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Locating ELF in ELT
Yasemin Bayyurt and Martin Dewey

Introduction This Special Issue is dedicated to exploring the relevance of English as a

lingua franca (ELF) to English language teaching (ELT). This journal is
a very fitting platform for a Special Issue on ELF for two reasons: first,
it has always provided an important interface between researchers and
practitioners, and so is an invaluable forum for addressing the practice-
based concerns of teachers that ELF research gives rise to; second,
ELTJ has a long history of publishing articles about ELF, by both very
established scholars in our field and by a growing number of early-career
researchers. The representation of ELF in ELTJ dates back to the very
early days of research in this area, back to a time before ‘ELF’ itself had
been settled on as the preferred term used by scholars researching this
subject matter. In possibly the first article of its kind anywhere to address
seriously and systematically the relevance of ELF in ELT, Jenkins (1998)
posed a poignant question, one that amazingly we are still grappling with
more than two decades later: ‘Which pronunciation norms and models
for English as an international language?’ Although Jenkins does not
refer to ELF in her title, this is precisely what she was concerned with in
posing this question. Reference to the role of ELF does in fact occur in the
abstract for the article.
This article proposes that with English assuming the position of the
world’s major lingua franca, a radical rethink is called for in terms
of the role of pronunciation and its aims within the ELT curriculum.
(Jenkins 1998: 119)
This early appearance of ELF in ELT subsequently generated a flurry
of activity, primarily in the form of review articles of Jenkins’ work and
responses to some of the arguments she put forward. In short, the impact
of ELF on discourse and debate in ELT began to take hold quite early on in
the trajectory of ELF as a paradigm, generating, for example, Seidlhofer’s
(2005) Key Concepts in ELT. This discourse has continued to grow
during the years since these early responses to ELF, with a considerable
volume of discourse being published in this journal. If we include book
review articles and point/counterpoint articles as well as research papers,
we counted altogether 27 ELTJ articles in which ‘ELF’ or ‘English as a
lingua franca’ appear in the title. In other words, discussion about the
relationship between ELF and ELT has long been debated, sometimes
very hotly.

ELT Journal; doi:10.1093/elt/ccaa048  Page 1 of 8

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
 However, hot debate does not always lead to impact in practice. As
Walker (2019) points out, while there is generally a lag between the
emergence of new theories and their practical application, in the case of

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ELF this lag has seemed unending, culminating in what Walker describes
as ‘the huge vacuum created by the wealth of ELF research findings
and the dearth of teaching materials’ (Walker 2019: 483), with Walker’s
(2010) own guide to classroom practice for pronunciation teaching a
rare exception. We feel there are many reasons why ELF theory and
research have still not led to a significant volume of teaching materials
and resources. This has been a key research focus for both authors over a
number of years now, and is an issue addressed by several of the authors
included in this special issue.
In this introduction we take into consideration the history of ELF,
briefly discussing its emergence as a distinct field of research, before
then moving on to give an overview of the growing volume of work that
investigates ELF from the perspective of language pedagogy. Finally, we
briefly introduce the structure of this Special Issue and summarize each
of the contributions we have included.
What is ELF? In its earlier accounts ‘lingua franca’ referred to a more stabilized
pidgin that was used between local people and merchants from abroad.
Hence, it had relatively limited scope and speakers tended not to use it in
their daily lives other than for a narrow range of commercial purposes.
Fifteen years ago, in the opening paragraph of her original Key Concepts
article, Seidlhofer (2005: 339) defined ELF quite simply ‘as a way of
referring to communication in English between speakers with different
first languages’. However, since then, Seidlhofer, and the field more
generally, has moved on quite substantially from her earlier accounts
of ELF. There is now broad agreement among ELF scholars that this
narrow understanding of lingua franca is no longer tenable. We rather
consider ELF to be a multifaceted phenomenon involving a large number
of speakers of English (non-native or native) coming from many diverse
linguacultural backgrounds. Jenkins (2015: 73) explains how difficult it is
to define ELF, referring to its complex nature and indicating that the way
we define ELF has had to respond to our evolving understanding of ELF
interaction as we gather more evidence about the nature of lingua franca
interaction.
What has remained constant as our definitions of ELF have evolved
is the understanding that English is now predominantly used among
people with different first languages and cultural experiences. In short,
because of increased global mobility, English is used as a language of
negotiation, problem-solving, and decision-making in ever-more diverse
and ‘superdiverse’ contexts. In order to meet the need to understand
language and communication in this rapidly changing multilingual/
multicultural world, Jenkins has reconceptualized ELF as English
as a multilingua franca (EMF) which she defines as ‘multilingual
communication in which English is available as a contact language of
choice, but is not necessarily chosen’ (Jenkins, 2015: 73). Other terms
used in research on language use in multilingual settings have also
included ‘polylanguaging’ and most extensively ‘translanguaging’, both

