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“Mircea cel Batran” Naval Academy Scientific Bulletin, Volume XX – 2017 – Issue 2

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COOPERATIVE TEACHING VS. TRADITIONAL TEACHING IN DEVELOPING ESP

SPEAKING SKILLS. AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Lavinia NADRAG1
Alina BUZARNA-TIHENEA (GALBEAZA)
1Prof. PhD Faculty of Letters, Ovidius University of Constanta, Aleea Universitatii no. 1, Campus, Corp A,
Lnadrag28@yahoo.com
2Assist. Prof. PhD of Letters, Ovidius University of Constanta, Aleea Universitatii no. 1, Campus, Corp A,
alina_buzarna84@yahoo.com

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that EFL/ESL skills, in general, and ESP skills, in particular, are bette

developed when modern and innovative student-centered teaching and learning methods and technique

are employed, such as the communicative approach, cooperative teaching and learning, creative teaching
and teaching for creativity, contextual learning, cross-over learning, computational thinking, adaptive
teaching, embodied learning, etc. The purpose of this paper is to underline the efficiency of cooperative
learning, compared to traditional teaching methods, in developing the students’ ESP speaking skills. This
paper is part of an experimental study conducted on two groups of students whose major is Business
Economics (first year of study), over a period of one month, in the first semester of the academic year 2016-
2017. The control group consisted of 25 students while the experimental group had 20 students. The
experimental study involved the following stages: an initial test was applied to both groups of students, i

order to assess their initial ESP skills; afterwards, two ESP units were taught, i.e. “Tomorrow’s World” an

“Job Interviews”. The traditional methods and techniques were used when teaching ESP to the contro

group, while techniques specific to cooperative teaching and learning were applied to the experimental
group. At the end of the teaching period, a final test was taken by the students of both groups in order to
assess the effectiveness of the two teaching methods and techniques that had been used during the
ESP seminars (i.e. the traditional and the cooperative one), focused on developing the students’ ESP
skills. Moreover, the students answered a questionnaire assessing their opinions and attitudes towards
the applied teaching methods.
Keywords: cooperative learning, traditional teaching, ESP, Business Economics, speaking skills

Introduction
ESP cooperative learning implies teaching by
organizing students in small teams (each team
consisting of students of different ESP skill levels)
and using a wide range of ESP learning activities
and tasks in order develop their understanding. I

is noteworthy that, when it comes to cooperative
learning, every team member holds the
responsibility for learning what is taught and for
helping their team colleagues learn (Castillo,
2007:85). Therefore, this method engenders an
achievement environment. While performing their
task, students are also required to ensure that all
team members successfully understood and
completed it. The students’ cooperative efforts
generate reciprocal benefits for all team members.
Moreover, by sharing the same task, they become
acquainted with each other’s performance and
skill levels and are aware of the fact that
performances are influenced both by oneself and
by the other team members. Upon the successful
achievement of the task, the students usually feel
very proud and they are happy when a team
member’s success is acknowledged, because this
is also the success of the entire team. Thus,
cooperative learning triggers more opportunities
for students to get involved more actively in the
learning process (Adams, 2013).

Cooperative learning: concept and techniques
Speaking is playing a more and more important
role in learning any foreign language, since the
learners’ main purpose is represented by the
acquisition of the ability to communicate and to
understand the messages transmitted in the
respective language. In cooperative learning,
discussions are indispensable tools, especially
when it comes to the development of the
speaking skills, as they represent a better
alternative to the question-and-answer method,
giving students more freedom of expression
(Johnson et al., 1998). However, discussions
also have several drawbacks when applied at
the level of the entire class because shy and
less confident students can hide from the
teacher and avoid contributing to the respective
discussion-based activity. Therefore, in order to
promote productive talk, students should be
organized in pairs or small groups, in order to
discuss and solve a specific task (Meng, 2010:
701-702). Through cooperative learning,
speaking activities can be highly motivating and
students are willing to express their views, to
express themselves instead of being afraid of
making mistakes in front of the whole class
(Meng, 2010: 703).

