SIFAKIS

World Englishes, 2015 0883-2919
doi: 10.1111/weng.12150
Insights from ELF and WE in teacher training in Greece and Turkey
NICOS C. SIFAKIS∗ AND YASEMIN BAYYURT∗∗
ABSTRACT: The paper describes a framework for the education of ESOL teachers that is inspired
by principles grounded in research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) and world Englishes (WE). The
essential feature of such a framework is that it involves interested teachers in a critical reorientation of their
beliefs toward English language teaching, learning and communication. This transformative framework
informs what we call the ‘ELF-aware’ teacher education component. We then present a framework for a
transformative perspective for ELF-aware and WE-aware teachers and describe the phases of a teacher
education project that attempted to put this framework into practice.
INTRODUCTION
The past few years have seen a lot of scholarly discussion on the nature and impact of
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), namely, the (primarily spoken) discourse produced
in communications involving non-native users of English. Many of these discussions
have focused on defining the ELF paradigm (Seidlhofer 2001, 2004; Jenkins 2006a),
delineating the pragmatic characteristics and principles of exchanges in English by ‘non-
native speakers’ (Firth 1996; Cogo & Dewey 2006, 2012; Pitzl 2012), developing and
studying large corpora of such discourse (e.g. the VOICE corpus, Seidlhofer 2012, or
the ELFA corpus, Mauranen 2012). Other studies have considered a wide array of issues
that are intrinsically or more broadly connected with the ELF and world Englishes (WE)
domains, such as attitudes and perceptions of teachers (e.g. Sifakis & Sougari 2005;
Bayyurt 2006; Bayyurt & Erçetin 2009; Csizér & Kontra 2012; Ahn 2014) and learners
(e.g. Timmis 2002; Devrim and Bayyurt 2010; for an overview see Jenkins 2007), or
the strategies activated in engaging in successful communication involving ‘non-native
speakers’ (Sifakis 2004; Baker 2011; Nelson 2011; Deterding 2012).
To date there have been fewer attempts at looking into the implications of ELF and WE
for ESOL pedagogy. Jenkins (2000, 2002) provided a sociolinguistically based proposal
for a pronunciation curriculum that takes into consideration the characteristics and needs of
‘non-native speaker’ (NNS) communication – this was recently developed into a compre-
hensive handbook by Walker (2010). Hamid and Baldauf (2013) have argued for the need
to consider the crucial role of teachers’ considerations and perspectives in the treatment of
learners’ deviations from language standards. Other proposals have referred to implications
of ELF and WE for testing (Jenkins 2006b; Hamid 2014), the foreign language classroom
(e.g. McKay & Bokhorst-Heng 2008; Sifakis 2009) and teacher education (Sifakis 2007;
Dewey 2012). However, with particular regard to teacher education, a comprehensive pro-
posal for what might constitute a curriculum and how that may be implemented yet remains
∗ Hellenic Open University, 18 Parodos Aristotelous, Patras, 26335, Greece. E-mail: sifakis@eap.gr
∗∗ Boğaziçi University, Faculty of Education, Bebek, Istanbul, 34342, Turkey. E-mail: bayyurty@boun.edu.tr

C 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
472 Nicos C. Sifakis and Yasemin Bayyurt
to be put forward. Key questions to be addressed here are the following: What information
should an ELF-related teacher education component incorporate? To what extent would
the different ESOL teaching contexts inform such a component?
The focus of this paper is to provide some responses to these questions and to link much
of research in ELF and WE with ESOL teacher education.1 In what follows, we delineate
the particulars of what we term ‘ELF-aware teacher education’ and go on to present a
comprehensive proposal for such an endeavour. We then describe an ongoing ‘ELF-aware
teacher education’ (ELF-TEd) project, carried out under our supervision, that has put this
proposal into action, using in-service ESOL practitioners in Turkey and Greece working
in all levels of public and state education. We present a variety of teachers’ reflections
regarding their transformative journey to becoming ELF-aware teachers and link these
reflections with different principles of ELF and WE research. In the last part of the paper,
we sum up the various implications that ELF-aware teacher education can have for ESOL
practitioners and the ESOL classroom alike.
ELF AND TEACHER EDUCATION

