Exploring nonnative pre-service english teachers’ awareness of the diversity of english: world englishes and english as a lingua franca

Abstract

"The fast spread of English language across the globe has originated a great number of new varieties of the English language which scholars call World Englishes. These varieties have given English language the role of lingua franca of the world. Given that WE and ELF speakers possess a wide range of L1 backgrounds, prioritizing intelligibility has become a need in ELT. Hence, several scholars (Jenkins, 2006; Kamhi-Stein, 2016; Fang & Ren, 2018) have argued the need of raising awareness about these concepts in ELT, with special emphasis in pre-service teacher education where a greater impact can be achieved over the pre-service English teachers who will also impact thousand lives in the future (Matsuda, 2017). However, few studies have investigated the issue of awareness of the WE and ELF conceptions in pre-service teachers. This research project thus investigates 13 pre-service English teachers’, 12 NNESs and 1 NES, awareness about the WE and ELF notions with questionnaires and interviews. It also investigates the strategies implemented by those participants’ BA professors to teach them about the diversity of English, and what the implications of participants’ awareness about the mentioned notions are on their teaching expectations".