(This is a blog post, not an academic article. I will write the way I usually express myself on this blog. -Jeremy Eckert, UIC-Barcelona student)

Did you know that the majority of all English conversations happening on Earth right now are most likely happening between non-native speakers? That’s right, native speakers are no longer the majority of English users (and this has been the case for a few decades already). As you probably know, English occupies a special place in global communication, serving as a world Lingua Franca. But while scientific research, aviation, and many news media use Standard British or American English, the unscripted exchanges happening right at this moment between, for example, Korean and German CEOs in business meetings, or between Saudi and Brazilian online gamers messaging each other, occur in a functional English known as English as a Lingua Franca.

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is that practical English which is used by non-native speakers when communicating with other non-native speakers, often not relying on the grammar norms or pronunciation of native speakers. Since “non-native speakers of English” is a very broad term encompassing the diverse majority of English speakers on Earth, ELF is highly variable in its features. Since it doesn’t consist of a distinct set of grammatical features or phonemes, linguists cannot classify it as a distinct English variety. Instead, what makes it distinct is its speakers’ flexible usage of communication strategies to reach the goal of mutual intelligibility. This might be important to the field of teaching and learning English because it shows that learners of English aren’t following some of the norms that were taught to them in their courses which traditionally hold Native Speaker English as the ultimate standard.

Acknowledging that many ELF speakers don’t always have use for language norms set by native speakers of Standard English can make a person wonder, do ELF users simply lack knowledge of English grammar and pronunciation, or are they choosing to communicate in this way for other reasons? According to research, it’s not necessarily because they don’t know about the English rules. Krashen’s distinction between ‘learned knowledge’ (knowing ABOUT English) and ‘acquired language’ (being able to USE English) helps explain why learners who know the English rules might prefer to use simplified or non-standard forms during real-time interaction. When ELF speakers are put on the spot, they use language which is functional and easy to access in their minds, rather than consciously learned rules. Instead of this implying that ELF speakers are ‘incorrect’, it might instead show learners’ adaptation to real communicative contexts. If this is true, teachers may need to rethink which aspects of English should be focused on in the classroom, and which aspects might be less useful for our students, and should be de-emphasized.

To understand why these kinds of language habits arise, it’s helpful to look at how second language acquisition (SLA) has been thought of, and compare it with more recent ideas challenging those models. One traditional model of SLA labels the awkward in-between stage which language learners occupy before mastering a language as “interlanguage”. Interlanguage models tend to think of ‘learner language’ as if it’s a stable mental list of rules that slowly grows to the same size of a native speaker’s mental list of rules over time. More recent, usage-based approaches see language differently. They argue that linguistic knowledge is not fixed, but constantly changing and shaped by use. For example, Nick Ellis (2008) suggests that learners do not build a separate “interlanguage grammar.” Instead, they develop flexible, probabilistic connections between what they hear and what they say, based on frequency, patterns, and experience. In other words, don’t imagine learners writing a grammar book in their brains as they learn more language. Rather, imagine learners slowly strengthening patterns of use based on what they hear and say most often.

Imagine: Speaker A successfully made himself understood to his listener when saying “she don’t like it” instead of saying “she doesn’t like it”, and this frictionless interaction gave him no reason to correct himself and switch “don’t” to “doesn’t”, and he will continue to speak this way in the future as more smooth interactions reinforce this habit. To reduce his own cognitive load, and maintain a fluent talking speed for his listeners, he continues to use “don’t” in all cases. People are understanding him, so he is accomplishing his goals. From this perspective, English as a Lingua Franca is not a reduced or broken form of English, but a natural result of how language is learned and used in multilingual settings.

For this reason, I believe ELF can be taught in the classroom. One aspect of moving toward teaching ELF would be focusing more on successful communication, and focusing less on accuracy of grammatical forms. Even before I learned about ELF in my MA course, I already felt that some of the grammar points which my school’s English textbook was expecting 2^nd graders to produce accurately were too nuanced to be focusing on, at least at this stage. I simply didn’t feel right penalizing my students on tests whenever they wrote “Have you got some milk?” (They were supposed to write “Have you got any milk?”) Using ‘some’ in this context is completely understandable, and it’s a sentence which is maybe even used by native speakers in some situations.

While I saw nothing wrong with exposing 2^nd graders to the words “a/an/some/any”, and the situations when you use them, I disagreed with the amount of focus on producing accurate forms that the textbook exercises and tests were putting on this distinction. Class group after class group who usually performed well on my tests consistently struggled with this particular unit. In order to get them to pass the unit test, we had to spend an undesirable amount of time practicing this grammar distinction in class, rather than focusing on meaningful self-expression and fluent communication. Compared to other grammar points which my textbook tests them on, the cognitive load of juggling “a/an/some/any” is relatively high. Consider the following three lines (inspired by the unit test in question, but not directly taken from it):

“Have you got _____ meat?” “No, I haven’t got _____.”

[answers: any; any]

“Would you like _____ oranges?” “No, I don’t want _____.”

[answers: some; any]

“Here is _____ apple. Here is _____ apple juice. Here are _____ apples.”

