In discussing ELF, he quoted, among others, Alan Firth saying that the practice of communication has been overlooked by the general focus on lexico-grammar. Despite its relevance for our business clients, Evan said that teaching practice will presumably only begin to change when the big testing organisations budge and develop new standards. How exactly the level of skills in practical communication can be tested to standard levels is still unclear. Even so, a few key elements have become central in my teaching, and are learnable: Jennifer Jenkins’ Lingua Franca Core, being able to analyse and apply successful communication strategies, and successful listening comprehension across varieties. I can well imagine them becoming a part of a set of new testing standards that extend the old ones rather than throwing them overboard entirely.

I saw the relevance of prioritizing communication strategies again yesterday. I was teaching back office skills to a group of management and team assistants and administrators at Mundipharma in Limburg. They’re part of an international corporate group where 1/3 of the staff they normally address are based in Germany, and 2/3 are based in Britain. As they wrote practice emails and we went through them, it became very clear that it was far more valuable to discuss how their British colleagues would respond to their direct formulation of requests and orders, and how to reformulate them to reach both the Germans and the Brits, than to nitpick minor errors in their use of the tenses and prepositions.

ELF, or BELF, will also be the focus of the BESIG pre-conference event at IATEFL with Vicki Hollett, Chia Suan Chong, Almut Koester, and Mark Powell speaking. I’ve decided to go and am very much looking forward to this. Have to sign up today, I think, to still get an early bird discount. I’ve never been to Scotland…

Focus with me for a moment on his metalanguage (often called signposting), that is the language he uses to take us from one point to the next. Metalanguage or signposting varies widely between presentation types, and is generally very different in product marketing, say, than in a presentation of technological developments to other specialists. Likewise metalanguage in academic science presentations that rely heavily on visuals will differ completely from those in economics, with their charts and empirical data, or from lectures in philosophy. At one level the difference is connected to the way each type of presentation communicates concepts. The more abstract and involved concepts get, the more difficult it will be for the audience to relate to and follow the speaker communicating them, and the more necessary it becomes to talk about what has already been said and to connect it to what is coming up next. In other words, there is no one formula for signposting, no instant phrases to learn by heart and simply apply to presentations. One size does not fit all. Every genre is different!

Just listen to the type of metalanguage Steve Jobs uses. It’s unbelievably simple:  Introducing a new product: “You like everything so far? (Audience: Yeah!) “Well, I’ll try not to blow it.” Moving from one feature to the next: “So that’s Contacts; here’s Calendars. Works much the same way.” Each statement backed by the trademark big, beautiful pictures. His authentic and communicative body language suggests that everyone is really getting the message. He doesn’t explain the technology in a way that goes over anyone’s head. And should anyone not get it completely, he draws them in, not through information, but through

• Empathy: “Keeping those devices in sync is driving us crazy.” “You might ask, Why should I believe them? They’re the ones that brought me Mobile Me. It wasn’t our finest hour, let me say that, but we learned a lot.”
• Emotion, quasi-religious feeling and humor: “Some people think the cloud just a hard disk in the sky… We think it’s way more than that.” “The truth is on the cloud.”
• Reassurance: “It just works.” “Pretty cool.” “It’s that simple.”

…and his audience laughs and believes it understands. A socially very powerful approach. Remember we are talking about an app that takes all of the information on your personal phone and removes it to an external something, somewhere, which should at least invite questions. But no, it’s all good.

It’s really an understatement to say that Steve Jobs’ iconic presentation style perfectly matched the Apple image. As a consequence of these presentations, Jobs was Apple. He’ll be a hard, no: an impossible act to follow. RIP.

• I’ve written about what we can learn from Steve Job’s presentations here: Island Weekly April 2008: Simply Beautiful.
• Here’s a lesson based on his presentation style by Carmine Gallo, BNET: Present Like Steve Jobs, March 2008. – Also see a summary of the lesson on Six Minutes, a public speaking blog by Andrew Dlugan, May 2008.

