Assessing English as a Lingua Franca

Abstract

English as a Lingua Franca refers to English used as a contact language among speakers of different first languages, whether from choice or through some kind of coercion. English as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF) has the largest number of users of English worldwide, of whom the vast majority are nonnative speakers. The resulting diversity and emergent nature of ELF communication mean that it is not amenable to being captured in descriptions of static norms, and therefore that conventional language assessment is ill-equipped to deal with it. This chapter is thus different from the others in the volume to the extent that as tests of ELF do not currently exist, the discussion is primarily conceptual, exploring developments in thinking about assessing ELF rather than contributing to and critiquing specific test types, goals, and descriptors. After introducing the ELF background, we go on to discuss early orientations to assessing nonnative uses of English, in particular, the work done within the related field of World Englishes. We then consider some key conceptual approaches from ELF scholars, both earlier and more recent, along with the influences on these approaches from the field of critical language assessment and research into multilingualism, particularly translanguaging. Next, we discuss the kinds of difficulties that are faced by anyone attempting to pursue a nontraditional ELF-oriented approach to the assessing of English. We end by exploring some possible future directions that ELF-oriented language assessment scholars might take in designing and introducing a radical new way of assessing of English in its ELF guise.