Leading ELF scholars have always been very careful with drawing easy conclusions from
their ELF-related research for the ESOL classroom. In a 2004 paper, Seidlhofer considered
such an attempt ‘premature [ . . . ] before certain prerequisites have been met’ (Seidlhofer
2004: 209). More recently, Jenkins (2007: 241) and Seidlhofer (2011: 196–198) have
made some suggestions for an integration of some broad ELF-related concerns in the
ESOL classroom. However, Jenkins (2012: 492) cautions that ‘we do not believe it is our
place to tell teachers what to do, but that it is for ELT practitioners to decide whether/to
what extent ELF is relevant to their learners in their context’.
It could be argued that Jenkins’ claims have the following underlying suppositions:
1. that ELF and WE research is primarily responsible for providing the ‘raw’ data from
descriptions of the practices and strategies involved in the (primarily spoken) interaction
among ‘non-native speakers’ of English; and
2. that teachers who are interested in integrating ELF and WE research in their teaching
context already have the means to do so.
What is missing from the above line of thought, is the ‘intermediary’, a system or process
that will facilitate interested teachers’ access of the ever-growing and always spreading
ELF and WE research and will ‘ease’ the process of understanding, applying, evaluating
– in a sense, making sense of – such research in each different teaching context. The main
reason for the need for such an intermediary is that, as research has shown, ESOL teachers
may be aware of the global function of English and, also, of many of the implications it
brings, but still appear to be rather confused about (i) the principles for teaching that arise
from ELF/WE research and (ii) how these principles might have an actual bearing on their
own teaching context.
These difficulties are evident if we consider the studies that have looked at teachers’
perceptions and attitudes towards ELF and ELF-related concerns. To give just one example
from our own research, in a survey of Greek state school teachers, Sifakis and Sougari
(2005) showed that, while participants were aware of the need to prepare their learners
for communicating with other NNSs, they were reluctant to set aside their traditional EFL
practices of teaching standardised, or native English. In a similar vein, in the Turkish

Insights from ELF and WE in Teacher Training in Greece and Turkey 473
context, Bayyurt’s (2006) study on Turkish ESOL teachers’ perceptions of culture showed
little awareness of the changing status of English and emphasised the significance of the
traditional EFL practices. Llurda (2009) highlighted the function of non-native teachers
as best promoters of EIL for their learners in a pedagogical context that is still largely
norm-dependent. Similar cases are presented in Jenkins (2007). In many ways, learners
seem to be more ‘ready’ to be exposed to the ELF and WE perspectives than their teachers
(see Jenkins et al. 2011: 307).
These provisos notwithstanding, there have been a handful of attempts at delineating
some of the implications of ELF for teacher education. For example, Dewey (2012) presents
an evaluation of existing teacher qualification programmes and finds them wanting in terms
of the real impact of ELF on their specifications about language accuracy, correctness,
context, or even teacher autonomy. Blair (2015) outlined the basics of an ELF-aware
pedagogy that prioritises the ‘post-native’ model of learner multicompetence and focuses
on informing teachers and learners about the variability and diversity of English. Both
Dewey and Blair refer to teacher trainees’ perceptions about a changing ESOL world that
is influenced by ELF and WE-oriented concerns. Earlier, Sifakis (2007) discussed the
importance of focusing on a transformative perspective for ELF teacher education and
drew a detailed roadmap for such a perspective. What follows is an attempt to build upon
these suggestions.
Towards an ELF-aware teacher education

Many researchers seem to agree that, when it comes to fully appreciating research in ELF
and WE, what is needed is a radical re-appreciation of teachers’ beliefs about their long-
established practices. For example, in a paper advocating a ‘practice-based perspective’,
Sung-Yul Park & Wee (2011: 368) contended that ‘the debate over ELF should proceed to
question some of the more deeply rooted assumptions we hold about language’. Similarly,
Seidlhofer (2008: 3–4) argued for the replacement of teachers’ ‘normative mindset’ on the
basis that norms are ‘continually shifting and changing’. And Widdowson (2012: 5) has
more recently claimed that the usefulness of ELF is in helping us ‘to consider its effect as
a catalyst for change in established ways of thinking’. It goes without saying, therefore,
that what is necessary, when it comes to linking ELF and WE research with the ESOL
classroom, is a reorientation of teachers’ preconceptions and convictions, or, as Sifakis
(2007) has argued, a transformation of their deeper beliefs about teaching, learning and
communication. This is where our proposal for an ELF-aware teacher education framework
comes in.
We define such a framework as the state in which ESOL teachers engage with the
concepts, principles and criteria of the ELF and WE literature and relate them to their own
teaching practice, with a view to bringing about changes in it. The transformative frame-
work (which draws from the transformative learning theory put forward by adult education
theorist Jack Mezirow (Mezirow 1991; Mezirow and Associates 2000) is useful in that it
asks participants to confront and change their own established viewpoints. It incorporates
a critical outlook of the teaching and learning practices and of their connection with the
functions of English in our world today. However, the transformative framework goes
beyond the critical perspective, in the sense that the latter mainly focuses on practices that
lie outside the teacher’s mind, whereas the former focuses and attempts to reformulate the
inside worldview of the teacher. While the critical perspective is a necessary precondition,