[answers: an; some; some]

To fill in those blanks accurately, the learner’s mind is:

        -Juggling 4 possible answers (a/an/some/any);

        -Paying close attention to whether the food item in the sentence is…

                singular/plural (an apple/some apples)

                countable/uncountable (an apple/some apple juice)

                starts with a vowel/consonant (an apple/a lemon)

        -Checking whether the whole sentence is…

                positive/negative (I’ve got some… / I haven’t got any…)

                a statement/a question (There are some… / Are there any…?)

Finally, they also need to remember exceptions to the rules they learned: 

        -Use “any” when asking questions: “Have you got any meat?” but DON’T use “any” when asking questions to make an offer: “Would you like some meat/fruit/oranges?”

        -Use “some/any” with uncountable words like meat/cake: “I’d like some chicken/some cake.” but ALSO use “a/an” with those words because sometimes uncountable words can be countable: “I’d like to buy a chicken/a cake.”

That’s a lot to consider mentally, all at one time! I would argue that it’s an unreasonable cognitive load to expect pre-A1 second graders to bear while communicating. If even strong students consistently stumble over these distinctions, it suggests that the issue is less about the learner’s ability and more about a curriculum’s over-emphasis on accuracy at the expense of communicative success—an imbalance that ELF research invites us to change.

One reason we should move toward teaching ELF is that it can expand access to English. Teaching English with a stronger focus on intelligibility rather than strict accuracy can allow more learners to participate meaningfully in English communication, instead of feeling that English is only for those who can master every small rule.

Another reason is fairness. No matter what field/industry our learners eventually work in, they probably won’t need to sound like native speakers, but they will very likely need to speak some English, and they will need to be understood. When we insist that all learners aim for native-like grammar from the very beginning, we raise the barrier to success unnecessarily. Learners who can already communicate clearly may still feel like they are “bad at English” simply because they fail accuracy-based tests. Teaching ELF means redefining success as being able to communicate ideas, solve problems, and interact with others, rather than producing perfect grammar under test conditions.

Teaching ELF does not mean abandoning structure or grammar altogether. Instead, it means being more selective about what we emphasize. One practical step is to carefully evaluate which grammar points are most meaningful for communication at a given level. When I was researching for this blog post, I found out about the linguistic concept of “salience”. Salience basically refers to how much a language feature “jumps out” to the learner. Structures that strongly affect meaning—such as word order, basic tense contrasts, or clear question forms—deserve attention. Other structures, like subtle article distinctions that rarely cause misunderstanding, can be introduced gently but tested less strictly, or postponed until learners are developmentally ready. (One example of a grammatical feature that is not very salient to my learners at ALL is the 3^rd person “s” added to the end of verbs like “walk/walks”; “do/does”; “watch/watches”. From when 3^rd person “s” is introduced to them in grade 1, allllllll the way to grade 6, my students never produce this structure on their own during unplanned conversations — NEVER. This indicates that this structure doesn’t stand out to them when they hear it, and the learners are able to get their message across perfectly clearly without using it.) I would also not pressure learners to produce idioms (which are mainly used by native speakers), though it will still be necessary for advanced students to understand the most common ones.

Another key part of teaching ELF is focusing more on communication strategies. These include skills like paraphrasing when you don’t know a word, asking for clarification, checking understanding, repeating or rephrasing key points, and using gestures or examples to support meaning. These strategies can be taught through simple classroom activities: role plays where students have to explain something using limited language, information-gap tasks that require clarification questions, or group tasks where success depends on being understood rather than being grammatically perfect. I can model these strategies myself and praise students when they use them successfully.

Assessment also needs to change if ELF is taken seriously. Instead of mainly testing whether learners choose the correct article or verb ending, teachers can assess whether students can complete communicative tasks: ordering food, explaining a problem, giving instructions, or sharing opinions. Errors that do not block understanding can be noted but not heavily penalized. This helps learners see English as a tool for communication, not a constant test they are failing.

REALITY CHECK: What about IELTS/TOEFL exams? If I teach ELF to my students, will they be prepared for these exams which gatekeep the world’s best universities? Maybe it won’t prepare them specifically for passing these tests. But will it prepare them for communicating in English? Absolutely. Can that serve them by giving them a foundation of confidence and communicative effectiveness which can later be polished for accuracy? I think so.

In a world where most English users are non-native speakers, teaching English only through native-speaker norms no longer makes sense. Teaching English as a Lingua Franca offers a way to expand access, reduce unnecessary cognitive load, and better prepare learners for real communication. By focusing on intelligibility, meaningful structures, and communication strategies, teachers can help learners use English with confidence and purpose, even if their language is not always “perfect.”

SOURCES:

British Council. (2013, August 27). British Council report explains The English Effect. https://www.britishcouncil.org/contact/press/english-effect

Britain, D. (2018). Using English as a lingua franca in education in Europe https://www.asau.ru/files/pdf/1882962.pdf

Krashen, S. (1988). Teaching grammar: Why bother? http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/teaching_grammar_why_bother.pdf

Nick C. Ellis. (2008). Usage-based and form-focused language acquisition: The associative learning of constructions, learned attention, and the limited L2 endstate. In P. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 372–405). Wiley-Blackwell https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9780470756492.ch4

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Salience (language). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_(language)

University of Vienna. (n.d.). English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): Research areas.
https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/teams-and-research-areas/elf/