Page 2 of 8 Yasemin Bayyurt and Martin Dewey

 terms intended to emphasize the dynamic ways multiple languages
can be used simultaneously and conjointly to communicate meaning.
This can be done through use of English as the main contact/common

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language and all other shared languages regardless of its level of
proficiency/competency. In this Special Issue, the papers cover a range of
ELF concepts and related terms, most of which span various definitions
of ELF, EMF, translanguaging, and similar. Since it is beyond the scope
of this introductory article, we will not go into too much detail with
some of the conceptual confusion that can occur between terms such as
ELF, EIL (English as an international language), GEs (global Englishes),
and WEs (world Englishes), but it is important to note that there are
important overlaps between these terms, as is also the case with ELF,
EMF, polylanguaging, and translanguaging. The most salient aspect of
each of these is that English is used as a common language of contact
among people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, with
or without other shared languages that may be present in contexts of
multilingual and multicultural societies. Therefore, as English language
teachers, we should be aware of how English is used when it functions as
a lingua franca, as this will facilitate more of a focus on communication
than the structural properties of language.
Since the advent of communicative language teaching, teachers have
had to struggle to identify ways of promoting effective communication
skills, while only having available to them standard language models,
where ‘authentic language use’ has always been predominantly defined in
relation to NS norms. An ELF-aware/ELF-informed pedagogic perspective
on ELT can provide learners and teachers with invaluable information
regarding the language resources and strategies speakers use to achieve
effective communication. ELF research findings can shed light on the
nature of English in many varied domains of use, in which language
is ‘authentic’ when it is communicatively effective. Adopting an ELF
perspective on pedagogic practice can enable researchers and teachers to
facilitate learners’ language development by emphasizing effectiveness
over accuracy so they can become more confident and successful users of
English.
An overview of The emergence of ELF as a distinct research field coincides with an
ELF research increased intensity of research interest in the use of English in this
global role that came about as a consequence of the publication of
several seminal pieces of work in this area in the late 1990s and early
2000s. Most notable among these are Jenkins’ (1998) investigation
into the phonology of English in lingua franca interactions, and
Seidlhofer’s (2001) announcement of the first large-scale corpus of ELF
(VOICE—the Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English, https://
www.univie.ac.at/voice/). In the two decades since these publications,
ELF has established itself as a diverse, dynamic field, with a dedicated
journal (Journal of English as a Lingua Franca), an annual international
conference (celebrating its 10th anniversary meeting in Helsinki
in 2017, and with subsequent conferences in London in 2018 and
Medellín in 2019), and a dedicated book series published by DeGruyter.
In addition, the field has witnessed a growing number of edited

Locating ELF in ELT Page 3 of 8

 collections that focus on various aspects of ELF, including a Routledge
Handbook (Jenkins, Baker, and Dewey 2018, henceforth RHELF), as
well as several notable collections that concentrate on the relevance of