in that the teacher is expected to be able to fully appreciate the idiosyncrasies of his/her
teaching context, the transformative framework demands that the teacher takes a more pro-
active position, (a) by changing his/her convictions about issues that are typically taken for
granted, such as normativity and standardness, fluency and accuracy, or NNSs’ ownership
of English, and (b) by designing and reflecting on the impact of instructional sequences
(tasks or whole lessons) that put these new notions to the test in the actual teaching context.
We prefer the term ‘ELF-aware’, as it seems to us to more adequately refer to an
autonomous ESOL practitioner making decisions about their teaching contexts, rather
than on what the ELF or WE research may be seen to ‘dictate’. To that extent, the term is
in accordance with ELF scholars’ cautious remarks about the need to leave the application
of ELF-related principles in the ESOL classroom to the teachers themselves. ELF-aware
teachers, then, become owners of ELF, as they come to appreciate it through linking it to
their individual teaching and learning contexts and specifications.
As we understand it, ELF-aware teacher education may involve all aspects of teacher
preparation, from extensive education courses to pre-service teachers to smaller training
programmes for in-service teachers. What is important in this framework is that teachers:
1. engage with the principles of ELF and WE;
2. are prompted to form their own understanding of what these may mean for their own
teaching context;
3. design whole lessons or individual activities on that basis;
4. teach these lessons or activities; and
5. evaluate the impact of the lessons or activities for their learners, themselves and other
stakeholders.
Throughout these phases teachers are involved in an on-going reflective appreciation
of beliefs, deeper convictions and practices. They are prompted to engage not only with
their current teaching context, but with other contexts they may have experienced (see, for
example, the very useful case study in Canagarajah 2012) and, perhaps more importantly,
refer to their own experiences as learners of English as a foreign language. Different
teachers will have different perspectives about the importance of ELF/WE research and
principles for their own context – for example, they may be involved in a predominantly
high stakes examination-oriented setting that does not give them much or any room for
initiative; or they may have other reasons for disagreeing with the whole ELF perspective
that they may not wish to depart from. It follows that there will be different reflective
‘journeys’ made by each and every participant. The important thing here is that the ELF-
aware teacher education programme acts as an opportunity for teachers to reflect on many
aspects of English language teaching, and that the teacher educator acts as facilitator for
each teacher participant.
THE ELF-TED PROJECT

The project began in October 2012 and completed its pilot phase in July 2013. In
September 2012 the coordinators sent out invitations to many teachers working in all
levels of public and private education settings in Turkey and Greece. While many
teachers responded to the invitations, 32 teachers registered online and came to our
first meeting. Of those, 12 teachers (11 from Turkey and 1 from Greece) com-
pleted all phases of the project. The essential component of the project is its website

(http://teacherdevelopment.boun.edu.tr/), which has two sections, a public section that is

open to everyone and a restricted members-only section. The public section presents the
project’s aims and further information concerning the role of ELF, the transformative
framework and the ELF-aware training syllabus (more on which below). The restricted
section contains the actual content of the syllabus and participants’ responses.
The ELF-TEd project unfolded in three broad phases: a theoretical phase, in which
teacher participants were informed about a variety of ELF and WE-related concerns; an
application phase, where teachers were asked to link the knowledge and skills from the
first phase with their own teaching context (through some form of instructional experimen-
tation); and an evaluation phase, where teachers were prompted to raise, discuss, reflect
on, issues that arose from their application of the theoretical concerns.
Phase 1: Theory
In this phase participants were prompted to:
r read an extensive selection of published papers on ELF (with an inclusion of YouTube
videos by David Crystal and Sir Ken Robinson) – these were organised in sections
that referred to key issues addressed in the ELF literature (e.g. the role of stan-
dardness, ‘native speakers’ vs. ‘non-native speakers’, identity, ownership, examples
from published ELF discourse, etc.) and were accessible through the project portal
(see below for more information on the papers);
r respond to questions or prompts that accompanied each paper – these questions
are carefully phrased to raise teachers’ awareness of the above issues and, more
importantly, link what they read to their own teaching context (more on the questions
below);
r exchange experiences and viewpoints on an online forum; and
r begin to make sense of the various complicated terms/notions in ways that are
relevant for their own context.
As already mentioned, the ELF-TEd syllabus consists of a large number of published
articles and book chapters written by ELF scholars and other researchers. The articles are
placed into categories that participants have to access one after the other. These categories,
or sections, are the following:
r section A. Understanding the global character of English;
r section B. Presenting the ELF paradigm;
r section C. Describing the ELF paradigm;
r section D. Some critiques of, additions and alternatives to the ELF paradigm;
r section E. Applications and tangible suggestions for the classroom;
r section F. Tools for teaching and learning success; and
r section G: Teacher autobiographies.
The papers in each category are also numbered, so that participants know the order
in which they are invited to read them. The underlying assumption here is that partici-
pants begin with the broader orientations (section A, which begins with a list of videos
about current demands in education by Sir Ken Robinson and about the global character
of English by David Crystal) and move on to the more particular aspects of ELF defi-
nitions and principles (section B) and descriptions of ELF discourse (section C). Once

