Bayyurt, Yasemin and Mario Saraceni: Bloomsbury World Englishes Volume 3: Pedagogies

The volume reflects the growing interest in developing and researching pedagogical frameworks for World Englishes (WE) (e.g., Kirkpatrick 2021), but also English as a lingua franca (ELF) (Sifakis and Tsantila 2019), English as an international language (EIL) (e.g., Tajeddin and Alemi 2021) and Global Englishes (GE) (e.g., Rose and Galloway 2019). One of the unique contributions of the volume is that it succeeds in seamlessly merging the complex dimensions depicted by the different established orientations to the English used beyond the so-called Inner Circle. This is no small achievement of the volume’s editors, themselves internationally recognised scholars in the field, who bring together, in this book, some of the leading researchers and theoreticians of pedagogy across these fields.

The book, which is the third in a series of volumes published by Bloomsbury concerning World Englishes, incorporates 17 chapters categorised in four sections: “General Principles” (five chapters), “Native Speakerism” (four chapters), “English as a Medium of Instruction” (four chapters) and “Focus on Specific Contexts” (four chapters). The chapters are preceded by a useful prologue by Jenkins and Lopriore and a helpful introduction by Bayyurt.

It is interesting to note that, to date, there have been no edited volumes focusing exclusively on the pedagogy of WE. The extensive editions on WE that are published are primarily concerned with (a) describing WE, itself a monumental task, as there are countless WE contexts that evolve ceaselessly (e.g., Buschfeld and Kautzsch 2020) and (b) reflecting on themes like norms, cultures, politics, and identities (e.g., Schreier et al. 2020). Pedagogical considerations are rather downplayed in these volumes and seem to be at best relegated to a section of a handful of chapters. There is probably a reason for this and, while the editors of this volume do not explicitly mention it, it is often alluded to in the chapters. In recent years, there has been more research published on the pedagogy of ELF, EIL, and GE than on that of WE. A quick look at the articles of the two flagship journals for ELF (JELF) and WE (World Englishes) demonstrates this (e.g., see Sifakis 2018). What is even more interesting is that the main underlying topics in these proposals seem to indicate the same major concern: namely, that what needs to be targeted and ultimately changed is stakeholders’ (especially teachers’ and learners’) established attitudes.

Attitudes are at the epicentre of most chapters in this volume, which offer interesting and informative viewpoints. For example, Hall’s chapter focuses on teachers’ attitudes. He claims that one of the main obstacles to integrating Global Englishes in the language classroom is teachers’ deep-seated ideologically laden convictions about the predominance of Standard English. His proposal, titled “Teacher education about English for global learners,” identifies five principles underlining reflective teacher education programmes that engage teachers’ conceptualisation of the normative, social, and cognitive dimensions of English. In his own chapter, Crowther reiterates the centrality of teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards English language use and perceives the role of GE-informed Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as a vehicle for reinforcing critical ELF awareness. Matsuda’s comprehensive orientation of the history of the so-called native speaker bias in English Language Teaching (ELT) is defined with reference to perceptions of non-native speakers as deficient users of the language. She goes on to debunk what she calls the three myths about native English speaker teachers: that they are the exclusive owners of the linguistic and cultural capital of English, that their use of English is by default the most effective one and that, by extension, this use is the undisputed norm in ELT.

What all authors seem to agree on is that such attitudes can only be dealt with and ultimately transformed through the implementation of a critical reflection component embedded in both ELT pedagogy and in teacher education. A large part of this component includes providing information about the new state of things regarding English. Galloway reports the findings of an interviews-based study of a group of in-service teachers attending an MSc TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) programme that incorporated the Global Englishes for Language Teaching (GELT) perspective and informed them about GE-related topics such as WE and ELF, translanguaging and the internationalisation of higher education. Her research shows extensive evidence of nativespeakerist characteristics in a host of ELT domains, from curricula to courseware to pedagogical approaches. She identifies several factors that impact nativespeakerism, one of which is “objective” (state-controlled curriculum design) and a further two are linked to stakeholders’ favourable attitudes towards Standard English. In their own chapter, Selvi and Yazan problematise the ingredients of language teachers’ professional identity vis-à-vis the native/non-native speaker dichotomy and propose a GELT-informed perspective that prioritises a critical-reflective approach to teaching and teacher education and a relationship between teachers and learners that is open to ethnolinguistic diversity and the negotiation of all aspects of identity, including the linguistic and the cultural.

The follow-up to focusing on attitudes and engaging teachers and learners in critical reflection is prompting action. Two chapters tackle this with reference to language learning materials, which, as we all know, play a vital role in ELT. Vettorel highlights the importance of teachers, operating in their local context, in authenticating materials for their learners. She points out that both language inputs and learning activities incorporated in published courseware can be rendered ELF-aware through the integration of additional inputs selected from online resources and bilingual or translingual language use, following a strategic process of localisation by teachers. Syrbe and Rose provide a helpful guide that teachers can follow to establish the possible norm-bound and native-speaker-led “hidden curriculum” of the materials that they use. The reflective focus of the sample lessons that they offer as examples of raising learners’ intercultural awareness is very useful.

