Prot. 2015REZ4EZ
The ROMA TRE UNIT
The unit starts from the assumption, underlying this Project, that ELF is not some defective version of the L1 but a use of linguistic resources in its own right, challenging the pedagogic belief that since ELF uses do not conform to ENL rules and usage conventions, it is really only learner English at various stages of interlanguage. In fact, this Unit will provide evidence that ELF users, while ‘incompetent’ in reference to such prescribed norms, are nonetheless capable of achieving appropriate communicative outcomes on their own terms if innovative language teaching, and language-teaching training, is developed. Crucial to this line of enquiry is the notion of ELF as ‘language authentication’, appropriated by non-native speakers according to their L1 parameters (Widdowson 1979), and justifying ELF variability, thus challenging the notions of ENL as the only ‘authentic variety of English’, and ELF as a shared ‘international variety’ of English for efficient and economical communication, which prevail in today’s EU language policies and educational practices. This Unit, therefore, will revisit the notion of communicative competence, whose descriptors are based on the native-speaker model conveyed by the Common European Framework of Reference, by developing novel ELT teacher education programs, course-books, curriculum and syllabi design to be employed not only in face-to-face and distance English classrooms, but also for the training of (a) intercultural mediators (with the Salento Unit) and (b) specialists in digital-media (with the Verona Unit). The Unit will employ a Mixed Method Research (MMR) approach (Cresswell 2009) for qualitative and quantitative analyses accounting for social, political, and resource-oriented needs. The aim is to investigate the use of ELF variations in multilingual classrooms, also in e-twinning and telecollaboration, in face-to-face and online teaching, and in pre- and in-service teacher education contexts, to develop an ELF awareness informing ELF pedagogy, assessment and evaluation.
The Roma Tre Unit will offer ELF teaching/training innovative perspectives by proposing schools/universities principled programmes aimed at facing the challenges of teaching/learning ELF-communication in a multilingual and multicultural society, addressing issues related to the development, use and testing of interactive communicative strategies by a task-based approach. ICT, multimedia products, on-line learning and specialised software will be used to analyze and assess ELF classroom discourse, tasks and tests, by also relying on e-twinning approaches.
Findings in the research areas of the Project will ultimately allow the identification of significant strategies for effective ELF communication contributing to the creative empowerment of interacting people, making them competent cross-cultural communicators, as required by today’s globalized society.
The Roma Tre Unit will develop a pedagogic approach to ELF teaching to be applied to the training of teachers, mediators and digital-media specialists operating in multicultural environments to achieve an awareness of ELF pragmatic failure and possible accommodation strategies.