participants have a basic understanding of the ELF perspective, they are then asked to read
critiques of the ELF paradigm (section D) and begin to prepare for the application phase
of their training, looking at published papers that focus on curricular and pedagogical
implications of ELF (section E) and further reflections on what we consider to be useful
information for this phase, namely, the post-method condition in ESOL pedagogy and
understanding and applying the principles of differentiated instruction.
The entire syllabus contains a total of 66 papers. It is obviously beyond the scope of this
paper to provide full details of all the articles incorporated, but section A has articles by
Crystal on global English, excerpts from the books by Graddol on the future of English
and by Holliday on native speakerism. In section B participants are invited to read, among
others, Seidlhofer’s papers on defining ELF, whereas section C incorporates papers on the
notions of intelligibility, pragmatics, lexical innovation, accommodation and negotiation
in NNS-NNS interactions. In section D participants read about learners’ and teachers’
attitudes towards ELF and standardised varieties of English, the role of ‘native speakers’,
implications for testing and, also, Phillipson’s critique of ELF.
The ELF-TEd syllabus would not be complete just with the inclusion of these papers,
though. It would be very difficult for participants to know what to look for in each paper
(we have to remember that these papers were not written with such a training aspect in
mind). We therefore provided a large number of prompts, questions and statements that
were meant to do the following: (a) direct participants’ attention to the necessary part(s) of
each paper that we wanted them to focus on; (b) present them with challenging remarks that
would perhaps disorient them, with an aim to arouse their curiosity and trigger reflection;
(c) ask them to link what they read with their own teaching context; (d) ask them to
begin to think about how they would incorporate what they read in a lesson plan. In this
way, the questions aimed to help teachers use narrative tools while engaging in a critical
self-analysis of their convictions about NNS interaction in English and ESOL teaching
(Johnson & Golombek 2011). The total number of such prompts was 118. Figure 1 has a
few characteristic examples of these prompts.
As the syllabus provided everything participants needed to start working with ELF and
WE, it was presupposed that much of the work would be done by participants working
with the articles and answering the questions. In a way, therefore, the project followed
the distance learning mode. As we began to collect their reflections, we decided that we
would not provide specific feedback to their input, for fear that it may be seen as criticism
of what they did. It quickly became clear, though, that participants enjoyed their readings
and responded to them with their reflections, but needed moral support; we promptly
decided to host fortnightly meetings in Istanbul, where Yasemin would invite participants
to attend with their questions and problems and Nicos would participate as co-coordinator
via Skype.
Phase 2: Application
In this phase participants were invited to engage in a mini action research project. They
were asked to develop and teach ELF-aware lesson plans for their own classes. These
plans took a number of forms. Some teachers designed one or more original lesson
plans that deviated from their current textbook. Others opted to supplement the textbook
with additional activities, thereby improving its ELF-related status. Although our original
intention in this project was to have teachers design and teach their lessons, when this