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ELF from a language teaching perspective (see e.g. Bowles and Cogo
2015).
In terms of understanding the potential impact of ELF research in ELT,
it is worth considering Seidlhofer’s description of ELF as ‘the most
extensive contemporary use of English worldwide’ (2001: 133). Almost
20 years on, the role of ELF has become even more globally extensive.
The scope and volume of research in ELF now being carried out is a
reflection of the continuing globalization of English. In addition to
VOICE, there are now several large-scale corpora, including English as a
Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA; https://www.helsinki.fi/en/
researchgroups/english-as-a-lingua-franca-in-academic-settings/research/
elfa-corpus), based at the University of Helsinki, and the Asian Corpus
of English (ACE), established in Hong Kong, and involving a team of
researchers across East and Southeast Asia (https://corpus.eduhk.hk/
ace/). In other words, as with the use of ELF, research has gone global.
In short, given the global reach of English in its lingua franca role, it is
essential that English language teachers develop an understanding of
how English is used as a language of contact worldwide, and that careful
consideration is given to the impact this understanding has on the
language syllabus, teaching materials and methods, and ultimately on
language assessment. In our own work both editors of this Special Issue
have been engaged for several years in trying to understand the relevance
of research in ELF for language pedagogy, most specifically in relation
to raising awareness of ELF among ELT practitioners and examining
how an ELF perspective on language use might be better integrated in
language teacher education.
Research on Following Jenkins’ (1998) critical reappraisal of pronunciation norms
Pedagogy and ELF and models, the discussion of the pedagogic implications of ELF theory
and research has been extensive, touching on every conceivable aspect
of L2 pedagogy, from assessment to teacher education and pretty
much everything in between. Among the most salient areas of focus
for investigations into ELF and ELT are assessment and testing (see
chapter by Harding and McNamara in RHELF;), materials and resources
(see chapter by Galloway in RHELF; see Vettorel 2018), phonology and
pronunciation (Walker 2010), academic writing (see chapter by Horner
in RHELF), and most productively so far perhaps, teacher education and
professional development (e.g. Bayyurt and Sifakis 2015). In addition,
there have been several research-based accounts of ELF in relation to
the pedagogic concerns of ELT specialisms and subdisciplines, such as
business English (Pullin 2013), CLIL (see chapter by Hüttner in RHELF),
EAP (Björkman 2011), and young learners (Lopriore 2015). Finally, quite
a number of authors have focused on the relevance of ELF in relation to
language learning and teaching in specific geographical and/or cultural
settings (see, among many others, e.g. Wang 2013 on China; and see e.g.
Kirkpatrick 2010 for a much broader regional perspective on ELF and ELT
in Southeast Asia).

Page 4 of 8 Yasemin Bayyurt and Martin Dewey

 In short, the level of interest in addressing ELT principles and practice
from an ELF perspective has been substantial and the scope far reaching.
The considerable debate notwithstanding, for the most part the focus

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on ELF in ELT has not led to any sizeable material changes in practice.
While we have seen extensive and in-depth discussion of the implications
of ELF for ELT, there has so far been relatively little uptake in terms
of application. The language syllabus, teaching resources, assessment,
and testing continue to be principally designed in line with standard NS
English; and while the numbers programmes of teacher education that
engage with ELF are gaining in momentum, these are still only a small
minority globally. Our objectives in this Special Issue are to address this
relative absence of implementation of ELF in practice.
In our work we have focused on developing an ELF perspective on teacher
education, as in our view it is through integrating ELF in the teacher
education curriculum that we will be able to generate more take-up of
the implications of ELF in pedagogy. In recent years, the notion of ELF
awareness and ELF-aware teaching practices have been studied by several
teacher-educators (among several others, see especially Bayyurt and
Sifakis 2015 and chapter by Sifakis and Bayyurt in RHELF). The objectives
of this work are to explore the implications of ELF in ELT while deeming
them relevant and applicable to local teaching contexts. Such teacher
education programmes like the ELF-TEd project (Bayyurt and Sifakis
2015) stress the paramount importance of critical reflection and action
research as a means to allow for radical changes in teaching practices and
materials which would more adequately represent the realities of current
language use worldwide. In the in-service teacher education phase of
the ELF-TEd project, there were 11 primary teachers who participated in
and completed the study. Participants were provided with a series of key
readings on ELF, each text accompanied by questions designed to enable
teachers to connect ELF concepts with their own classroom practices.
The readings and questions were presented in an online platform where
the participants would take part in a forum and write their responses
and comments to the questions and readings (For more information,
see the ELF-TEd website: http://www.teacherdevelopment.boun.edu.
tr/ and the ELF-TEd facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/
groups/601031896579177/).
The teachers who participated in the ELF-TEd project indicated that they
went through a journey throughout the project: some reported being able
to devise ways of implementing and internalizing the essentials of the
project and reflecting on their ELT practice; others, by contrast, welcomed
the ideas in principle but reported not being able to associate these with
their teaching practice. Two revealing aspects of the findings of ELF-
TEd were lack of information on methodological/practical aspects of an
ELF-aware approach to ELT and lack of appropriate ELF-aware teaching
materials (see chapter by Vettorel in RHELF). A common response to ELF
we have both experienced when presenting our work to ELT practitioners
is for teachers to raise questions about how to integrate ELF in practice
if there is no ‘ELF method’ or availability of related materials. In this
respect, we can say that there is no specific method for integrating an
ELF perspective in ELT; however, an eclectic approach to already existing

