Bringing real-life language use into

EFL classrooms
Éva Illés and Sumru Akcan

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This article explores the potential of the classroom as a venue for authentic,
real-life language use, and highlights the importance of unplanned classroom
communication. Examples from the lessons of prospective English teachers in
Hungary and Turkey indicate that, when given the opportunity, EFL students
enjoy using the L2 spontaneously. The classroom observations provide evidence
that unplanned interactions can create conditions which give rise to humour
and linguistic creativity, both of which feature prominently in language
use outside the classroom as well. By raising metalinguistic awareness and
promoting fluency, humorous language play facilitates language acquisition
as it enables learners to experiment as well as express their own meanings
and find their voice in English. Teachers should, therefore, encourage off-task
conversations and make good use of students’ humorous repartee and asides.
Teacher educators should also encourage prospective teachers to create and
exploit opportunities for naturally occurring interaction in their future classes.

Introduction As soon as learners step outside the classroom, they act as users of
English who communicate with other speakers of English from a wide
variety of linguacultural backgrounds. Given the global spread of English
and the fact that the majority of users do not speak English as their
mother tongue, learners are likely to be involved in interactions with other
non-native speakers. These situations then bear the hallmarks of English
as a lingua franca (ELF), which is ‘any use of English among speakers
of different first languages for whom English is the communicative
medium of choice, and often the only option’ (Seidlhofer 2011: 7). Since
ELF speakers represent various cultures and languages, ELF contexts of
use are characterized by diversity and the subsequent unpredictability
and variability of communication. Therefore, interactions where English
functions as a lingua franca require active engagement in the meaning-
making process by the participants.
One of the consequences for ELT is that the focus should shift from
the desired product, i.e. language which is correct and appropriate
in reference to native-speaker norms, to the actual process of
communication. As Seidlhofer (ibid.: 198) puts it: ‘What really matters
is that the language should engage learners’ reality and activate the
learning process’. In the practice of ELT, such a process-oriented approach

ELT Journal Volume 71/1 January 2017; doi:10.1093/elt/ccw049  3

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Advance Access publication July 1, 2016
 entails teaching language as communication (Widdowson 1978), where
learners are involved on their own terms and create their own meaning,
rather than learning language in preparation for communication with
native speakers in predicted future contexts of use. In fact, this focus on
the process of communication seems to better reflect how language is
acquired:
[i]t is not that you learn something and then you use it; neither is it
that you use something and learn it. Instead, it is in using that you
learn—they are inseparable. (Larsen-Freeman 2007: 783)
The question this article aims to address is how learning language
through language use can be realized in the classroom and, more
specifically, how allowing spontaneous interaction in the foreign language

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enables students to activate both their reality and available linguistic
resources for the purpose of creating their own meanings in the L2.

Classroom Most English language lessons are usually pre-planned and progress
communication in a fairly predictable manner, often following the IRF (i.e. teacher
initiation–learner response–teacher follow-up) cycle. Sometimes, however,
there may be moments that have not been pre-planned and give rise to
spontaneous language use. Examples of such ‘less legitimate’ (Waring
2013: 191) language use include off-topic conversations, asides, students’
cheeky repartee, and remarks that teachers do not always appreciate and,
at times, even penalize. Interestingly, these instances of communication
bear a close resemblance to what learners have to be able to handle when
they use English outside the classroom. In such out-of-school situations,
discourse is seldom scripted and is usually co-constructed (Gil 2002) by
the interlocutors with conversational norms and language emerging as
the interaction proceeds. Markee (2005: 212), therefore, makes a valid
point by observing that ‘off-task interaction may be closer to learners’
real-life interactional needs than on-task interaction’. When students
are allowed to function outside the confines of conventional classroom
communication, features of everyday language use, such as humour and
language play (Maybin and Swann 2007), may appear which, together
with other forms of unplanned language use, require quick decisions and
the activation of linguistic and metalinguistic skills.
Ludic language use can ‘broaden the range of permitted interactional
patterns within the classroom’ (Cook 2000: 199) and may result in role
reversals as reported in Waring’s (ibid.) study investigating L2 classrooms.
Such playful talk can also generate rich language use and better learner
engagement (Bell 2009), as well as ‘increased metalinguistic awareness’
amongst students (Pomerantz and Bell 2007: 556). Furthermore, research
indicates that language play facilitates language learning (Bell ibid.) and
improves learners’ proficiency (Schmitz 2002). Allowing students to enter
a language arena that is usually considered native-speaker territory is not
only challenging but also motivating for the learners. As a consequence,
students are usually happy and willing to be involved in playful language
use (Bell ibid.). And since play, including games and humour, often
features in communication with others in one’s first language, there is no
reason why it should not be exploited in language teaching (Cook ibid.).

