English as a lingua franca: Perspectives from international MA tesol students in the United States

Abstract

English learning and teaching have taken many forms in the last years. It is studied as a foreign language and a second language, and with specific purposes in technical fields of knowledge. However, in a broader context, English has become the lingua franca of communication and business. This new paradigm has impacted how teachers and learners see the acquisition of English. While some people prefer native or native-like English learning models, others are getting away from it. That is, some prefer intelligible communication rather than native-likeness. Therefore, this quantitative non-experimental study examined international MA TESOL students' perspectives about their awareness of English as a lingua franca and investigated their aspirations and preferences as English learners. The sample was composed of 20 non-native English teachers. Data were collected through an online survey that examined teachers' preferred models of English, beliefs about the most conducive environments for learning English, aspirations for correctness, intelligibility, and fluency. The findings provided empirical evidence that non-native English teachers are aware of the different English varieties and that they recognize these varieties as valid forms of English. This study found that participants put a higher emphasis on intelligibility than on grammatical accuracy if they thought that certain utterances would not impede communication. However, the results revealed a dual orientation in participants' aspirations, where their strong preferences paradoxically contradicted their awareness of the diversity of English varieties and their emphasis on intelligibility for native-like models of pronunciation and lexical knowledge. The implications of this study suggest that TESOL teacher education programs should provide spaces for analysis of the role of ELF in international learning milieus.