Locating ELF in ELT Page 5 of 8

 language teaching methodologies may help teachers and teacher trainers
to see the need to implement ELF in their classroom practices. Clearly,
there are no straightforward solutions with respect to implementing ELF

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in practice. This is part of the challenge of moving beyond implication
towards further application.
As, Bayyurt and Sifakis (2015) conclude, developing and using ELF-
aware activities and/or materials in the classroom suggests two things:
first, teachers may need to design original ELF-aware activities, either by
adapting existing textbooks or by creating new stand-alone activities, or
likely a combination of both; second, teachers may need to reflect on the
methodological implications of an ELF-aware approach if they are to make
full sense of the implications of the knowledge base of GEs, ELF, and
related paradigms. This therefore entails ‘experimenting more and more
with practices that may seem entirely novel and at times even unwelcome
to them and their learners, such as applying the less strict approach to
correction’ (ibid.: 130). Herein lies the challenge. It is not always feasible
for teachers to engage in extensive refection and experimentation, as this
requires institutional support and resources, which may not always be
available to teachers.1 In the light of their findings, Sifakis and Bayyurt
(in RHELF) indicate that ELF-awareness entails an ongoing process of
teacher engagement with ELF research in order to develop a personal
pedagogic response that enables teachers to integrate ELF in their own
specific classroom contexts. This requires continuous critical reflection,
involving ‘design, implementation and evaluation of instructional
activities that reflect and localize one’s interpretation of the ELF construct’
(RHELF: 459). In other words, there is no ‘ELF method’ as such because
the implications of ELF research and ELF concepts will depend on the
individual educational setting and professional beliefs and practices of
teachers. Each of the articles in this Special Issue discuss ELF in ELT
in light of this need to engage with local teaching realities and teachers’
professional beliefs and practices.
Overview of the As a starting point in this endeavour, Siqueira discusses a decolonizing
articles in this perspective on ELF and EFL materials as a means of meeting the
Special Issue challenge of bringing ELF into the ELT classroom in a systematic way.
Yalçın, Bayyurt, and Alahdad discuss the implementation of a CLIL
programme in a primary school setting as a means of raising NNS
teachers’ awareness of their own English in a more positive light and
awareness of instructional choices from an ELF perspective. Kordia
explores task-based language teaching (TBLT), arguing that it offers a
methodological framework for integrating ELF in language classrooms.
Ishikawa considers awareness of multilingualism among Japanese
students, adopting an EMF schema to explore how EMF-aware pedagogic
intervention can enhance communicative capability and confidence.
Sahan examines ELF and EMI in a higher-education setting in Turkey,
exploring the use of code-switching as a communicative strategy
among students and teachers. There then follow several articles that
address ELF in relation to teacher education and development. Dewey
and Pineda report on a study into beliefs and practices among student
teachers in university programmes of teacher education in the UK and
Spain, exploring the extent to which awareness of linguistic diversity

Page 6 of 8 Yasemin Bayyurt and Martin Dewey

 may impact teaching priorities and preferences. Choi and Liu discuss
ELF-aware teacher development, investigating what challenges teachers
encounter and what support they may need if they are to teach from an

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ELF perspective. Biricik, Kemaloğlu-Er, and Özkan discuss the integration
of ELF in pre-service teacher education, addressing the relative lack of
pedagogic descriptions and classroom-driven data in order to promote
synthesis of theory and practice. Following this, Sifakis, Tsantila, Masina,
and Vourdanou discuss high-stakes exam preparation contexts in Greece,
describing an intervention designed to put the principles of ELF-aware
pedagogy into practice. Finally, Jenkins concludes our Special Issue with
an opinion piece in which she explores the extent to which the testing
of English has (or has not) kept up to date with developments in ELF
by embracing linguistic diversity, then goes on to address the pros and
cons of a radically alternative approach to standardized English language
assessment.

