The goals of ELT: Reproducing nativespeakers or promoting multi- competence

among second language users?

Vivian Cook
Online Writings
SLA Topics

Draft of piece in J. Cummins & C. Davison (eds), Handbook on English

Language Teaching, Kluwer, 2007
Background
Why do people learn a second language? One answer comes
from the students themselves: Coleman (1996) found that the
six most popular reasons among UK university students of
modern languages were 'For my future career', 'Because I
like the language', 'To travel in different countries', 'To have a
better understanding of the way of life in the country or
countries where it is spoken', and 'Because I would like to
live in the country where it is spoken'. Another answer comes
from the expectations of the educational systems in various
countries: the UK Modern Language Curriculum (DfEE,
1999) expects pupils to 'understand and appreciate different
countries', to 'learn about the basic structures of language',
and how it 'can be manipulated'. Another perspective comes
from SLA, which sometimes states the target of L2 learning
overtly: LP [language pedagogy] is concerned with the
ability to use language in communicative situations (Ellis,
1996: 74) the point of language teaching is to help the
students communicate, but more often puts it covertly: Long
(1990) assumes that discussion of age concerns 'whether the
very best learners actually have native-like competence', i.e.
successful L2 learners become like L1 native speakers.
The purposes of language teaching are far from
straightforward. The multifarious goals include benefits for
the learner's mind such as manipulating language, for the
learner's future career and opportunities to emigrate, and
effects on the society whether through the integration of
minority groups, the creation of a skilled work-force, the
growth of international trade, or indeed good citizenship,

moral values and the Malaysian way of life (Kementarian

Pendidikan Malaysia, 1987). Cook (2002) made an openended list of the goals of language teaching that includes:

self-development. The student becomes in some

way a 'better' person through learning another
language. This goal is unrelated to the fact that
some people actually use the second language,
as in the group-related dynamics of Community
Language Learning.

a method of training new cognitive processes. By

learning another language, students acquire methods
of learning or new perspectives on themselves and
their societies.

a way-in to the mother-tongue. The students'

awareness of their first language is enhanced by
learning a second language.

an entre to another culture. Students can come to

understand other groups in the world and to
appreciate the music and art of other cultures.

a form of religious observance. For many people a

second language is part of their religion,
whether Hebrew for the Jewish religion, Arabic
for Muslims, or indeed English for Christians in
some parts of the world.

a means of communicating with those who speak

another language. We all need to cope with people
from other parts of the world, whether for
business or pleasure.

the promotion of intercultural understanding and

peace. For some the highest goals of language
teaching are to foster negotiation rather than war or
changes in the society outside the classroom. (see for
example Gomes de Matos, 2002)

None of these goals directly state that the learners should

approximate native speakers, even if they are waiting in the

wings. They are instead concerned with the educational

values of the second language for the learner. Indeed many of
them might be achieved without actually learning the new
language per se; degree courses in literature may be carried
out through translations; courses in French civilisation have
been taught in English schools through the mother tongue.
Internal and external goals
These goals can be divided into two main groups external
and internal (Cook, 1983; 2002).

External goals relate to the students' use of language

outside the classroom: travelling about using the
second language in shops and trains, reading books in
another language or attending lectures in a different
country, surviving as refugees in a strange new world.

Internal goals relate to the students' mental

development as individuals; they may think
differently, approach language in a different way, be
better citizens, because of the effects that the second
language has on their minds. So-called traditional
language teaching often stressed the internal goals:
learning Latin trained the brain; studying L2 literature
heightened people's cultural awareness.