Two more chapters offer specific suggestions for prompting critical reflection and changing learners’ attitudes. Murata discusses the practices surrounding the use of English in Japanese higher education settings and focuses on a course titled “WE and ELF” in the Department of English Language and Literature of a Japanese university. Her extensive research shows that employing teaching assistants from different linguacultural backgrounds in this course helped students to develop positive attitudes towards ELF and WE. The chapter by Fan Fang and Baker is another comprehensive attempt at debunking the myth of the preponderance of native speakers in EMI (English as the Medium of Instruction) settings. They propose the reconceptualisation of EMI with reference to the multilingual and intercultural nature of Global Englishes and suggest broad ways of designing a GE-oriented critical pedagogy that combines learners’ first language (L1) and translanguaging communicative experiences, thereby promoting their intercultural competence and global citizenship.

With regard to curriculum development and implementation, Doğançay-Aktuna and Hardman’s chapter shows that teachers’ reluctance to dismiss the predominance of native speaker norms in their own practice can be accounted for with reference to an inherent resistance to curricular innovation. As a case in point, the authors report on their study of a group of USA-based MA TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) students’ perspectives towards integrating plurilithic English in their contexts and link their perspectives and practices to the processes involved in the diffusion of innovation. Lowe and Kiczkowiak posit that, despite the enormous turnout of research debunking native-speakerism, there has been relatively little progress in curriculum development and actual pedagogy. The authors build upon the concept of ELF-aware pedagogy (Bayyurt and Sifakis 2015; Sifakis 2019) to suggest the ingredients of an “ELF mindset” and “ELF skillset” as “a set of tangible linguistic, communicative, and intercultural skills which students can employ in international communicative situations” (p. 148). The focus is on prompting discussion, amongst learners, of concerns that raise ELF awareness, e.g., discussing their perceptions about “foreign accent”.

Yet another helpful dimension of the volume helps us understand how the global spread of English actually impacts specific contexts. İnal, Bayyurt and Kerestecioğlu present a useful overview of EMI in Turkey and highlight that, while English is selected as a means of internationalising education and is perceived by stakeholders to offer better career opportunities, it may also result in both instructors and students feeling doubtful and vulnerable as users of English. D’Angelo reports on the expansion of EMI courses in Japanese universities and, based on his own experience as a lecturer of World Englishes at Chukyo University, attests to the expansion of WE courses in tertiary education management and economics programmes in the country. He postulates that Japan’s decision “to increase its EMI ‘footprint’” can be coupled with a commitment for prompting university students’ “critical yet positive view of their roles in the hot, flat, and crowded world” (p. 219). Llurda and Mancho-Barés present a different perspective of the integration of English in tertiary education in Spain and refer to the example of the University of Lleida in Catalonia, where English is not only officially recognised as one of the languages of instruction (it is referred to as a “third language”), but it is nevertheless used extensively as a means of internationalising the curriculum (p. 226). The authors comment that the integration of EMI courses is seen as a complement to more traditional English for Specific Purposes (or, better, English for Academic Purposes) courses, with the latter offering the materials and activities within specific academic disciplines and the former the realistic communicative context. Siqueira and Gimenez present in some detail the innovative characteristics of the recently published Brazilian National Curriculum (BNCC), which explicitly endorses an ELF orientation as a means of promoting linguistic and cultural diversity. The authors are persuasive in underlining that, while BNCC identifies English language teaching as a springboard for integrating pedagogy and politics to develop school-goers’ critical appreciation of the global reality, in certain respects it espouses a prescriptive understanding of the teaching of language skills. The authors argue for the integration of an ELF-aware approach to ELT with a Freirean critical pedagogical orientation that is grounded in concepts like conscientisation and teaching for social justice. At the level of policy-making, Gutiérrez, Ortiz and Jaime document the policies and processes in Colombian tertiary institutions to reform foreign language programmes with a view to reinforcing plurilingual and pluricultural education. The authors report on the impact that the “critical intercultural dialogue” integrated in an English course for Colombian Afro-descendant and indigenous students of the University of Antioquia had on raising participants’ critical awareness of the historical past of coloniality and their recognition of “its power structure by putting into question all global, universal, mostly Eurocentric models that strengthen highly unequal social structures and continue to dehumanise and eliminate entire communities around the globe” (p. 260). Kamwangamalu argues for a radical reorientation of language planning policies of the heritage languages in Africa along the lines of Bourdieau’s notions of capital, habitus and linguistic market. His proposal aims at establishing recognition of these languages “against parental preference for English-medium instruction in postcolonial context” (p. 275). The author perceives so-called “prestige planning” for these languages as inadequate in shifting negative attitudes towards them, as it merely consists in their official recognition by the state, and proposes that these policies are supplemented by giving more tangible advantages to people who use these languages, such as better employment opportunities.

Overall, this is a very welcome volume that contributes important and informative insights to the growing WE, ELF, EIL and GE pedagogy and teacher education literature.