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Among the numerous factors which have an
impact on the results of learning, Ryan and Deci
(2000: 55-61) enlarge on the concept of
motivation, its definition and classification:
“intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing
something because it is inherently interesting or
enjoyable, and extrinsic motivation, which refers
to doing something because it leads to a
separable outcome. “Intrinsic motivation results in
high-quality learning and creativity” while external
motivation is classified into external regulation,
introjection, identification, integration. On the other
hand, amotivation “is the state of lacking an
intention to act”.
In Frandsen’s opinion (1994), it is clear that
physical conditions influence the learning process
and can alter the students’ motivation either
positively or negatively. Thus, teachers should try
to make their classrooms as pleasant as possible.
For instance, even where conditions are bad, it
may be possible to improve the atmosphere with
posters or by displaying the students’ work on
walls.
Thus, compared to the traditional classroom,
where students are passive and work alone, the
teacher directing their work, the cooperative
classroom encourages students to be active, to
direct their work by themselves and to work either
in pairs or in small groups made of up to six
students. If in the traditional classroom the
teacher is the one who initiates the discussions,
silence being valued, the cooperative classroom
teaches students to initiate discussions, the
learning noise being appropriate. On the one
hand, in the traditional classroom, not all students
have the opportunity to participate and the focus
falls upon individual accountability, the students
being encouraged to become independent
learners and being provided with individual
materials. Moreover, feed-back comes only from
the teacher. On the other hand, as far as the
cooperative classroom is concerned, all students
are provided with different occasions to participate
actively in order to solve tasks. Having in view
that, in the cooperative classroom the focus is
placed on individual and team responsibility,
students are encouraged to become
interdependent learners, being given shared
materials (Bawn, 2007; Macpherson, 2007).
Furthermore, feedback also comes from the
students’ peers. The teacher’s role is to help and
encourage students to develop their skills, but
without relinquishing a more traditional role as a
source of information, advice and knowledge
(Jones, 2007: 25).
Therefore, cooperative learning relies on a wide
variety of classroom interaction types, such as
collaborative learning, discussions, debates, role-
play, interactive sessions, loud reading, story-
telling, conversation with learner (Sanchez, 2010;

Stone, 2007). These techniques contribute heavily
to the development of students’ ESP skills
(especially the speaking and listening ones) and
enhance their ability to think critically and to share
their opinions with their colleagues, as they
involve emotions, creativity, agreement/
disagreement, gestures, spontaneity. Cooperative
learning encourages student-student interaction,
which relies on group work or pair work. In this
case, stress is reduced as students group with
their classmates for discussions and help each
other. The teacher plays a less dominant role,
being only the monitor, while the students are the
main participants to the activities, dominating their
own interaction process (Gillies and Ashman,
2003). Moreover, they will develop their self-
correcting abilities as they learn to avoid making
the same mistakes that their peers have made
before.
Among the benefits of cooperative learning, one
can notice: the increase in the students’
achievements, their becoming responsible for
their own learning, retention improvement, the
generation of more positive feelings towards the
subject studied, the promotion of active learning,
lower frustration and anxiety levels, promotion of
inter-personal communication abilities,
enhancement of self-worth feelings and the
creation of a sense of community (Wilwert, 2015;
Zhang, 2010).
In order to be able to monitor each group, the
teacher should provide clear guidance and
directions before asking the students to practice
interactional activities in their respective groups.
Furthermore, in order to better organize the class,
Jones (2007: 8) provides the following pieces of
advice: talkative students should be organized in
groups of three and less talkative students in
groups of four or five; in order to stimulate a better
exchange of ideas, shy students should be
organized in groups of three rather than in pairs;
the teacher can ask two students to discuss while
a third one listens to their conversation, takes
notes and provides feedback at the end.

Class activities for developing speaking skills.
Concepts and techniques
It is widely known that communication plays a
very important role in ESP teaching and learning,
so that learners acquire the necessary speaking
skills in order to be successful on the
contemporary highly competitive and globalized
labor market (Mărunțelu and Dumitrașcu, 2013).
In order to develop the students’ ability to spea

fluently, the teacher should have in view not only
their knowledge of language features but also
their ability to process both the received
information and the used language (at the same
time) and to structure their discourse. Often, this
triggers the need for further clarification by the