External goals dominated language teaching methodology for

most of the last century, first through situational teaching and
then through audio-lingualism with its emphasis on external
situations. Then communicative language teaching
introduced syllabuses based on language function and
interaction in the world outside, not in the world inside the
student. Lists of language functions such as Wilkins (1976)
ignored the internal functions that L2 users accomplish in the
second language as self-organisation (keeping a diary etc),
memory tasks (phone numbers), and unconscious uses
(singing to oneself) (Cook, 1998).
The task-based learning approach, ultimately derived from
the class-room based schemes of Prabhu (1987), has
recognised that classroom tasks do not necessarily have

external outcomes in the world outside. Skehan (1998, p.96)

for example thinks that it desirable that tasks have real-world
relevance but difficult to obtain in practice. Task-based
learning has not, however, mostly tried to see what long-term
internal goals such tasks might have for the student beyond
the sheer acquisition of linguistic knowledge.
The platitude that obsessed language teaching for thirty years
has been that the goal of language teaching is
'communication'. On the one hand this skirts the issue of
communication where, with who and for what:
'communication' is too vague a term to bear the weight that
has been given to it in language teaching. If the goal is
indeed external communication with other people who do not
speak your first language, this is beside the point for many
EFL students; few students in China, Cuba or Chile, for
instance, can realistically expect to speak with people in
English outside the classroom. On the other hand equating
language with communication misses its other functions;
communication is only one role of language in human life, as
proclaimed by linguists from Malinowski's phatic
communion to Halliday's interpersonal function and
Chomsky's pragmatic competence. Enabling students to use a
second language does not just give them a tool for talking to
people through a different language but changes their lives
and minds in all sorts of ways (Cook, 2002).
The native speaker as the target of language teaching
The external goal implicit in much language teaching has
been to make the students approximate to native speakers.
After all, the ultimate goal perhaps unattainable for some
is, nonetheless, to "sound like a native speaker" in all
aspects of the language (Gonzlez-Nueno, 1997: 261).
Students are successful according to how close they get to
these native speakers; The native speakers competence or
proficiency or knowledge of the language is a necessary
point of reference for the second language proficiency
concept used in language teaching (Stern, 1983, p.341). The
best teacher is therefore a native speaker who can represent
the target the students are trying to emulate. A language
school in London invites one to Learn French from the

French; a school in Greece proclaims 'All our teachers are

native speakers of English'.
Within the past decade the term 'native speaker' has been
deconstructed, partly by recognising that people are multidimensional; the role of native speaker is a comparative
minor part of one's identity compared to citizenship,
membership of ethnic minorities, football fan clubs, social
classes, professional groups etc (Rampton, 1990). Its basis in
power has also been described; native speakers assert power
over their language and insist that they only can control its
destiny. Unlike DNA, nobody has copyrighted a natural
language (computer languages and Klingon are a separate
issue as they do not have native speakers!). The denial of the
right of L2 users to sound as if they come from a particular
place speaks of power; native speaker are not treated in the
same way; it is acceptable for someone speaking English to
sound as if they come from London, Chicago or Auckland
but not from Paris, Beijing or Santiago. As la Rochefoucauld
wrote in 1678, 'Laccent du pays ou lon est ne demeure dans
lesprit et dans le coeur comme dans le langage' An example
is the denigration of Joseph Conrad for having a Polish
accent, despite his being one of the stylists of English prose
of the twentieth century. The native speaker concept has
contributed to denying the rights of human beings to show
their membership of particular groups.
The concept of native speaker has little meaning as an L2
goal. In the literal sense it is impossible for an L2 user to
become a native speaker, since by definition you cannot be a
native speaker of anything other than your first language.
Phrasing the goal in terms of the native speaker means noone can possibly achieve it; L2 learning can only lead to
different degrees of failure, not degrees of success: 'Relative
to native speaker's linguistic competence, learners'
interlanguage is deficient by definition' (Kasper &
Kellerman, 1997: 5). In a wider sense accepting the native
speaker goal still does not specify which native speaker in
what roles: native speakers of English come from all parts of
the globe, classes of society, genders and ages.

