Volume 12, Issue 2

Mentored online intercultural and international collaboration projects using English as a lingua franca (ELF) in tertiary curricula are a valuable pedagogical approach to develop intercultural communicative competence. However, students’ perceptions of ELF in virtual exchange (VE) projects remain largely unexplored. This mixed-methods study investigates students’ attitudes towards ELF interactions in the context of online collaborations involving four countries in the Global North and South. The students participated in a six-week VE and collaboratively completed tasks set by their teachers. Results of the qualitative and quantitative data show that the students’ attitudes towards ELF interactions varied in different contexts and that the experience encouraged reflections, for instance, on students’ linguistic effectiveness in intercultural situations. The findings show a (re)evaluation of native and non-native English and attitudinal shift for some students. The results indicate that online intercultural exchanges can be a catalyst for students to reflect on international English usage and global ownership. The article provides implications for setting up ELF-VE projects regarding its potential to (trans)form ELF identities and gives advice for ELF practitioners.

This paper delves into the identity constructions of Japanese young adults as users of English as a lingua franca on social media, with a specific focus on Instagram, a widely utilized platform among this demographic. Grounded in the premise that social media serves as a space for self-presentation, drawing from the social constructivist idea that the self is a performative act, the study centers on three Japanese young individuals with overseas experiences. It explores how they employ English as a communicative lingua franca in a transnational space while remaining highly conscious of their Japanese followers, endeavoring to portray idealized English-speaking selves. An ethnographic approach (Netnography) to the participants’ online practices involves prolonged online observations and interviews, seeking not only screen-based linguistic data but also uncovering the speakers’ voices behind the online screen. The findings illuminate that their identities as experienced English users evolves into a distinct aspiration to present themselves as competent English users. This aspiration is intricately attached to English ideologies, including native speakerism and the social status of English. The study provides valuable insights into the importance of scrutinizing the complex identity construction and language negotiation among speakers in ELF contexts, particularly within the realm of everyday online discourse. It sheds light on how young online users navigate between identities as English users and learners in the dynamic context of both global and local friendships.

This paper contributes to the recently increasing literature on the role of English as the Academic Lingua Franca (ELFA) in international research publications, and the potential pros and cons this may entail for non-Anglophone scholars in different contexts. While exploring Turkish and Iraqi scholars’ attitudes to English for research publication purposes (ERPP), their research writing challenges, and the strategies they use for successful publication, which are areas still lagging far behind in the current state of research, will be the main focus. Therefore, an online questionnaire was designed in this context to investigate the experience of academicians of different academic ranks across university disciplines in both Turkey and Iraq to address such a research gap. Findings are expected to enrich the field with respect to the presumed relationship between ELFA and ‘linguistic injustice/hegemony’, problems encountered by non-Anglophone scholars in different contexts, and their strategies for successful publication through English.

English-medium instruction (EMI) is a growing phenomenon among universities in Türkiye, with higher numbers of local and international students registering for programs offered in English each year. This situation suggests that students should get prepared for multilingual contexts before they start taking faculty courses; however, institutions usually ignore this when offering linguistic support to students. This study explored the potential ways of adopting a more inclusive approach to language education offered to students preparing for EMI. The in-class teaching practices of language instructors and the views of students who attended these lessons were explored through classroom observations and focus-group interviews. The results revealed that the instructors preferred several different methods to modify their teaching in English-as-a-lingua-franca-compatible ways, and students found their instructors’ practices useful from multiple aspects for their future English-medium courses. The findings imply revisions on the nature of the language education offered in English preparatory schools in Türkiye.

Teachers’ and teacher educators’ individual theories, attitudes and beliefs underlying their daily practice, are often challenged by sociolinguistic changes, curricular innovations, or new language policies that may often trigger teachers’ resistance to change, particularly when they are required to adapt and revisit their teaching practices. In many European countries recent migration flows have modified the countries language landscapes; their school population is now growingly plurilingual and with different learning and language needs. In their out-of-school experiences, learners are more and more exposed to English through social media and to non-native speakers’ English (ELF), aspects not integrated yet in local language policies, nor in teacher education programs. It is thus important to design pre- and in-service teacher education programs aimed at sensitizing language and subject teachers to these new scenarios, using reflective practice approaches in multilingual contexts. These contexts require English language teachers, and teachers who use English in different fields such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or English Medium of Instruction (EMI), to reconsider their personal assumptions and beliefs, and to develop new competences that would incorporate the powerful reflective framework provided by ELF-awareness. The ELF-aware perspective had been adopted in recent courses for English teachers carried out in Italy, as the ENRICH CPD course, and in the CLIL courses for content teachers. The aim of this contribution is to present and discuss findings of two research studies carried out within the above-mentioned courses that were meant to make teachers aware of new instantiations of English through a reflective practice approach such as the ELF-aware approach, and to sustain their professional development as well as their agency. This paper is mostly related to the lessons learnt from the findings from teachers’ responses to course innovations and their agency development during these courses.