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teacher (Harmer, 2003: 271). When conducting
speaking activities in the cooperative ESP
classroom, the teacher should bear in mind two
basic oral communication types, i.e.
conversational (dialogic) and expositional
(monological).
The conversational mode has an interactional and
communicative nature and it is the most widely
used. It relies on the rapid exchange of
information and, in the ESP classroom, it can take
the form of enjoyable and stimulating activities
that involve the transfer of information from one
person to another that “catch” the students’
attention and reduce their anxiety, activities such
as question-answer based tasks, brainstorming,
conversations, simulations, role play,
improvisations and debates on different proposed
topics. Moreover, the texts used in the classroom
provide opportunities for role play and
improvisation, interactive conversation and
communication, which, if performed regularly,
gradually improve the students’ abilities to master
essential communication strategies (Vizental,
2007: 109).
As far as the expositional mode is concerned, the
speaker delivers freely an informative (introducing
oneself, for instance), descriptive (describing
something), narrative (storytelling), persuasive
(persuade somebody to do something, expressing
opinions) presentation on a certain topic, in front
of an audience, stimulating the students’ ability to
speak fluently and freely. The expositional mode
may include activities such as describing a
person, expressing opinions on a given topic,
telling a story, commenting on a text/an event,
delivering a speech. The students can be asked to
speak spontaneously (called on to express their
opinions without preparation), or they may be
given an of time to prepare what they want to
say. To foster the students to speak, the teacher
must lead them from fully controlled activities,
through guided activities to free communication. In
the early stage of language teaching, the students
learn basic vocabulary items and structures
through drills and exercises, controlled activities
(in which language is controlled by the teacher),
the focus being on ways of producing correct
language (Vizental 2007: 210-216).
The next stage is represented by guided practice,
which consists in controlled activities aimed at
providing support and confidence, where students
produce language by imitating the model provided
by the teacher. Nevertheless, repetition does not
lead to the actual production of language and,
therefore, students should move as far away from
the models as possible in order to get ready for
real life, and carry out activities involving
interaction, creation of messages, information
transfer. Thus, the students can express
themselves in progressively creative contexts.

Guided speaking activities require students to
produce texts similar to those provided by the
teacher, but in a different way, by paraphrasing
the words of the initial text (not repeating them) or
by using one’s own imagination and expanding
the respective text. The most common type of
guided conversation is represented by the
question-answer exchange, related to the studied
text. Students should be motivated, they should
involve in conversations on topics similar to those
in the real world and close to their own
experiences, such as home, family, shopping,
travelling, music, professions. Besides
conversations, other guided speaking activities
include joining or reordering slashed words,
sentences, or paragraphs, continuing sentences
or paragraphs according to one’s own
imagination, using linguistic or non-linguistic props
(such as key words, pictures) to form their own
texts (Mărunțelu, 2006).
The next step, i.e. free language production and
communication (involving the independent
collecting of material and production of own texts),
can be applied after the students have developed
language fluency and proficiency (usually at
intermediate and advanced levels) and involved
activities such as dialogues, role play and
improvisation. The teacher organizes the
activities, facilitates the interactions, moderates
and analyzes the students’ free language
production.
It is noteworthy that speaking activities can take
place at any stage of the lesson, i.e. as pre-
reading or pre-listening activities, as while-reading
or while-listening activities or as after-reading or
after-listening activities. However, they should be
managed and organized differently, having in view
factors such as the lesson stage, the text type, the
lesson’s objectives, the students’ age and
language level.

Case study
This second section of the paper is a case study,
centered on the comparison between Cooperative
Language Learning and Traditional Language
Learning, with a focus on the ESP speaking skills.
The study was based on the following hypothesis:
When using the Cooperative Learning Method in
the ESP classroom, learners feel more
comfortable and their Speaking Skills are
enhanced. Therefore, it is aimed at analyzing and
assessing the influence that cooperative learning
and traditional learning methods and techniques
have on the students’ ESP Speaking Skills.
The research instruments used for the purpose of
this research were: speaking tests used as initial
tests and final tests, the experiment and the
observation. During the experimental stage, we
also used different types of exercises including
matching, cloze, true or false, riddles, crosswords,