Transferable skills are what everyone talks about in job qualifications. So what transferable skills has an English trainer like me acquired in 13-14 years of experience? I can teach, I can write (in two languages), I can translate. But many newcomers compete for those very same jobs. I’d love nothing more than to work in a close-knit team, and am still hoping that I will find one that will have me.

One USP is my ability to put it all together for specific clients, e.g. for one group, designing a syllabus, preparing and writing materials, correcting and coaching written work, providing coaching before presentations, even setting up connected tech support. Or, for another client: translating presentations, knowing what language level to pitch the translation at so my client can actually give the presentation, understanding intercultural issues as a trainer to modulate the language, and then coaching in preparation for the meetings and presentations. The key (at least for me) is to develop those good client relationships and to give them more and more sophisticated services, rather than expanding my client base just for the sake of expansion. In fact, what I do has turned more and more into language consulting.

Scouting around, thinking about what might be around the next corner, I just watched James Schofield’s interview at last year’s BESIG. He’s one of the most inspiring trainers out there, a prolific writer (and a really good one), a teacher trainer who has held many sessions at BESIG and also at MELTA in Munich, and here he talks about a typical skill, namely the ability to manage groups and facilitate meetings. This seems to be an area that he has been developing, and it sounds very interesting indeed.

Are you thinking about your own professional development? How do you answer this question: “Where do your see yourself in 5 years?”

James Schofield
Summertown Readers: Ekaterina, Peril in Venice, Room Service, Double Trouble
Business Spotlight short stories (ongoing)
Course: Double Dealing (with Evan Frendo, Summertown, 2004-2006)
Course: Compass Langenscheidt (with others)
Course: Collins English for Business. Speaking (with Anna Osborn 2011); coming in 2012: Workplace English 1&2

This was the third lesson in a series on job applications. The group started by thinking about the exact definition of 12 given words that you can use to describe your strengths (and weaknesses). Since some of them are similar in Spanish, and others are very different and can easily be confused, the class spent quite some time exploring their meanings, and applying them to themselves.

• supportive… means I am helpful when there are problems. — de apoyo!
• friendly… means I am nice and helpful. — amistoso!
• focused… means I am very clear about what I am doing.  – centrado!
• flexible… means I can make changes as needed. — flexible
• creative… means I have many ideas.  – creativo
• organized… means I plan very carefully.  – organizado
• responsible… means I do the right thing. — responsable
• careful… means I think about what I am doing so I don’t do anything wrong.  – cuidadoso
• technical… means I understand technology.  – tecnico
• experienced… means that I have done something a lot.  – exprimentado!
• reliable… means that I will do what you expect.  – fiable!
• successful… means things are going very well for me. — exitoso!

One of the most important things I learned in the assessed teaching practice, through somewhat painful trial and error and very helpful feedback from Mark McKinnon, was to break down new content into individual stages. So, for example, I didn’t have the learners focus on the spoken words until they had worked out the meaning in groups. I didn’t ask them to tell or read me the answers, because that would have meant having them say the words, and I would have either let their pronunciation errors pass, or would have had to correct them, distracting everyone from the area we were focussing on. Only after everyone had the correct words and definitions lined up did we begin to work on pronunciation.

I only took this approach after having done a simlar exercise differently in a disasterous earlier lesson, where I’d had them do a gap fill and then read off answers, which lead to discussions about meaning and pronunciation drills all mixed up with questions about where we were on the page, creating a huge mess of an activity which completely tore apart a lesson which on paper had looked balanced and promising. So: these details are important!

This was fascinating to me. I learn very differently than many of my students.  I tend to set up tasks based on my natural inclination to synthesize information very quickly rather than processing it analytically, and prefer short general explanations that don’t break things down over the more extensive and particular explanations that many learners prefer, but which I find positively irritating when I am subjected to them. So following my own preferences over the years means I haven’t been giving learners with a less global/ more particular and less synthesizing/more analytical approach quite the information they needed to do their tasks well. Realizing this blind spot in my knowledge of learning preferences and exploring similar issues goes far beyond just being sure to cater to visual or kinesthetic learners. This broader approach to self-reflection on language learning styles was introduced to me by Patricia Franco using Rebecca Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, and it has made me turn my teaching inside out. The Strategy Inventory makes a lot of sense to me as a reflective tool and I hope to incorporate it consciously into my new courses. I’ve found a very extensive learner questionnaire by Oxford, Cohen and Chi that can be used as is to jump-start a deiscussion with learners, and help profile their preferences from the very beginning of a course: Learning Style Survey.