Indeed many L2 users speak to people who are not native

speakers, whether the German businessman negotiating
contracts with a Dane, the Chinese air-line pilot using it to
talk to the control tower in Singapore, or the Japanese tourist
buying a film for her camera in Spain: English is a useful
lingua franca for much of the globe. The Israeli National
Curriculum (2001) 'does not take on the goal of producing
near-native speakers of English, but rather speakers of
Hebrew, Arabic or other languages who can function
comfortably in English whenever it is appropriate.' Perhaps
the majority of 'communication' in English does not involve
native speakers. The native speaker goal can have a limited
currency for some students; it has no relevance as an internal
goal since learning a second language makes people different
from monolingual native speakers.
the L2 user concept
An overall alternative to the native speaker goal is the
concept of the L2 user, which refers to people who know and
use a second language at any level, similar to functional
definitions of bilingualism: 'the point where a speaker can
first produce complete meaningful utterances in the other
language' (Haugen, 1953: 7). The term 'L2 user' is however
preferred to 'bilingual' because of the numerous definitions
for 'bilingualism', many of which refer to the native speaker:
'bilingualism, native-like control of two languages'
(Bloomfield, 1933, p.56) the bilingual is the sum of two
monolinguals rather than something sui generis.
Perhaps the majority of people in the world are L2 users.
While figures are impossible to come by, it is certainly
suggested by countries like the Congo with 213 languages or
Singapore, where 56% of the population are literate in more
than one language, or indeed Europe, where 53% of the
population can speak at least one additional language
(European Commission, 2001). The British Council (1999)
estimates one billion learners of English in the world.
Everyday life in many societies demands more than one
language, for example the Cameroon or India. Other L2 users
are members of linguistic minorities who need another
language for education or health, like Bengali speakers in the

East End of London, or businessman using another language

than their own such as Luc Vandevelde, the Belgian head of
Marks and Spencers, or international sports personalities
using English in interviews with the mass media, say Martina
Hingis, Michael Schumacher or Frankie Dettori. In short the
second language increases rather than diminishes human
diversity.
Both linguistics, SLA research and language teaching have
primarily taken the monolingual native speaker as their
starting point. Chomsky (1986) set the goals of linguistics as
accounting for knowledge of language, not knowledge of
languages. Both language teachers and students have seen
their goal as getting close to native speakers. To people who
treat L2 users as deviating from native speaker norms, the
important questions are the cognitive problems of
bilingualism, not the cognitive deficits of monolingualism,
and why L2 students can't speak like natives, rather than why
monolinguals can't speak two languages.
The L2 user concept is rooted in difference rather than
deficit, following Labov (1969). L2 users are different kinds
of people from monolingual native speakers, and need to be
measured as people who speak two languages, not as
inefficient natives. Their differences from native speakers
reflect the complexity of a mind with two languages
compared to the simplicity of a mind with one. The L2 user
concept arose in the context of the multi-competence
approach to SLA. Multi-competence is 'the knowledge of
two or more languages in the same mind' (Cook, 1992). It
extends the concept of interlanguage by recognising the
continual presence of the first language in the learner's mind
alongside the second language; there is little point in
studying the second language as an isolated interlanguage
system since its raison d'tre is that it is added to a first
language. Indeed it may be wrong to count languages in
people's minds L1, L2, L3 as the language system exists in
a single mind as a whole akin to Chomsky's notion that the
mental reality is a grammar, not a language (Chomsky,
1986). If the L2 user is the norm in the world, the

monolingual mind has a more basic system because of the

impoverished language it has encountered.
The term 'L2 user' is conceptually different from 'L2 learner'
even when it refers to the same person. L2 users are
exploiting whatever linguistic resources they have for a reallife purpose ordering a CD on the internet, talking about
Manchester United, translating a letter, visiting the doctor
L2 learners are acquiring a system for later use; they interact
in information-gap games, they make up sentences, they plan
activities in groups Sometimes 'learner' and 'user' overlap:
a student learning English in a classroom can also use it over
coffee five minutes later. But it is demeaning to call a person
who has been using a second language for, say half their life,
a learner.
The nature of the L2 user
So what is the purpose of L2 teaching? Put it in a simplistic
form, there are some qualities in people who use second
languages that society or the individual student values.
Language teaching serves to foster these qualities in students.
Let us then look at the qualities of L2 users that students can
strive to emulate.