(Section A)
In defining a global language, Crystal refers to critical issues and questions. In your journal, make a list of
those features. Then, think about your own personal perspective – to what extent do you agree with Crystal’s
claims? […] If you took a different perspective before reading these excerpts, are you persuaded to think
about these issues more critically? What has made you shift your perspective, if at all?
(Section B)
In this article, Seidlhofer makes a link between ELF and WE. Can you spot these links? What does she have
to say about ‘ownership’ and ‘identity’? Do you find the points raised here useful for your own teaching
context? Write your reflections in your journal.
(Section C)
The paper describes some findings from the VOICE Corpus. Focus on the processes used by NNSs of
English when they communicate and the corresponding examples from p. 30 onwards. Make a list of the
processes described and write your reflections about the different aspects of creativity of NNSs in
establishing intelligible communication. Which of the processes and strategies mentioned do you find
particularly interesting or striking? How do you respond to the fact that, while NNSs are creative
communicators, they tend to make certain grammatical and other ‘mistakes’? Why do you think are such
‘mistakes’ created by them? How would you react to them if you encountered them in the foreign language
classroom? Ultimately, do you start to see a ‘gap’ between what we teach in the classroom and how NNSs
behave as successful communicators?
(Section D)
In this paper, Holliday mentions the notion of ‘Centre’ and ‘Periphery’. He also denotes a number of
problems regarding the ways in which the ‘Centre’ imposes certain aspects of culture on the ‘Periphery’.
First, think about where you and your teaching situation belong: the ‘Centre’ or the ‘Periphery’? Justify your
answer. Then, try to establish aspects of your own teaching practices that can be characterised by a native-
speakeristic attitude, as opposed to the ‘cosmopolitan’ view proposed by the author. In your answer, try to
offer specific examples from your teaching experience, the way that you teach, the coursebooks used, the
curriculum implemented, etc.
(Section E)
What is the importance of intercultural communicative competence in language communication? What skills
should an interculturally competent learner display? In what ways can such competence be introduced and
developed in the ESOL classroom? Do you find the case study useful for your own teaching context?
Figure 1. Examples of prompts and questions from the ELF-TEd syllabus
was not made possible we prompted them to present their ideas to the group during a
meeting and, if they wanted, micro-teach parts of the lesson to the rest of the group. In this
way, participants began to rationalise what ELF can actually mean in terms of teaching
and learning (inside the classroom), not merely communicating (outside the classroom),
thereby localising, or putting to the test, their own understanding of ELF.
We would like to stress that we, as project coordinators, did not interfere at all with
these lessons, their design or teaching. All we wanted was to document how these teachers
would put into practice what they had read. For this reason, we asked participants to audio
or video-record their ELF-aware lessons and to upload them as podcasts on the project’s
forum, together with their original lesson plan.
Phase 3: Evaluation
In the final phase, participants engaged in a self and/or peer-evaluation of their lessons or
activities. They were all invited to consider their own and their colleagues’ lessons. The
criteria that we set involved teachers in thinking about the links between the original lesson

plan and the actual lesson taught, the different ways in which ELF-related concerns (e.g.
the role of ‘native speaker’ norms versus the role of ‘non-native speaker’ communicative
efficiency) materialised in the actual lesson, the ways in which certain obstacles were
overcome, and so on. The discussions that ensued shed light on other concerns as well. For
example, there were exchanges that focused on the fact that many EFL classes in Turkey
and Greece, especially those that focus on preparing learners for high-stakes examinations,
are monolingual and/or monocultural (which may also be true for other Expanding Circle
contexts). All evaluations were uploaded on the project website.
SAMPLING PARTICIPANTS’ REFLECTIONS

As it would be difficult to present examples from all the different phases of the project, for
want of space, in what follows we present excerpts from two focus group interviews that
were carried out with the Turkish participant teachers (11, all women) during and after the
completion of the project’s pilot phase. The intention here is to document their perceptions
about their first-hand experience from the project and their views concerning the strengths
and weaknesses of ELF-aware teaching as they see it, as well as other implications that
arise for them and their context. The interviews were taken in two installments, the first
in February 2012, after the teachers completed the first phase of the project, reading the
articles and answering the corresponding questions, and the second in June 2012, after
they (10 of them, to be precise) completed the teaching of at least one original ELF-aware
lesson. The interviews took place in Istanbul and were set up to include at least 5 or 6
teachers in each sitting. All of the teachers participated. Each focus group interview lasted
for about one hour and was coordinated by both authors, who acted as prompters. The
interviews were recorded and transcribed.
We were first interested to see how teachers defined ELF for themselves, once exposed
to the literature. In the excerpt below, one participant perceives ELF to have a system
of its own that is dictated by successful communication between NNSs, and identifies
standardised English as a ‘force’ that is ‘imposed’ globally:
Well I want to express what I understand from ELF. ELF describes the communication between non-
native speakers whose first language and cultural backgrounds are diverse. This communication cannot
be forced to use standard forms that are imposed on learners throughout the world because it has its own
dynamics, its own rules. Nobody can assert ownership on ELF communication because once a language
is a global language or a global lingua franca it belongs to the people who use it.
Participants were quick to highlight the differences between ELF and EFL teaching.
According to this teacher:
First and foremost, I should note that one of the most important lessons I have learnt throughout the
ELF-TEd project is that teaching ELF involves more systematic planning and more complex decision-
making processes than typical EFL teaching, meaning that an ELF teacher should have developed a
broader knowledge-base than an EFL one.
There are many instances in the focus group where teachers acknowledged a change
in their perspective resulting from their engagement with the ELF/WE literature. In the