In a second step we did a very short review of question forms. I had anticipated that this would not work well, as this was a mixed level class with a variety of different approaches to studying grammar, so I declared this a sub-aim to the communicative aim, and wrote that I wasn’t aiming for accuracy, but for fluency. The question sorting part went well, but question formulation was something that only the more advanced learners could do on their own, and in fact a number of them did do it while the others were still working on the sorting activity. So when time ran out, I decided to drop the formulation activity and go straight to the role play. If I had to do it again, I’d declare the formulation part to be a flexible addition for the advanced learners to do on their own, and leave it at that.

The stronger learners supported the weaker ones throughout this course, which Patricia and I encouraged and relied on. The communicative activity that got the participants to speak English extensively and try out the new words and use the questions was the interview itself. I had prepared a cheat sheet with questions for them to pick and choose from, and they did really well, and interviewed away.  This setup for role play is something I learned from Heather Lyle. As for the seating arrangements, I had the learners move their chairs and sit in two formal rows facing each other, so they actually had to move physically into the role, which I think makes all the difference in getting into the mindset. After round one they switched partners and played the other role, balancing out the communicative heart of the lesson.

I had prepared a presentation anticipating a few areas I thought they’d have problems with, some of which did come up, so I could project those selected slides onto the board and we could work around the gaps and spaces to add emergent language. This is low tech, just a Powerpoint and a normal whiteboard. An IWB would be a cooler solution. In any case the projected images were a better solution than writing up all of the language that came up on the board, especially with these very visual learners. 60 minutes are such a short timespan to work with, and just understanding them when they were speaking and noting down emergent language was a challenge, let alone analyzing it and getting it onto the board in a comprehensible and didactically valuable way. It was more feasible to select and preempt areas they’d had trouble with just the lesson before, things I just knew would come up. Predicting errors and language problems in teaching learners whose L1 I don’t speak was really the hardest part of the entire course for me.  German learners I can teach on the spot, but not Catalan and Spanish speakers. GIven how lovely I found the country, I’ve decided that learning Spanish is definitely on my agenda!

The phonology bit, focussing on word stress, went fine. They had learned the notation using capital letters with Patricia the day before, and they had given us feedback that they actually really liked any and all drilling we did.  In hindsight, I should have added some work on /aɪ/ to the mix for “reliable” /rɪˈlaɪəb(ə)l/, which Spanish speakers have a great deal of trouble with.

Just to clarify: This is certainly not the way I have normally taught. I’d have poopooed this degree of scaffolding as “spoonfeeding”. Patricia and I had very interesting conversations about other kinds of lessons and learner training with analytical and deep end components that may be more effective in paving the way for greater learner autonomy over the duration of a course and in the long run. Still, I see staging in increments, followed by the communicative heart, as a very valuable teaching model because it redirects my attention towards what the learners can process on their own in a single lesson. That’s in fact very much a part of what I wanted to learn in this course. So I’ll be experimenting with it in “real life”.

Materials:
Handout: Job interviews
Job interview roleplay
Presentation job interviews

Documentation:
Teaching practice documentation is required for each assessed lesson.

This was probably my favorite essay question, one I knew was relevant from our MELTA 20th anniversary party with David Graddol, Vicki Hollett, Evan Frendo and Mark Powell’s plenary at BESIG, and one I could relate to my current experience. Evan organized a professional development session for ELTABB on the topic, which I unfortunately missed:

Essay question:

1. Briefly outline your understanding of the term “a variety of English”.
2. With reference to your reading on English as an international language (EIL), discuss the advantages and disadvantages of teaching a “standard” variety of English.

