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ELT and the global recession

Richard S. Pinner

This is a feature in which individuals are invited to express their personal, and sometimes controversial, views on professional issues. These views are not necessarily those of the Editor, the Editorial Panel, or the Publisher. Reaction to Comment features is especially welcome in the form of a letter to the Editor.

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How the global economy produced English as a lingua franca

The demand for English as a lingua franca (EL F) around the world is inextricably linked to the global economy and the so-called global village. International communication is more than just big business; it is an economic, political, and social necessity. This larger world economy is itself a product of the availability of cheap fossil fuel which has led to the replacement of small, local trading networks with much larger international corporations where things are produced in all corners of the globe cheaply through economies of scale. For example, many of the books we use in our classrooms might have been own in from other countries where it is cheaper to print them. The necessity of having one common language that people across the globe can use for international business is the reason we have now, for the rst time in recorded history, a language with more L2 than L1 speakers. However, every industry is being hit by the global nancial crisis. Many people are fearful of a deep world recession which could even lead to an international depression. Some pessimists predict the current crisis will be worse than the great depression of the 1930s, because this one has global implications. It would be nave to imagine that E LT will not be deeply affected by these changes, especially when we consider that both travel and the cost of living are becoming more and more expensive. The booming E F L market may lose some of its robustness as the effects of high oil prices and nancial problems take deeper root. In addition, the need to communicate in another language may be replaced by more pressing concerns in the new economic climate, such as nding work and paying for daily living.

What does this mean for E LT?

In the long term, students wishing to pursue an education in an Englishspeaking country will inevitably nd that they cannot afford to travel across the world and survive abroad where living costs may be twice as high as their own countries. Of course, this is unpredictable, as we have seen in the UK; the falling pound has meant that it is cheaper than ever for students to study there. However, prospective students may nd the necessity of speaking English lower down in their immediate priorities.
E LT Journal Volume 63/4 October 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccp061

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The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. Advance Access publication August 3, 2009

As we have already heard in the world media, many people are expecting unemployment to rise and both wealthy and poorer countries will be hit badly, with developing nations taking much of the brunt. Local networks will have to come back into place, because large-scale industries will have problems with their economies of scale when it no longer remains economically viable to ship their products from across the globe. In 2007 we saw the collapse of NOVA, the largest private English language school in Japan. This led to a mass exodus of teachers from overseas back to their native countries. In Asia, especially in the private sector, there is still a great deal of over-emphasis on native English-speaking instructors rather than qualied teachers for whom English may be an L2. This emphasis may change for the better under the new nancial climate. However, if private language schools are hit by the crisis, that would surely mean more people have to rely on their high school English education, which is rarely sufcient for business communication in an international context. Perhaps this could lead to versions which more accurately reect the way L2 speakers use the language. Another benet may be the greater acceptance of world Englishes. Also, the number of overseas students on university courses and E A P placement schemes could diminish over time, which would mean the way universities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia are funded by foreign students tuition fees would have to change dramatically and quickly. So what is the future for EFL? The slowdown is a fact for most large industries, and as such E F L is already being affected. The view I am taking here is very much a long-term one. David Crystal agrees that people have to start thinking in the longer-term (personal communication, 2008). Perhaps in the meantime we should use productively our ability to educate people around the world from multiple cultures. As part of the education we provide into language use, should we also be instilling a sense of ethical and environmental responsibility? Textbooks and materials writers might want to prole businesses that promote sustainability and give precedence to topics which could allow people to better understand some of the wider issues involved in sustaining the planet. More importantly, we may see textbooks that move English away from the L1 model of communication and start to accept the world Englishes that are actually in the majority already. There are still relatively few textbooks and exams that are doing this, despite the fact that many of us involved in teaching English are L2 speakers. There could be dire consequences in terms of employment and falling demand on the one hand, but on the other we might see ELT and assessment separate from the anchor of native English speaker models and grammar structures. There is a lot of scope for an exciting shake-up, and we have many new E L F corpora to help shape a more accurate view of real-world Englishes. This will enable us to understand more about how English is used and spoken around the world.

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Comment: E LT and the global recession

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The author Richard Pinner is an MA Applied Linguistics and E LT student at Kings College London. Email: richard.pinner@kcl.ac.uk

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Richard S. Pinner