following excerpt, the teacher claims that her reflections have led her to think critically
about the Turkish education system as a whole:
I want to also add something as far as I read these articles, as I say before many times it changes my
mind every time and one day after reading an article I realized may be our weakest chain in our education
system.
Another aspect of teachers’ exposure to the ELF literature is their awareness of the role of
English globally and what they are and are not ‘allowed’ to do as teachers:
For the first time in my teaching career, I went through a year which changed me a lot. ELF is the name of
this change. Now, I separated my life into two; before and after this project. Before ELF, I was in a great
endeavour to be a native-like English teacher. Because I was taught so. Native world which includes
Great Britain and USA, was the authority of English for me. Yes, I knew that people were speaking
English everywhere but I wasn’t aware of this serious issue in a global scale.
Instruction-wise, participants engaging in ELF-aware lessons expressed a shift in the way

that they handle error correction in the classroom. In the following excerpts, three teachers
link this shift with the raising of their self-confidence as teachers and as speakers:
Most teachers are obsessed with using English correctly. Minor mistakes which even do not disrupt
intelligibility are corrected by teachers. I must confess that I used to be one of them before I met this
project group. I had been stuck to EFL model throughout my teaching career, but after I got acquainted
with the term ELF and made the readings related to it, I realised that teaching English as a foreign
language is not the right methodology to apply in a country like Turkey.
As an ELF-aware teacher I changed my attitude of teaching. I create an environment that have sense of
security for students in the classroom, they feel they can ask for help and using target language. Also I
have changed my attitude towards error correction and pronunciation. As a NNS I feel more confident
and not strict about speaking like a British or American.
Before this project; I didn’t have so much sense of self-esteem. So I sometimes hesitated to talk during
the lessons because of my pronunciation. Since even in teacher’s room; other teachers criticize each
other’s pronunciation harshly even they say it is just a joke. But it is the fact that people has the view
based on native speakerism. But now I don’t pay attention such criticism.
Most of the transformative experiences reported by teachers were related to pronuncia-

tion teaching. As this teacher says:
Through the readings I have done so far, I have gone through an enlightenment process and it has had
some consequences on my own teaching methods. I used to overcorrect like most of my colleagues, but
now I am more lenient with students. I used to spend most of the class time doing pronunciation drills to
guarantee that my students would sound like native speakers of English. However things changed after
I learned so many things about ELF. Now I feel more confident when I speak English with both native
and non-native speakers because I know that it is impossible to achieve a native-like fluency and I don’t
mind if I am always using the correct structures or not. Similarly I can now consider students’ mistakes
from a different angle. If those mistakes do not interrupt intelligibility I do not correct them or even I do
not consider them as mistakes anymore.

Reading the articles on ELF and WE, and thinking about possible links with their own
experience, was an eye-opening experience for this participant:
In these articles I realized lots of cues for me to use in my classrooms, for example, the most interesting
for me was the simple past tense irregular forms, I mean you can say writed instead of wrote. But in the
beginning of this semester I heard an example like that. I thought that this is bad, this is not a good way
of using English even though I am a participant in this project and I read a lot about ELF, I thought it
like that, but when I read this article I realized I don’t know anything. Although these perspectives exist
it is hard to apply to my actual teaching situation immediately, I have many more things to learn.
The same participant goes on to offer an example of how she perceives the links between
pronunciation, identity and social behaviour in the classroom, and goes on to acknowledge
that this needs to change, but it will take time:
Now I know that the non-native speaker best suits to the non-native classroom. So when I go to my
classroom I feel confident. [ . . . ] I learn lots of things and also the pronunciation issue what is the best
way to teach it or how to teach it? What perspective should I focus on? And now I realize that we have
some standards to some extent but if we see some variety some variability we can accept it. For example,
in my classroom, when I ask my students whether they are in the classroom or not they say either ‘here’
or ‘absent’, most of the time they don’t want to pronounce ‘absent’ in the standard way, they say it with
an open ‘a’ (which is neither American nor British) and we laugh at when they do that. They know how
to pronounce it correctly but they want to say it that way and it is understandable among them. I do not
correct them or get angry at them when they pronounce words in a funny way because I know they know
how to pronounce the word in a standard way but they just want to use it that way in that specific context
so I think my level of tolerance increases as long as I read these articles towards my students and their
errors as well.
Another issue raised is the extent to which the local school context helps or hinders
ELF-aware teaching. The following teacher works at a privately owned primary school,
where learners’ exposure to NS English is very high in the agenda:
Yesterday I had a meeting with the school management. The basic titles of the meeting was the teachers’
situation in the classroom. They told me that the teachers shouldn’t hear any Turkish words in an English
classroom. Because they need to have a natural foreign language environment. If the teacher does not
talk in English; the students won’t feel the native speaker environment and won’t try to force themselves
to speak English. I talked about our project in detail but they don’t get convinced. They were still saying
that you ruin the atmosphere in the classroom.
Another source of pressure in the same school context comes from parents, who, according
to this teacher, view language learning as a commodity: ‘unfortunately, that is the case,
they want to buy the language also’. She goes on:
And our parents are saying that which English are you teaching British English or American English what
is the basis of your coursebooks, we mostly say British English [ . . . ] But while explaining something in
the private interviews with the parents I tried to explain them, I mean after this project, especially after
reading those articles now actually I am more aware of the things and talking about when I am trying to
explain them what it is or what an ideal English language education should be like. For example, they
come and say, OK now it is October and my daughter and son doesn’t speak English, they expect them
to speak in English.