The variety and varieties of English

a. English is the world’s lingua franca, and we generally speak of the language in the singular. But in fact English is a vast complex of different varieties, or dissimilar versions of the language spoken by different groups. They range from local dialects such as the non-rhotic Boston accent, to international standards like BBC English, and include mixed-language varieties like Hinglish. The most influential model of the spread of English is Braj Kachru’s model of World Englishes, which he described in three concentric circles: The Inner Circle, where English is a native language (L1), the Outer Circle, where it is a second language, spread by British colonization and now used in government, law and education (L2, e.g. India, Nigeria), and the Expanding Circle, where it is a foreign language in increasingly widespread use.

Sandra Lee McKay (2002) lays out that English has become an international language in four ways:

1. It is used as a language of wider communication internationally (global sense) and in multicultural societies (local sense).
2. The use of English is no longer connected to the culture of the Inner Circle countries.
3. It is embedded in the culture of the countries where it is used.
4. Its primary function is to enable users of the language to communicate with each other.

A quarter of the world now speaks English, but the largest group is non-native speakers (NNS), who outnumber native speakers (NS) 3:1. (David Crystal 2003)
There have been initiatives to create simplified varieties (Simple English, Globish) to facilitate communication on a global scale, but NNSs appear to be able to create their own lingua franca without outside guidance. In the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), Barbara Seidlhofer has recorded some 1,250 speakers of 50 different L1s, mostly with European backgrounds, using English with each other. Her findings show that, with few NSs present to provide impulses for (self-)correction, NNSs frequently or consistently:

• drop the -s in the present simple third person (she go)
• leave out or add definite and indefinite articles (I enjoy the nature. She is secretary.)
• add prepositions (We discussed about the trip)
• rely on selected general verbs (do, have, make…)
• use an all-purpose question tag (isn’t it?)
• use that clauses (She want that they go on a trip)
• do not distinguish between relative pronouns (who vs. which)
• avoid idioms
• do not distinguish between /θ/ and /ð/ and substitute other consonants (/s/ /z/ /d/)
• avoid weak forms and other aspects of connected speech

As this non-standard use does not impede meaningful communication, Jennifer Jenkins suggests we should stop thinking that ELF is simply “Learner English” (Swan/ Smith 2001), a step on the way to EFL proficiency, and acknowledge it as an emergent variety. This raises the question: If ELF is a useful variety of English, is it worth teaching?

2. Before weighing the advantages or disadvantages of teaching a “standard” variety of English, I’d like to look at what the various standard and non-standard varieties of English represent to those involved in English language teaching and learning.

First of all, standards are set with a purpose in mind. The Queen’s or King’s English, institutionalized by a British minority and described by Henry Cecil Wyld some 100 years ago at the height of British colonialism as Received Standard (later Received Pronunciation (RP), BBC English), has traditionally been considered “good English”, providing the international standard in ELT. After WWII, it was challenged in the US, leading to the establishment of a double standard, American Standard English in the USA, and British Standard English elsewhere. As the written standard, it continues to assure reliable communications, playing an immensely important role e.g. for translations in the European Union.

Spoken English, however, is different. Standard English can be pronounced using a variety of accents, but RP is unique, spoken by only a tiny minority associated with class and power. While it is the institutionalized pronunciation target in many parts of the world, providing NNSs with a reliable benchmark, NSs may use it in jest to parody the upper crust. In the Internet age, a wide range of pronunciation models are available to learners, who can train their listening comprehension and select a model spoken by the population they are most likely to deal with.

The teacher’s national variety generally plays some role in which standards a learner is exposed to. Webster’s Dictionary in 1828 famously gave America a sense of national identity, and other countries have also created their national standards. But contrast that narrow view of language as something that a nation can own, with an approach that looks for similarities in worldwide speech patterns, comparing rhythm (stress-timing vs. syllable timing) and rhoticity, as described by McArthur (2001). Based on their L1s, learners may find it easier to acquire one standard over another. For instance, most NS of English use stress-timing, while most of the languages in India, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean are highly syllable-timed, which carries over when they speak English. This explains why they must put so much effort into acquiring a standard accent, and why speakers of English with Asian L1s are mutually intelligible, but very difficult to understand to unpracticed NS ears.