L2 users have different uses of second languages

from monolinguals

If the aim were to clone the native speaker, this would limit
the functions of a second language to those that native
speakers can carry out in their L1. While some L2 users may
indeed need to speak to native speakers, the language that
natives use to non-natives is a specific variety. The presence
of a non-native speaker alters the behaviour of native
speakers, changing their syntax and the information they
provide (Arthur et al, 1980). The L2 user needs to master the
skill of conversing with native speakers in this particular
mode. Data-bases of native speech such as COBUILD and
the BNC have not provided any information about the native
to non-native English the L2 user will actually encounter (let
alone any insight into the non-native speakers they are more
likely to talk to). Continental businessman have told me that

they have no problems speaking English to fellow non-native

speakers; it is the English person who gives them problems.
L2 users also have distinctive uses for language unavailable
to monolinguals, most obviously when two languages are online. Translation is an everyday activity for many L2 users,
for instance children translating for their non-native parents
in consultations with doctors (Malakoff & Hakuta, 1991).
Some L2 users are indeed professional interpreters, foreign
correspondents, bilingual secretaries, and the like. Is there
any L2 user who has not at some time been called on to
translate something, ranging from a book title up to a letter?
Discouraging translation as a teaching technique does not
mean it is a valid external goal. Indeed 'translation provides
an easy avenue to enhance linguistic awareness and pride in
bilingualism' (Malakoff & Hakuta, 1991: 163).
Another distinctive L2 use of language is code-switching. L2
users commonly switch from one to the other according a
variety of rules depending on social roles, the topics that are
being discussed, the grammatical overlap between the two
languages, and many more (for example Auer, 1998). One
example might be a Japanese university student remarking:
Reading sureba suruhodo, confuse suro yo. Demo, computer
lab ni itte, article o print out shinakya (The more reading I
have, the more I get confused, but I have to go to the
computer lab and need to print out some articles). Another
might be T.S. Eliot: London Bridge is falling down, Poi
s'ascose nel foco che gli affina, Quando fiam uti chelidon
O swallow swallow, Le Prince d'Aquitaine la tour aboli
(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, V).
Code-switching is a highly skilled L2 use. Grosjean (1989)
distinguishes two modes of language in L2 users, a
monolingual mode in which one language is used at a time
and a bilingual mode in which both are used simultaneously.
Whether or not code-switching should be encouraged in the
classroom is a separate matter for methodologists to decide;
traditionally the teacher was supposed to frown upon
students using their L1 in group and pair-work, though
Jacobson (1990) has described a teaching method based on

systematic code-switching. But clearly most effective L2

users are capable of this feat of using two languages at once.
Paradis (1997) has argued that these L2 uses are simply
extensions of what monolinguals do; translation is the same
as paraphrase on a larger scale; code-switching is a more
complex form of dialect or register-switching. From a multicompetence perspective, the boot is on the other foot: the
monolingual uses restricted forms of the language functions
available to the L2 user.
As we see below, however, L2 users have more subtle
differences from native speakers in their use of both their
first and second languages, mostly due to the links between
the two languages in their minds. Whichever language they
are using, they are still to some extent affected by the other
language they know its rules, concepts and cultural
patterns. An L2 user is essentially a product of mtissage
'the mixing of two ethnic groups, forming a third ethnicity'
(Canada Tree, 1996; see also Lionnet, 1989). The danger is
not seeing themselves as fully members of either cultures,
rather than as fully-paid up L2 users. L2 users form the
majority in many countries of the world where it is taken for
granted that everyone uses whatever languages are necessary
for their everyday lives, whether the Cameroon or Pakistan.
Both their first and second languages may differ from those
of monolingual native speakers: so what? L2 users stand
between two languages, having the resources of both
languages available should they need them.

L2 users have a different command of the second

and first languages

Some researchers have argued people speak a second

language like a native speaker; others have denied this
possibility. On the one hand it is not significant if a handful
of people can pass for natives; it may be possible to find dogs
that look like rats or indeed to train dogs to behave like rats
but this does not mean they are not different species. On the
other hand it is the wrong comparison; an L2 user should be
compared with another successful L2 user a member of the