Despite these circumstances, young learners at the same school context appear to be more
open to ELF awareness than other stakeholders – this is in agreement with similar studies
of primary school learners’ perceptions in Chile (Kormos et al. 2011) and Finland (Ranta
2010). As another teacher working at the same primary school setting claims:
As I read the texts and thought about the questions, I gradually realized that ELF is what we need while
teaching English to the new generation. My students were first graders so I thought that it was very hard
to implement ELF in a very young learners’ classroom, but I have to say that it was so easy and enjoyable
with them. They were born into a world which is changing day by day. Maybe that’s why they got the
main essence of ELF quickly.
Once teachers understand what is involved in ELF-aware instruction and once they think
about the extent to which they can integrate such activities in their context, they realize
how they can help their learners go through the same transformative journey that they went
through. The following excerpt shows how one participant used simple questions to prompt
her learners to becoming aware of the potential of intelligibility in spoken interaction:
Our course books are designed in British English so all the videos and audio resources include a heavy
British accent. If I were the teacher before the project, I’d have probably imitated the accent and taught it
to my students in that way. When one of my students asked to me ‘The woman [the informant refers to the
voice from the CD] says ‘hair’ in a different way than you. Which one is true?’ I answered him as ‘She
is speaking British English because she was probably born in England. Did you understand both of us
while speaking?’ He said ‘Yes’. Then I said ‘That’s the important thing. Being clear is the most important
thing while someone is speaking’. After that day, whenever I expose them to English-speaking children
videos from all over the world, they found it very funny and became very happy as they understand what
the children said.
As the two excerpts below show (by two teachers working in the secondary education level),
ELF-aware teachers act as facilitators, using everyday circumstances as opportunities for
raising learners’ awareness of how English is used in different communicative settings:
In a different case, I observed how my students gained self-confidence to use their communication skills
when needed. For a couple of weeks, we had Norwegian and Dutch assistant teachers with us in our
lessons. I emphasized to my students that our visitors don’t know our language and we don’t know theirs.
The only means to communicate is English. You should see them. They didn’t care about grammatical
mistakes or their inabilities of building up a sentence. They tried really hard to communicate with the
teachers.
I teach at a high school and I have been observing what is happening in my classroom since the beginning
of the year and I believe that an ELF-aware classroom makes the communication easier. Furthermore,
they have made research and have brought extra materials to the classroom like a film and music clip
which includes Hindu English. As nobody laugh at each other for pronunciation mistakes they are more
active in the classroom and they are eager to learn more. And one last point is that none of the students
asks if they learn British English or American English.