4 Éva Illés and Sumru Akcan

Research context The research outlined in this article took place in EFL classrooms in
Budapest, Hungary, and Istanbul, Turkey, with students aged between
10 and 17. The present study was part of a larger research project that
investigated future teachers’ classroom language use and their views
on ELF. One of the reasons for the choice of these two countries was
the assumption that since Hungarian and Turkish are both inflectional
languages, there might be overlaps regarding the difficulties teacher
candidates face when speaking and teaching English.
The data were collected in 2012–2013. The participants, 25 in Turkey and
9 in Hungary, were pre-service English teachers who were undertaking
their practicum at the time. It must be noted that whereas recording
prospective teachers’ lessons is a compulsory part of Turkish teacher

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education, participants in the research in Hungary were volunteers. This
explains the marked difference between the participant numbers and the
need for convenience sampling in Hungary. In the Turkish system, there
is an agreement between the university department of foreign language
teaching and the practicum schools that allows the anonymous use of
students’ utterances. The agreement includes the teacher candidates’
and the schools’ consent for the purposes of research carried out by the
university department. In Hungary, the parents’ written consent was also
attained prior to the class observations.
The data came from class observations, video-ed lessons, and semi-structured
interviews which included stimulated recall of classroom observations. In
Turkey, one lesson by each teacher candidate was video-ed by their peers. The
prospective teachers felt comfortable during the video-ing because they were
already familiar with both the mentor and the learners, as they had observed
them and their classes the semester before. In Hungary, two lessons by each
prospective teacher were video-ed either by one of us (the authors of this
article) or by two PhD students who were involved in the project. In Hungary,
too, the participants’ teaching practice was preceded by class observation
and by the teacher candidates familiarizing themselves with the school
environment. This, and the fact that the observed lessons were not followed
by any kind of evaluation, enabled the researchers to create as relaxed and
familiar an atmosphere as possible. The video-ings in both countries were
followed by a semi-structured interview during which the recordings were
replayed and the participants were invited to comment on relevant incidents
in the lesson. The interview included questions about norms and correctness,
the linguistic and pedagogic challenges prospective teachers faced during
their practicum, and the linguistic model they chose for themselves and
their students. In the transcribed interviews and the field notes kept by us,
emerging themes were identified and categorized. The themes included the
topics of the interview questions and additional issues such as the role of
coursebooks, adherence to lesson plans, and the constraints teaching and
the practicum in particular presented. The thematic analysis was followed by
drawing illustrative examples from the data to explain the themes.
One of the more concrete issues emerging during the discussion of the
lessons was participants’ handling of spontaneous language use. The
next section comprises examples illustrating typical instances of such
diversions in the observed classes.

Spontaneous language use in the EFL classroom  5

Spontaneous The willingness of the students to engage in spontaneous communication
language use in the with the teacher (Bell op.cit.) was evident in the Turkish data. In Excerpt 1,
classroom the students were ready to engage in off-topic conversation, and it was the
teacher who kept their talk highly controlled:
Excerpt 1 (T = teacher; Ss = students; S1, etc. = specific student)
T: How have you been since I left you?
Ss: Fine, you?
T: I’m fine thanks. How are the exams going on? Do you have any
exams?
Ss: Nice.

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T: OK, we can start I think … who are the characters in the story?
Ss: Natalie, Harvey …
T: Anything else, what do you remember?
S1: Natalie is going to marry Branton, but she loves Harvey because
he is handsome.
T: How does Branton looks like, look like?
Ss: Stupid, unattractive.
T: What about Natalie?
S2: Branton thinks that she’s very beautiful …
S3: Not a very nice person.
T: Hmm … not a very nice person, morally.
In the excerpt, the students show willingness to communicate, to take the
theme further, and to engage in off-topic communication. They asked back
when the teacher inquired about their well-being and seemed to be ready
to extend the conversation beyond the level of just greetings. They also
appeared to have been engaged with the story they had read. The answer by
S3 could have provided an opportunity to discuss what the learners really
thought of the characters of the story. By not allowing time for unplanned
classroom communication and personal involvement, a chance to collectively
construct discourse (Gil op.cit.) and allow the students’ voices to be heard
was missed.
Instances where students could have been engaged on their own terms
occurred in the Hungarian context as well. One such occasion arose
when the students had to tell the jokes they had prepared as homework.
The following exchanges in Excerpt 2 represent typical feedback by the
teacher:
Excerpt 2 (T = teacher; Ss = students)
T: Did you like that?
Ss: [Giggle]
T: OK, thank you.

