Korean Adult English Learners’ Perceptions of the Common Grammatical Features of English as a Lingua Franca

Abstract

The present study examines Korean adult English learners' perceptions about English as a lingua franca (ELF) and the common grammatical features of ELF. 276 university students participated in this study through an online survey portal. The survey consists of two parts: part one asks participants' attitudes and perceptions about ELF statements, and part two is an acceptability judgement task for common grammatical features of ELF. Overall, the participants showed moderately positive attitude toward most ELF statements despite they manifested stronger preference for native speaker-oriented English learning on a few aspects. The results from the acceptability judgement task for 19 grammatical items consistently remained between neutral and slightly positive ranges. These results indicate that the participants already possess the concept of ELF, at least beyond a non-negative stance, and admit the features of ELF as acceptable forms of English for global communication. Participants' major, study abroad experiences, and experiences of communicating with foreign people did not cause consistent and significant difference in their attitude toward ELF, nor in their acceptability judgements. For timely and effective incorporation of ELF into English classrooms in Korea, further research need to be conducted with various learner groups regarding the perception about ELF, the development of teaching activities and materials, and the empirical data from on-site applications.

Thai Teachers’ Attitudes Towards English as a Lingua Franca: A Longitudinal Study

“…According to Seidlhofer (2011), there has long been a debate about factors that influence attitudes towards ELF which need to be considered and how they can be reconciled. While prior studies found that familiarity with varieties of English (Kaur, 2014a) and experiences abroad (Kaypak & Ortactepe, 2014;Luo, 2018) affected students' thoughts about ELF, a current study by Lim and Hwang (2019) found that studying in another country and experiences of communicating with foreigners made no difference in learners' attitudes or judgment about ELF. There are more factors found to influence ELF attitudes, including linguistic selfconfidence (Dornyei, Csizer, & Nemeth, 2006), proficiency levels (Jenkins 2007), notions about communicative competence and identity as English users (Jenkins 2007;Ortactepe, 2012), images of English (e.g., belief that the English variety of native speakers is standard English (Baker, 2012), accent preference (Cheung & Sung, 2016;Kaur, 2014b), perceived future use of English (Luo, 2018), and beliefs about the process of learning a language (Mikeladze & Hariri, 2018).…”

Using Elf Strategies in Teaching Students Who Speak Bilingual/Multilingual in the Classroom

“…English as a lingua franca assists teachers in teaching material. Based on Lim & Hwang (2019) a lingua franca is the 'language of contact' between people who do not share a common mother tongue or a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the preferred foreign language of communication.…”

‘It Looks Weird to Me.’: Attitudes Towards Standard Usage and Variant Use in Present-Day English

“…All these studies indicate that the participants tend to prefer standard varieties of English. In terms of language variation, previous studies have investigated language attitudes towards standard features and their non-standard forms, such as gender-neutral singular pronouns (Bradley, 2019), epicene pronouns in non-native writing (Stormbom, 2018), grammatical features of English as a lingua franca (ELF) (Lim & Hwang, 2019;Ploywattanawong & Trakulkasemsuk, 2014), and grammatical features of Hong Kong English (Ting & Wong, 2019). The results of these grammar studies have revealed mixed results, which warrant further investigation.…”