Note Jenkins, J. 2015. Repositioning English and

1 Although it may be very challenging for
teachers to engage with ELF in practice due to
local circumstances, there are several online
networks and platforms where teachers can
find support for exploring the pedagogic
implications of ELF. Among these is Teaching
English and Teaching in English in Global
Contexts, an online platform where researchers,
students, and practitioners can collaborate and
share knowledge (www.globalenglishes-emi.
education.ed.ac.uk/). The network generates
space for the exchange of experiences and
ideas on the globalization of English and ELT,
and provides access to teaching resources,
webinars, blogs, and interviews with
researchers and doctoral students.
References
Bayyurt, Y. and Sifakis, N. 2015. ‘ELF-aware in-service
teacher education: a transformative perspective’
in H. Bowles and A. Cogo (eds.). International
Perspectives on Teaching English as a Lingua Franca,
pp. 117–135. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Björkman, B. 2011. ‘English as a lingua franca in
higher education: implications for EAP’. Ibérica, 22:
79–100.
Bowles, H. and Cogo, A. (eds.) 2015. International
Perspectives on Teaching English as a Lingua Franca.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jenkins, J. 1998. ‘Which pronunciation norms and
models for English as an international language?’.
ELT Journal, 52/2: 119–26.
multilingualism in English as a lingua franca.
Englishes in Practice, 2/3: 49–85.
Jenkins, J., Baker, W., and Dewey, M. (eds.) 2018.
Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca. London:
Routledge.
Kirkpatrick, A. 2010. English as a Lingua Franca in
ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press.
Lopriore, L. 2015. ‘Young Learners in ELF
Classrooms: a Shift in Perspective’ in P. Vettorel
(ed.). New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning
English. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing.
Pullin, P. 2013. ‘Achieving “comity”: the role of
linguistic stance in business English as a lingua
franca (BELF) meetings’. Journal of English as a
Lingua Franca 2/1: 1–23.
Seidlhofer, B. 2001. ‘Closing a conceptual gap: the
case for a description of English as a lingua franca’.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11/2:
133–58.
Seidlhofer, B. 2005. ‘English as a lingua franca’. ELT
Journal, 59/4: 339–41.
Vettorel, P. 2018. ‘ELF and communication strategies:
are they taken into account in ELT materials?’. RELC
Journal 49/1: 58–73.
Walker, R. 2010. Teaching the Pronunciation of English
as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walker R. 2019. ‘Teaching English as a lingua franca:
the journey from EFL to ELF’. ELT Journal 73/4:
483–85.
Wang, Y. 2013. ‘Non-conformity to ENL norms: a
perspective from Chinese English users’. Journal of
English as a Lingua Franca 2/2: 255–82.

Locating ELF in ELT Page 7 of 8

The authors
Yasemin Bayyurt is Professor of Applied Linguistics
at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. She has
published extensively on ELF-aware in- and pre-
service teacher education; native/non-native teachers
and culture; mobile/blended learning, and English-
medium instruction. Her current research focuses
on methodological issues in ELF-awareness and CLIL
in K12 classrooms, and blended learning in EMI
universities. She is the co-editor (with Sumru Akcan)
of Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for ELF (De Gruyter,
2015) and the editor of Bloomsbury World Englishes, Vol.
3: Pedagogies (expected in December 2020).
Email: bayyurty@boun.edu.tr
Page 8 of 8 Yasemin Bayyurt and Martin Dewey
Martin Dewey is a Senior Lecturer at King’s College
London. He researches the globalization of English
and its role as a global lingua franca. He is currently
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exploring the impact of ELF in ELT and teacher
education, investigating what ELF means for how
we conceptualize language, communication, and
professional knowledge. He is co-author (with
Alessia Cogo) of Analyzing English as a Lingua
Franca: A Corpus Driven Investigation (2012) and
co-editor (with Jennifer Jenkins and Will Baker) of
the Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca
(2018). He is the editor of Journal of English as a
Lingua Franca.
Email: martin.dewey@kcl.ac.uk