same group not with a native speaker a member of

another group the L2 user could not belong to by definition.
Arguments based on the achievements of a select few should
be set to one side; despite the achievements of a tiny
minority, the knowledge of the second language of the vast
majority of L2 users differs from that of native speakers.
Mostly these differences are blindingly obvious. Though
many spelling mistakes are common to all users of English
spelling whether native, non-native, young or old, L2 users
soon give away their first language: volontary and tissu
(French), theese and precios (Italian), lavel (level) and
congratale (Urdu) and so on (Cook, in progress). In Voice
Onset Time (VOT) for plosive consonants L2 users have
timing that deviate slightly from native speakers (Nathan,
1987). Even at advanced 'passing for native' levels, there are
still concealed differences between L2 users and native
speakers in grammaticality judgments (Coppetiers, 1987).
Recent research has been discovering that the L2 user also
has a different command of the L1 from a monolingual
native speaker (Cook, in press).). The knowledge of
vocabulary in the first language is affected by the second so
that for example when a French person who knows English
encounters the French word coin they are aware of the
English meaning 'money' as well as the French meaning
'corner' (Beauvillain & Grainger, 1987). In syntax L2 users
process their first language differently so that for instance
Japanese, Spanish and Greek users of English look for the
subject of the sentence in Japanese in slightly different ways
(Cook et al, in press); some can be said more appropriately to
have an extended L1 competence rather than a declining L1
competence (Jarvis, in press). In other words the first
language competence of L2 users is not the same as that of
monolinguals. Within the multi-competence approach, such
changes are seen as inevitable: at some level the two
languages form a single complex system within the
individual mind; the totality of the L2 user is more than just
adding a second language to a mind that has a first. While an
overt goal of second language teaching may not be to alter
the first language of the learner, this is a necessary
consequence.

L2 users have different minds from monolinguals

But the distinctive characteristics of L2 users extend outside

what is normally thought of as language knowledge and use.
L2 users also differ from monolinguals in terms of interior
aspects of mind that go beyond the external uses of language
detailed so far. Indeed this is implicit in the concept of
internal goals of language teaching; as well as enabling
students to 'communicate' with other people, language
teaching also affects their minds in ways that society can find
beneficial the traditional virtues of classical language
teaching.
One such aspect is language awareness. Bilingually educated
children are sharper at making grammaticality judgments
about sentences than monolinguals (Bialystok, 2001).
Afrikaans/ English children aged 4-9 who know a second
language are ahead of monolinguals in developing semantic
awareness of words (Ianco-Worrall (1972). Hungarian
children who know English produce Hungarian sentences
that are more structurally complex (Kecskes & Papp, 2000).
Yelland et al (1993) employed all possible combinations of
big and large objects with big and large words (ant,
caterpillar, airplane, whale) to show that bilingual children
are better aware that big words do not necessarily denote big
The wider world of English literature soon shows us L2 users
who have shown this extra facility with language such as
Milton, Beckett and Nabokov.
A variety of measures have also shown that the actual
processes of cognition are affected by the knowledge of a
second language. Contrary to early findings about cognitive
deficit in bilinguals, research has usually shown that
bilingual children perform better than monolinguals on both
verbal and non-verbal IQ tests (Peal and Lambert, 1962);
bilingual five-year-olds showed advantages for object
constancy, naming and the use of names in sentences
(Feldman and Shen, 1971). Ianco-Worrall (1972) showed that
bilingual children think more flexibly. Even code-switching
by bilingual children is not a sign of deficit but of 'a kind of
linguistic competence that exceeds that which is
demonstrated by monolinguals' (Genesee, 2002). Diaz

(1985) lists other pay-offs from knowing a second language

on 'measures of conceptual development', 'creativity', and
'analogical reasoning'. The only negative findings seem to be
a slight deficiency on certain STM tasks; for example
Makarec & Persinger (1993) found that male L2 users, but
not women, had some memory deficiencies compared to
monolinguals.
L2 user goals in language teaching: problems and issues
The goal of becoming an L2 user is more valid and more
achievable for most L2 students, emphasising both external
and internal goals of language teaching. Let us bring together
the threads.
Most importantly L2 users have to be credited with being
what they are L2 users. They should be judged by how
successful they are as L2 users, not by their failures
compared to native speakers. L2 students have the right to
become L2 users, not imitation native speakers. This is not to
say that all of them would agree to this. Like all of us, L2
students are formed in part by the attitudes and stereotypes of
the society of which they form part. If there is constant
pressure to be like native speakers, they are likely to accept
this as their role rather than to work out the advantages of L2
users. In my own experience with talking to groups of
teachers about the shift from native speaker to L2 user goals,
some feel insulted because I have undermined a life-time
goal, others feel liberated by knowing that they have value in
their own right rather than in relationship to native speakers.
In education one always has to acknowledge Peters' (1973)
pithy remark 'What interests the students may not be in the
students' interests'. The L2 user goal may not at present be
exactly the most popular among students or teachers. But this
is more ignorance and than deliberate choice. To some the L2
user goal may be a blessed relief, to others an infringement
of their right to set their own goals. As we have seen the
problem with the native speaker goal is that it is essentially
unachievable for many students. Are we to write off the vast
majority as failures to become natives or to accept them as
successes as L2 users? Kramsch (1998, p.28) sums it up:
Traditional methodologies based on the native speaker