6 Éva Illés and Sumru Akcan

 Although the teacher briefly responded to the students, there were no
questions about the reasons for their emotional reaction. The lack of
any follow-up here is all the more regrettable since many of the jokes
featured national stereotypes and they would have provided an excellent
opportunity for the teacher to address issues such as diversity and
tolerance. Thus, failure to allow learners to engage in a discussion resulted
in the ‘loss of aspects of local knowledge and experiences as topics for
classroom talk’ (Cadorath and Harris 1998: 188).
Despite the fact that most of the communication was controlled in both
locations, there were some excellent examples of spontaneous humorous
moments which bore witness to the fact that students not only enjoy but
jump at the opportunities provided by asides in the lessons (Bell op.cit.).

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In the Hungarian context, even though the IRF cycle was fairly frequent,
there was not only pair work with students talking to each other about a
particular topic, but also instances of genuine communication between
teachers and students. When they had the chance, learners used humour,
as in the following repartee in Excerpt 3:

Excerpt 3 (T = teacher; S = student)

T: What do people do when they suffocate?
S: Suffer.
The source of the humorous effect is the deliberate misunderstanding
of the function of the teacher’s utterance. In the classroom context, the
teacher’s question should have been interpreted as a request to define the
word ‘suffocate’. However, rather than providing a definition, the student
took the literal meaning of the question and interpreted it as a genuine
inquiry requiring a description. In so doing, the student managed to
demonstrate both a good grasp of meaning and the ability to reply with
a word that is not only formally similar, but alliterates with ‘suffocate’ as
well.
Excerpt 4 (T = teacher; S = student)
T: Is he ill? [inquiring about a student who is absent]
S: Yes, he’s got test fever.
In Excerpt 4, the student’s response introduced a new expression that
reflected their particular reality but which, most probably, cannot be
found in other varieties of English. In Hungarian schools, continuous
assessment is carried out on a regular basis in the form of written or oral
tests in the lessons. Apart from marking absences at the beginning of a
class, teachers often ask students whether they have taken or will take
tests, since these tests may affect the students’ performance in subsequent
lessons or even lead to absences on a particular day. In the episode above,
the noun ‘test’ is used as an adjective, creating the novel compound ‘test
fever’, which carries the implication that the student who is absent did not
turn up, probably because he or she did not want to do the test.
Being tested appears to be a major concern for students in Turkey, too.
In Excerpt 5, the learners are trying to persuade the teacher to postpone a

Spontaneous language use in the EFL classroom  7

 test due to severe weather conditions; in other words, they do not want to
come to school and take the test. Below are some of the pleas the students
made:
Excerpt 5 (S1, etc. = specific student)
S1: I can carry your tea for a whole day, please!
S2: Snow was a student once, he is taking his revenge.
S3: Snow hates exams.
The students used various strategies in the hope they would be able to
soften the teacher’s heart, who, as a result, would postpone the test. S1
applied the ‘one good deed deserves another’ principle. S2 and S3 treated

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snow as if it was a human being. By using anthropomorphism, the
students not only used a literary device successfully, but managed to shift
the agent of the request from themselves to forces outside their and the
teacher’s control.
Excerpt 6 (Ss = students; S1, etc. = specific student)
S1: I had a dream, I was a king. Waked up, still king ... [trying to
boost himself and waiting for approval from his friends]
Ss: [Laughter]
S2: [Smiling] Woke ...
In Excerpt 6, S2 not only displayed metalinguistic awareness and the
knowledge of the irregular past tense form of the verb ‘wake’ but, by taking
over the teacher’s role and correcting their peer, with a single word they
managed to challenge the superior position S1 claimed for themselves.
In Excerpt 7 below, the students are discussing their work on English
grammar in relation to language improvement. They show awareness of
the use of the target language outside of the class and reflect both on the
language and on each other’s responses, as can be seen:
Excerpt 7 (S1, etc. = specific student)
S1: Grammar is necessary, especially for academic writing.
S2: Of course, but while speaking please do not worry about
grammar.
S3: See McDonalds says ‘I’m loving it’.
The source of the humour is that while discussing the role of grammar
in foreign language learning, S3’s example of not being worried about
grammar is the McDonalds slogan; this slogan demonstrates the kind of
native-speaker usage that would be considered an error in EFL contexts,
but is properly accepted outside the language class.

