Focus Questions for 3/27/18
Kachru & Nelson: World Englishes
Jenkins: English as a lingua franca: Interpretations and attitudes
1.What are the Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circles? What are examples of countries belonging to each?
2.What is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and what does Jenkins argue is the difference between it and English as a Foreign Language (EFL), both in terms of purpose of English use and linguistic features?
3.How do features of World Englishes or of ELF differ from language learner errors? Do they differ?
4.Do you think a learner of English needs to acquire an Inner Circle variety like American English or British English in order to be a successful English speaker? If good (proficient) English is not necessarily native-like English, how can we define good (proficient) English? What implications can you see for language learners of different definitions of the successful English speaker?
Li: Translanguaging as a practical theory of language
1.What is your understanding of translanguaging as a practical theory? What kinds of practices does it allow us to describe? (Note that answers to this part of the question don’t only appear in the section on ‘the practice’.) What does translanguaging suggest about our object of study as (applied) linguists and how we study it?What does it suggest about the phenomenon of named languages?
2.What implications does translanguaging have for language policy and practice? What about for our understanding of second language acquisition? Li mentions some, but it would be good to think about this beyond his suggestions. For example, how might this perspective affect language teaching, assessment, and the like?
3.Think of the AL classes you have taken or are taking (including this one). What are examples of things you have studied that seem at odds with translanguaging theory? How might we study them differently if we study them through translanguaging theory? And why might we want to—or not want to?