Symposium: The contexualization of teaching and learning English as an international language

Presented at the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, 24 August 2011.

SLA research has long been challenged by the flawed comparison of L2 learners to native speakers (Bley-Vroman 1983). Since the start of the new millennium, applied linguists have paid increasing attention to studies of English as a lingua franca (ELF), defined as ‘communication in English between speakers with different first languages’ (Seidlhofer 2005: 339). From the ELF perspective, L2 speakers of English are no longer considered as ‘failed native speakers’ who produce problematic talk, but as ‘highly skilled communicators’ (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey 2011: 284) who attempt to use multilingual resources to achieve their communicative goals.