Discussion The findings confirm that, when allowed, students show a desire to
engage in off-topic conversation and playful talk in the language class
(Bell op.cit.). The comments of one of the candidate teachers reflect
an awareness of the benefits of spontaneous language use, and of its
motivational force in particular:

8 Éva Illés and Sumru Akcan

 My mentor said that I should avoid such distractions. But I don’t think
that time spent on real communication, real interaction is in any way
wasted. It didn’t even occur to me [that these distractions] are wrong
because students learn best when there is genuine communication, and
I can’t create anything more genuine. There was a need on the part of
the students as well, that is, they would have liked to speak in English,
many of them were willing to speak in English.
However, the classroom observations of prospective teachers’ lessons in
our study indicated that the participants seldom engaged in unplanned
language use and, apart from the teacher quoted above, did not really
see its advantages. In the interviews, it turned out that both in Hungary
and Turkey teacher candidates were also heavily influenced by what their

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mentors judged as ‘pedagogically appropriate’. In addition, prospective
teachers were highly dependent on their lesson plans. In their efforts
to cover the planned material they often felt pressed for time, which
did not allow them to lose precious minutes to spontaneous classroom
communication. As a result, and except for this one participant, off-topic
conversations were often marginalized by quickly bringing them to a
close.
Interestingly, however, what transpires from the classroom observations
is that learners have the capacity for creative language use. The use
of English by some students in Budapest and Istanbul thus clearly
contradicted Medgyes’s (1992: 343) claim that ‘non-native speakers
can never be as creative and original as those whom they have learnt to
copy’. The new compound in Excerpt 4, for instance, bears the hallmark
of linguistic creativity in that there is indeed something new which
entails ‘the creation of new linguistic forms and expressions in ongoing
interaction/discourse’ (Pitzl 2012: 37). This and other instances in our
data show that ‘creativity is a pervasive feature of more routine uses of
language’ (Maybin and Swann op.cit.: 498), not only outside but inside
the language classroom as well. When allowed, learners displayed the kind
of everyday creativity that characterizes language use in general (Maybin
and Swann op.cit.), a good example of which are the new coinages and
other novel language forms that digital telecommunication has generated
lately.
It must be noted, however, that everyday creativity as normal practice
is usually seen in relation to L1 in the literature (Pitzl ibid.). What is
remarkable about the language play in our study, therefore, is the fact
that students engaged in everyday creativity and came up with novel
expressions in the foreign language. In so doing, they demonstrated
heightened metalinguistic awareness of what is possible in the target
language as well as the ability to express their identity as Hungarian or
Turkish learners of English. Students’ creative language play also resulted
in humour that challenged the teacher’s authority (Maybin and Swann
op.cit.).
Playful, spontaneous language use in the observed lessons often included
the combination of creativity and humour. It seems that the blend of
humour and play allows students to take risks and function outside the
traditional confines of classroom communication. Through causing

Spontaneous language use in the EFL classroom  9

 laughter, humorous language play increases solidarity among the students
and, at the same time, decreases the distance between the teacher and the
learners. In addition, humour in the form of language play focuses on the
linguistic element in a contextually relevant way and is directly related to
the learners’ immediate reality. Ludic language use thus creates
learner-centred authenticity where learners use the target language in
and on their own terms, and communicate very much like they would
in situations outside the language class. In addition, by helping students
to relax, building in-group rapport and raising students’ motivation and
interest, language play benefits learners both socially and psychologically
(Schmitz op.cit.; Bell op.cit.).

