learning process?

 These are all valid questions and come to show once again that research in Applied linguistics often times fails to bring any clearness and distinction in our understanding of teaching and language learning. Shades of grey, that's all we can hope for.