usually define language learners in terms of what they are

not, or at least not yet. Or, one might add, probably not ever.'
We need at least to explain this to the students.
A major problem is to spell out what the L2 user goal
actually means. Because linguistics has been concerned
almost exclusively with natives there are no descriptions of
L2 users. By default the only adequate descriptions that
teaching has to go on are those of natives. The ultimate
requirement is then descriptions of what L2 users are actually
like, say their basic common grammars as established by the
ESF project (Perdue, 2001), their phonological systems
(Jenkins, 2000), the types of use that they actually make of
the L2, the cognitive and processing differences, and all the
rest. But ignorance is no more excuse in language teaching
than it is in the eyes of the law. Teachers can start by building
on their own experiences as L2 users. Native speakers were
formerly the teachers who spoke with authority because of
their ownership of the language; now non-native teachers are
the authentic sources of knowledge about what it is like to be
an L2 user. Descriptions of native speaker English are a stopgap while proper descriptions of L2 users are made.
Furthermore L2 users differ extremely in their attainments
and in their needs. Often this variability has been held
against L2 users; since native children get to the same adult
target in L1, obviously L2 learners were supposed to get to
the same adult native target: one target does for all. But the
nature of L2 learning is the sheer variety of goals, as we saw
above. One may become a perfectly adequate L2 user for
one's purposes with only a small system; my few words of
Italian enable me to go to a restaurant or a concert in Italy;
my knowledge of French however enabled me to read Piaget
in his original language (incidentally much clearer than in
English translation!); while I can't read anything in Italian
and can't have a conversation in French, yet my L2 needs are
adequately served in both cases despite their intrinsic
limitations. In the first language native speakers mostly have
a greater range of uses, though reading Piaget may not
typical. In short, once the native speaker norm is abandoned,
there is no need to aim at superfluous uses of language, just
as native children are not taught to write sonnets. In some

ways this is the philosophy of ESP: teach the aspects of

language appropriate to the students' anticipated uses and
regard them as successes when they can carry them out, not
as failures for still having a foreign accent.
One important lessons is recognising the importance of
internal goals. Part of the value of acquiring another
language is the pay-off in internal terms, whether awareness
of language, more flexible approach, different cognitive
strategies or whatever. This is already mentioned in some
official syllabuses and curriculums: 'Through the study of a
foreign language, pupils begin to think of themselves as
citizens of the world as well as of the United Kingdom
(DfEE, 1999). Most teaching methods and course-books are
nevertheless still designed to foster external goals. Language
teaching could help people's lives in many ways, even if they
never meet a native speaker. One extreme example is the use
of Community Language Learning (Curran, 1976) as a form
of therapy for patients with mental illnesses; talking about
your problems in another language may help you to solve
them. Language teaching should emphasise the internal
educational goals in the changes in the individual L2 user
So far as external goals are concerned, despite their
prominence in language teaching methodology, they have not
been related to the actual L2 uses of language. The only
exception is the vast number of situations in course-books
where apparent L2 users seek help or guidance from natives
shops, surgeries, stations etc. In as much as these actually
reflect L2 use, they show low-level communication by
powerless L2 users; the native speakers are almost invariably
the experts in control. Teaching the L2 user goal means
teaching for the situations that L2 users encounter, and
modelling L2 roles and situations. At a simple level it means
using famous L2 user achievers into course-books, Ricky
Martin rather than Elizabeth II.