Focus on the Speaker-Learner in English as a Global Language: Agency and Satisfaction

Abstract

In pedagogical debates about Global Englishes (GE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF), there is widespread agreement concerning an urgent need for liberating teachers and students from the normative constraints of ELT's orientation towards standard English by raising their awareness of the characteristics and complexities of GE/ELF communication. ELT students are generally perceived as weak GE/ELF communicators requiring remedial education based on the analysis of recorded GE/ELF exchanges. Contrary to this deficit view, this article calls for acknowledging ELT students as 'speaker-learners', who are endowed with a natural capability for communication including strategic creativity, contextual inferencing, empathetic cooperativity, and communication monitoring. Through a social constructivist lens, they appear as principal agents of 'MY English' development, guided by their personal requirements of communicative and communal success and their aspiration for speaker satisfaction. A normalizing account of GE/ELF communication and an emancipatory MY English perspective on ELT provide the theoretical-conceptual underpinnings of an immersive pedagogical GE/ELF approach, preferably implemented through virtual exchange in a blended learning environment. Pedagogical mentoring is essential for helping students assume MY English responsibility, make best use of their ordinary communicative capability, and exploit the translanguaging range of their resources when faced with unfamiliar challenges in GE/ELF encounters.