1. ELF - and other
fairy tales!
Hugh Dellar
The University of Westminster
Heinle Cengage
2. Your surname’s Jones, isn’t it?
> Yes, it is.
And you’re 27, aren’t you?
> Yes, that’s right.
You weren’t at home last night at 8, were you?
> No, I wasn’t. I was at the pub.
But you don’t have any witnesses, do you?
> Yes, I do. My brother was with me.
Your brother wasn’t with you, was he?
> How do you know?
Because he was at the police station. We arrested him last night.
Native speaker dominance?
3. It must be very strange to be back home after such a long time.
> Yes, it is. I … I mean, it’s lovely to see everybody and I really
appreciate my bed.
Let’s have a look at these photos, then.
> Well, they’re all mixed up at the moment. I’ve got to sort them out.
Um, this looks nice. Where is it?
> Where do you think it is?
Ah, well … it must be somewhere really hot. It looks like paradise. I
suppose it could be Thailand or Bali, or it could even be India.
> No. I’ll give you a clue. It’s an island in the Pacific Ocean.
Hawaii.
No, I didn’t go to Hawaii.
Oh right. I thought you’d been everywhere. It’s probably Fiji, then.
Native speaker dominance?
4. 1 Andy Kirkpatrick and /th/
2 “In international contexts, the simpler, the
better”!
3 Doublespeak: good, ungood, plusgood,
doubleplusgood
4 Jennifer Jenkins: “I like chilling out.”
5 Luke Prodromou and the corpora of non-
native-speaker English
The backwash
5. Excuse me. Is there an ATM machine near here?
Please?
A cash machine? To get money?
Sorry. I no English.
Money?
Oh! Yes! Yes!! Go there.
Meanwhile … back in the real world!
6. 1 The reductionism of ELF-ers.
Great / boiling / Do you mind if I …? / I can’t stand it /I love it / spare time-key-
room /unemployed
2 We assume competence - to avoid being patronising!
3 We can all accommodate ourselves - and grade down.
4 The concept of ‘native-like’ is all relative . . . and depends
on L1.
The can of worms!
7. 5 Students themselves often seek out ‘native-like’ language.
How long your tail! / Were you born in a barn? / I felt like a fish out of water.
6 Students also often translate expressions directly.
Do you think I have cucumbers on my eyes? / Do you think I was born yesterday?
7 Are we stifling creativity?
He drinks like a horse/I felt like a fish IN the water/I felt like a bird out of the sky.
8 Level!
Further complications . . .
8. • Just because many conversations are between non-
natives, it doesn’t mean people won’t also talk to natives.
• Many non-natives already speak near-native level
English.
• Whose ELF is it anyway?
• What students really want.
• Ebonics and similar debates.
The issue of models
9. • Jennifer Jenkins and ELF pronunciation
• Barbara Seidlhofer and grammatical errors which do not
hinder communication:
Dropping the 3rd. person -s/who and which/tag questions/redundant prepositions
• Collocational errors
The environment is a large theme in my thesis.
• Talking like me doesn’t mean being me!
• Are ELF-ers just opposed to bad teaching?
Is comprehensibility enough?
10. • Native-like does not mean NATIVE.
• Reuseability is central
• Teaching standards doesn’t mean IMPOSING them.
• Knowledge is power.
• Language teachers teach language.
In conclusion
11. Visit the Heinle stand and
claim a free book!
E-mail me at:
hughdellar@mac.com