CONCLUSION
In this paper we have presented a proposal for an in-service ELF-aware teacher education
programme that involved teachers in reading the ELF and WE literature, reflecting on
their perceptions about related concerns, and developing, teaching and evaluating original
ELF-aware lessons for their learners. We have also presented an account of the pilot im-
plementation of the project which involved Turkish ESOL teachers and offered participant
teachers’ perceptions from that phase. In this final section we sum up what we have learned
from this experience so far.
The teachers who participated in the ELF-TEd project found ELF a straightforward
enough notion. They appreciated the different elements involved and were able to establish
key distinctions both between ELF and standardised varieties of English (on the level of the
use of English in spoken interaction involving NNSs) and between ELF and EFL (on the
level of instruction). Having said that, teacher participants did not consider ELF and EFL
to be an either/or situation. Their engagement with the ELF literature and their familiarity
with every aspect of their local context prompted them to want to integrate both, to the
extent that this was possible. We saw that this was the case across contexts.
What is more, teachers saw their ELF-aware training as a window to becoming aware
of new developments in ELT. This made them reflect about broader issues that were
related to the Turkish educational system. In other words, teachers saw their engagement
with ELF not merely as a means of getting to know the ELF construct but as a broader
opportunity for their own development as reflective teachers. Their engagement with the
ELF/WE literature and the corresponding reflective questions prompted them to rethink
the effectiveness of their teaching practices, and consider re-allocating time spent on
certain aspects of the curriculum and course book. This resulted in a re-orientation of
their convictions regarding (a) their self-awareness as ‘non-native speakers’ and (b) their
use of instructional techniques such as error-correction. Both of these re-orientations or
transformations resulted in raising their self confidence as NNS communicators and as
teachers (in ways similar to the ones described in Park 2012).
The experimentation with what is possible for different contexts probably accounted for
teachers’ descriptions of their learners’ positive, even enthusiastic reactions to the ELF-
aware lessons they designed. This implies that ELF-aware language learning materials
work best when they are ‘locally’ designed, by the teachers who know the idiosyncrasies of
their own classroom context better than anyone else. This confirms Hamid and Baldauf’s
(2013: 490) caveat that the best way to make teachers tangibly aware ‘of plurality of
Englishes, multiplicity of norms and the value of multilingualism’ is to involve ‘the
crucial gate-keepers of languages and varieties operating in the pedagogical sphere’. In
this sense, ELF-aware instruction does not prescribe a particular teaching methodology
or even a specific curriculum. Our experience from this project shows that it can be
integrated or embedded within a traditional EFL curriculum, provided this integration is
the responsibility of the teachers themselves. Teachers believed that their learners could
gain from becoming ELF-aware, without this necessarily influencing the way EFL is taught
in a country like Turkey. This was the case even in contexts where stakeholder perceptions
strongly favoured the standardised English paradigm. In many ways, therefore, it could be
argued that non-native teachers operating in Expanding Circle contexts (like Turkey) will
more readily endorse the integration of WE in their classroom once they have understood
and appreciated the validity and function of their own ELF varieties.

What we found from this pilot phase of the ELF-TEd project was that ELF-aware teacher
education is interesting in that it asks teachers to draw their attention to a particular reality
they may or may not be aware of, see which aspects of that reality (communication and
instruction-wise) are possible to be implemented in their local context, and experiment with
different teaching ideas on that basis. This entire process is beneficial for them, because
it places them in a reflective journey that prompts them to see their educational context
in a critical way and, as a result, helps them develop as teachers. More importantly, these
benefits are evident whether the original ELF-aware lessons suggested by the teachers
are appropriate or not. After all, innovation in teaching is hard to come by and requires
repetitive attempts and further ongoing reflection. What this project has shown is that
participant teachers experienced this process as a serious learning curve in their careers
as teachers. In this sense, it could be argued that, if ELF-aware teacher education is
organised along the lines of transformative education, it has the potential of becoming
really challenging and perhaps even innovative, as an ESOL teacher education process, in
that it goes further to ask that teachers critically reflect on issues that might be potentially
life-changing or transformative not only for them but, more importantly, for their learners
and even their wider social circle.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study is supported by Boğaziçi University Research Projects (project number: 8000). We would like to thank all the
teachers who took part in the project.
NOTES
1. Throughout this article, we consciously set out to integrate ELF and WE approaches in describing and analysing our
data. We realise that the two are not always compatible and we are aware of the attempts to see links between them
(see papers in World Englishes, volume 28, issue 2). For the purpose of this paper, however, we are interested in
integrating both research perspectives in teacher education. We have chosen to use the term ELF as a way of focusing
more on the discourse and communicative practices exhibited in Expanding Circle contexts (like Greece and Turkey)
by so-called ’non-native speakers’.
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(Received 8 March 2015)


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World Englishes, 2015 0883-2919

Insights from ELF and WE in teacher training in Greece and Turkey

NICOS C. SIFAKIS∗ AND YASEMIN BAYYURT∗∗

ELF AND TEACHER EDUCATION

Towards an ELF-aware teacher education

THE ELF-TED PROJECT

(http://teacherdevelopment.boun.edu.tr/), which has two sections, a public section that is

Figure 1. Examples of prompts and questions from the ELF-TEd syllabus

SAMPLING PARTICIPANTS’ REFLECTIONS

Instruction-wise, participants engaging in ELF-aware lessons expressed a shift in the way

Most of the transformative experiences reported by teachers were related to pronuncia-

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