Home-grown, regional/ local, ethnic, socially-based dialects, like Boston English or Estuary English, are essential to the cultural identity of a given group, and are everywhere in popular culture. To young EFL learners, hits songs and “memes” are often the most engaging areas and can create a bond between people from widely ranging cultures. On the other hand, NS know the dialects to be “non-standard”, and when they would be inappropriate or most effective. These cultural aspects of language in use are highly relevant when learners are planning to spend time in that particular country or area.

However, with the exception of internationally recognizable “memes”, dialects are unhelpful for English as an international language (EIL). As a Japanese executive complained: “Dear English speakers: please drop the dialects.” (McArthur).

There seem to be two main perspectives on English as a lingua franca (ELF). One prioritizes standards. David Graddol’s summarizes: “The use of English as a global lingua franca requires intelligibility and the setting and maintaining of standards.” (Graddol 1996) By contrast, widespread, non-standard varieties such as European English (handy, beamer) prioritize ownership and agency. Phonology professor Jennifer Jenkins asks why one variety of English should be more legitimate than another. Instead, she suggests a “Lingua Franca Core” containing phonological elements that she has found speakers of any L1 need when they speak English with a NNS with another L1. The core includes some of the aspects noted by Seidelhofer, and Robin Walker (2010) has provided a set of pronunciation targets to prioritize for speakers of different L1s, based on the core.

As some of my classes are multilingual, and all of my learners deal with a wide range of other non-native speakers, this approach holds much appeal. The Lingua Franca core benchmarks can promote mutual intelligibility. As learners aspire to different standards at different times and for different purposes, it would be wrong, however, to make the Lingua Franca Core the “new standard of English”. There are core areas, weak forms and connected speech, which learners very much do need to be able to understand. In this media age they should to be able to interpret far more sounds than they can speak.

Alan Firth (2009) (thank you, Evan!) highlights the “multicompetencies” that emerge in interaction between speakers of different L1 speakers aiming to achieve an outcome, which he calls “the lingua franca factor”. This is what allows interactors to produce discourse, including strategies like “letting it pass”, and “making it normal” that level the playing field between the people communicating with each other. In business exchanges there is often a concrete need to have an exchange reach an outcome, which provides enough motivation to work towards understanding each other.

I feel the most important aspect of the discussion is the concept of ownership, which gives priority to negotiating meaning over defending form. Developing effective discourse strategies to achieve an outcome is an essential communication skill in any language. This priority is also born out by Ehrenreich’s (2010) study of a German multinational company, where Business English is used as a Lingua Franca (BELF) (again, thank you Evan!). Ehrenreich focuses on the need to improve effective communication (rather than English as such) and suggests that learning might better take place in “communities of practice” and through “learning by doing” rather than traditional English instruction. Her research showed that English proficiency was required in order to be hired, but that conformity with Standard English was in effect an irrelevant concept. When asked which varieties of English they found easiest, the people interviewed reported that it depended on how much practice they had in dealing with any particular one. Intelligibility was seen as a matter of co-construction, rather than variety. Interviewees also reported that native speakers tended to use their linguistic competence as an instrument of power, which NNSs found extremely irritating.

So, to sum up, where does this leave teaching a standard variety of English? While we need to be able to focus our learners on productive skills that are up to the standards expected in the environments they plan to inhabit, and to prepare them to handle a wide variety of relevant contexts, practice shows that they will most probably go on to use English as an instrument to get things done. Our job, then, is to know when to stop teaching the formal aspects of the language, and to give learners space and tools to develop the skills to work out meaning. Or, as Scott Thornbury has written in a related discussion on his blog (2011), “If we devoted more time and energy to teaching the learner, and less to teaching the language, we might be better off.”

• Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Ehrenreich, S. (2010). English as a Business Lingua Franca in a German Multinational Corporation: Meeting the Challenge. Journal of Business Communication, 47, 4: 408-431.
• Firth, A (2009) The Lingua Franca Factor. Intercultural Pragmatics 6-2, 147-170.
• Graddol, D. (1996) The Future of English? The British Council.
• Graddol, D (2006) English Next: Why Global English May Mean the End of English as a Foreign Language. London: British Council.
• Jenkins, J. (2007): English as a Lingua Franca. Attitude and Identity.
• McArthur, T. (2001) World Englishes: Trends, Tensions, Varieties, and Standards. Lang Teach. 34, 1-20
• McKay, S.L. (2002) Teaching English as an International Language
• Seidelhofer, B. (see VOICE)
• Swan, M./ Smith, B. (2001) Learner English, CUP
• Thornbury, S. (2011) A-Z: E is for ELF (http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/e-is-for-elf/ (Accessed 15 July 2011)
• VOICE website: www.univie.ac.at/voice
• Walker, R. (2010) Teaching the Pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca, OUP
• (This topic was debated in connection with BESIG 2010, in a discussion hosted by Vicki Hollett)

PS: Got lucky! One of the exam essays was a quote from someone saying, back in 2001, that varieties of English should be play a greater role in ELT, much as gender and race had. I might have cut to the chase too quickly, not talking about gender or race, or about ELT as opposed to EFL. But there is so little time in these exams, so I just went for it.

The above links are pdfs of my presentation and handouts from the workshop I gave at the Uni Potsdam Graduiertenkolleg Geowissenschaften yesterday and today.

This is an extremely interesting challenge for me, as these scientists are more advanced presenters than the undergraduate students I’ve normally taught, and not as versed in the world of marketing as my business clients. As a group, they give a series of short 2-minute presentations as an invitation to later visit their science posters in the exhibit area.  Key issues are how to make their points memorable, and their listeners hungry for more. This opens up a huge area for micro-storytelling (adding the personal dimension), but also for memorable catchphrases that stay safely this side of rhetoric. Work in progress, I’m looking forward to the rest of the workshop.

Susanne Frölich-Steffen (her website), a scientist now working as a communcation skills trainer in the academic world (primarily in Munich and Bavaria) gave me wonderful tips. I’m hoping we can work together in the future.

Further reading:

• Michael Alley: The craft of scientific presentations. Critical steps to succeed and critical errors to avoid. Springer NY 2003 ISBN-0-387-95555-0
  – Book homepage
• Nancy Duarte: Slide:ology. The art and science of creating great presentations. O’Reilly 2008 ISBN-13:978-0-596-52234-6
  – Nancy Duarte’s blog

This particular blog carnival came into being when Carl Dowse was rounding up blogs dedicated to Business English in a links list for BESIG, the Business English Special Interest Group of IATEFL. The conversation brought to light that there are just a few blogs that focus completely on business, like Evan Frendo’s “English for the Workplace“, Jeremy Day’s “Specific English“, the Business Spotlight blogs by Deborah Capras, Helen Strong and Robert Gibson, or Jeffrey Hill’s “The English Blog: Business“. But even writers for and teachers of Business English will treat non-business topics in their blogs; just think of Vicki Hollett’s “Learning to speak ‘merican” or Karenne Sylvester’s “Kalinago English“. Then, teachers of general English are highly respected and much read in the BE/ ESP community, like Alex Case of “TEFLtastic“, Larry Ferlazzo of “Websites of the Day” or Jamie Keddie,  etc. etc. Plenty of teachers – including many readers of this blog! – cross over on a daily basis between teaching young learners, giving general English classes and handling business English groups, and they must have interesting lesson ideas to share to introduce themselves to a more specialized, business-focussed readership. The round-up of blogposts will also be published on the BESIG website – so new readers are guaranteed!

So I’d like to extend a very warm invitation to all of you, from the specialist to the generalist, to contribute to this upcoming event. Just make sure that your entry is indeed geared to Business English or ESP, that is: the English people need at work. Have a look at the form, please, and let me know whether you’ll be joining us.