Implications for Given the important role ‘less legitimate’ use plays in language

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teacher education learning, we suggest that teachers should encourage rather than
ignore or penalize students’ spontaneous, playful, and often
creative language use. In so doing, they have an additional tool
that enables them to prepare language learners for the diversity
and unpredictability of real-life communication outside the school
walls. Furthermore, by fostering creativity, teachers develop a skill
which, along with critical thinking, collaboration, motivation, and
metacognition, is considered to be vital in the twenty-first century (Lai
and Viering 2012). Another reason why such creative efforts should
be encouraged by teachers is the dominant use of ELF where, too,
different forms of linguistic creativity constitute a pervading feature of
communication (Pitzl op.cit.).
In the classroom, warm-up tasks that include topics of interest can serve
as an opportunity to involve learners’ own realities and make them use
the target language spontaneously. In addition, planning lessons with
a less tight schedule may leave time for the unpredictable twists and
turns which are bound to happen, and for which teachers should be
prepared, regardless of the particular teaching context. Noting creative
utterances would also be useful in order for teachers to understand
students’ potential to play in and with the target language. Similarly,
students’ awareness of unplanned language use can be raised by making
them reflect on and think about their own ludic utterances. Among the
variety of approaches, task-based language instruction or CLIL could be
options, since they create situations in which learners have to engage their
knowledge of the world.
Some issues affecting the use of unplanned communication and language
play in the classroom, not mentioned in earlier ELT Journal articles (for
example Cadorath and Harris op.cit.), came to light during our interviews.
In our study, some pedagogic problems were caused by the prospective
teachers’ lack of confidence both in pedagogic and linguistic terms. The
participants were inexperienced and therefore uncertain whether they
would be able to handle unplanned communication, especially when
it could lead to the possibility of students misbehaving in the lesson.
Teacher candidates were also better prepared for pre-planned classroom
language use than naturally occurring interaction. The following extract
from an interview with one of the Hungarian participants highlights this
problem:

10 Éva Illés and Sumru Akcan

 The most difficult thing is to respond spontaneously. So I can ask the
question, because obviously I do the asking, but to feed back, to provide
closure in English is very difficult.
Teacher education, therefore, should equip future teachers with the
linguistic and pedagogic knowledge and skills that enable them to enter
and exploit the relatively unchartered territory of spontaneous classroom
language use. High levels of language proficiency can help teachers
to cope with the linguistic demands of playful talk and develop the
confidence necessary to grapple with the unpredictability of going off-task.
Handling discipline problems should also be part of teacher education
courses together with the discussion of the role of humour and playful
language.

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Conclusion In order to prepare learners for the diversity and unpredictability
of communication in English in international contexts of use, an
approach which entails engaging learners on their own terms both
linguistically and schematically is necessary. This can be achieved
if English is taught as communication (Widdowson op.cit.), where
language learning and language use take place simultaneously (Larsen-
Freeman op.cit.). Since the demands of unplanned and off-task
classroom language use are very similar to what students experience
outside the school walls, it has been suggested that teachers should
create opportunities where students are allowed to experiment with
English and express their own meanings.
The findings of the study conducted with prospective teachers in Hungary
and Turkey indicate that when learners are allowed to use English
spontaneously, they often engage in the kind of creativity that characterizes
everyday communication outside school. It has been argued that humorous
and creative language play is beneficial for language learning as it
activates not only learners’ own realities but the linguistic resources and
metalinguistic skills available to them. In addition, unplanned and often
ludic language use can serve as an important motivational force resulting
in students’ active participation and increased interest in classroom
communication. The language class should be ready to accommodate the
needs of such an interactive and dynamic environment. Discussing the
potential of the classroom as a venue promoting learner participation and
authenticity should therefore be included in teacher education to ensure
that teachers are prepared to exploit the benefits of spontaneous language
use and everyday creativity in the classroom.
Final version received April 2016

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12 Éva Illés and Sumru Akcan
The authors
Éva Illés teaches in the Department of English
Applied Linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest, Hungary. She holds a PhD in ESOL from
the Institute of Education University of London.
She has a wide range of experience, including
teaching in adult, secondary, and higher education
in Hungary and Britain. Her current research areas
are pragmatics and translation in language teaching,
ELF, and teacher education.
Email: illes.eva@btk.elte.hu
Sumru Akcan is an Associate Professor in the
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Department of Foreign Language Education
at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. She
received her Master’s degree on Teaching English
as a Second Language from the University of
Cincinnati, USA in 1997. She also received
her doctorate degree on Second Language
Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) from the
University of Arizona, USA in 2002. She has
taught undergraduate and graduate courses in
teacher education and foreign language teaching
methodology at Boğaziçi University since 2002.
Her research mainly focuses on language
teacher education and foreign language teaching
methodology.
Email: sumru.akcan@boun.edu.tr