English as a lingua franca 

Teaching and learning English as a lingua franca (ELF) is probably the most radical and controversial approach to emerge in recent years. It squarely addresses some of the issues which global English raises. 

An inexorable trend in the use of global English is that fewer interactions now involve a native-speaker. Proponents of teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF) suggest that the way English is taught and assessed should reflect the needs and aspirations of the ever-growing number of non-native speakers who use English to communicate with other non-natives. 

Understanding how non-native speakers use English among themselves has now become a serious research area. Proponents of ELF have already given some indications of how they think conventional approaches should be changed, as for example, the different priorities in teaching English pronunciation. Intelligibility is of primary importance, rather than native-like accuracy. Teaching certain pronunciation features, such as the articulation of “th” as an interdental fricative, appears to be a waste of time whereas other common pronunciation problems, such as simplifying consonant clusters, contribute to problems of understanding. 

Unlike traditional EFL (English as a foreign language), ELF focuses on pragmatic strategies required in intercultural communication. The target model of English, within the ELF framework, is not a native speaker but a fluent bilingual speaker, who retains a national identity in terms of accent, and who also has special skills required to negotiate understanding with another non-native speaker. 

ELF suggests a radical reappraisal of the way English is taught, and even if few adopt ELF in its entirety, some of its ideas are likely to influence mainstream teaching and assessment practices in the future. 

The example concerning the teaching of English used in the third paragraph can be said to be in the realm of