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rephrasing exercises. In addition, the students
were encouraged to engage in debates and short
dialogues, interviews, descriptions, storytelling,
summarizing, expressing opinions, in connection
to their field of study, i.e. business economy.
This case study was conducted in two parallel
groups majoring in Business Economy, over one
month, in academic year 2016/2017, in order to
analyze the efficiency of cooperative learning and
traditional learning on the students’ ESP speaking
skills. The experimental group (where cooperative
learning was used) consisted of 20 students
(divided into five teams of four members) and the
control group (which studied and developed their
ESP speaking skills by means of traditional,
teacher-centered methods) had 25 students.
The lesson plans for both groups addressed the
same instructional objectives based on the
same speaking topics and exercises. However,
the lesson plans for the experimental group
were based on cooperative learning and
provided opportunities for small-group
interaction and sharing resources among team
members. As far as the control group students
were concerned, they were asked to solve their
tasks individually and shared their answers with
the class, their activities being based only on
student-teacher interactions. Worksheets were
provided to both groups; however, the control
group was provided with traditional routine
situations.
Before the experiment, an initial test was
administered to both groups in order to assess
the students’ ESP level and the differences
between the two groups, in terms of their ESP
skills. The initial test contained three tasks:
answer some questions, talk about picture
differences and express your opinion on a
particular topic. The procedure of the test
provided the measure of performance quality,
according to the following criteria: pronunciation
(intelligibility degree, intonation, sentence and
word stress, articulation of individual sounds),
grammar and vocabulary accuracy (control of
grammatical forms, range of appropriate
vocabulary items, ability to exchange views on
unfamiliar and abstract topics), discourse
management (language style, types of
contributions, range of cohesive devices and
discourse markers) and interactive
communication (linking/ not linking contributions
to those of other speakers; scope of interaction;
negotiation towards an outcome).

The results of the initial tests provided
the following pieces of information in terms of
the students’ speaking skills, and they are
presented in the table below:

Table 1. The students’ speaking skills.
Levels and criteria (initial test results)

Le
ve

E
xp

er
im

en
ta

l
gr

ou
p

C
on

tr
ol

g
ro

Criteria

E
xc

el
le

3
st

ud
en

3
st
ud
en
ts

The student spoke fluently; s/he
made few mistakes, gave the
necessary explanations and
arguments, supporting them with
appropriate examples. His/her
mother tongue influences his/her
pronunciation only to a very small
extent. In terms of grammar and
vocabulary, the student made only
2-3 small mistakes.

Ve
ry

g
oo

2
st

ud
en
ts

3
st
ud
en
ts

The student spoke with ease,
making only several mistakes that
did not change or influence the
meaning of the message. His/her
mother tongue slightly influences
his/her pronunciation. In terms of
grammar and vocabulary, the
student made only a few mistakes,
most sentences being correct.

G
oo

d
2
st
ud
en
ts

3
st
ud
en
ts

The student spoke with ease,
making only several mistakes that
slightly changed or influenced the
meaning of the message. His/her
mother tongue influences his/her
pronunciation moderately;
however, there were no serious
phonological errors. In terms of
grammar and vocabulary, the
student made only a few small
mistakes, with only 1-2 major
errors causing confusion.

P
as

7
st

ud
en
ts

9
st

ud
en
ts

The student spoke hesitantly,
conveyed the required messages,
but s/he made serious mistakes.
The student’s vocabulary is limited.
His/her mother tongue influences
his/her pronunciation; s/he made
only a few serious phonological
and lexical mistakes and some of
them created confusion in terms of
understanding the conveyed
message.

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W
ea

k
3
st
ud
en
ts

4
st

ud
en
ts

The student had difficulties in
transmitting his/her message and
s/he made frequent mistakes that
entailed communication
breakdowns. The student’s
vocabulary is poor. His/her mother
tongue influences heavily his/her
pronunciation. In terms of grammar
and vocabulary, the student made
many basic mistakes.

Ve
ry

p
oo

r
3
st
ud
en
ts

3
st
ud
en
ts

The student’s English is very poor;
s/he could hardly transmit a
message and made serious
mistakes in terms of pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary. There is
no evidence that they master
English speaking skills.

Source: Authors’ own processing

The initial marks obtained by the experimental
group students revealed that 70% passed the test
and 30% failed it.

Table 2. Initial test marks – the experimental
group

M
ar

ks
under 5 between

5-6,99
between
7-8,99

between
9-10

6 7 4 3

P
er

ce
nt

ag
e

30% 35% 20% 15%

Source: Authors’ own processing

The marks obtained by the control group students
in the initial test reveal that 64% passed it while
36% failed it.

Table 3. Initial test marks – the control group

M
ar
ks
under 5 between
5-6,99
between
7-8,99
between
9-10

9 9 4 3

P
er
ce
nt

a
ge

%
36% 36% 16% 12%

Source: Authors’ own processing

These results reveal that not all the students had
a highly developed ability to interact, to speak in a
range of contexts and to balance accuracy and
fluency. Pronunciation errors were minor as they
did not impede meaning processing. Some of the
students could hardly convey messages, made

serious mistakes and required additional
prompting and support.
The initial test results showed that the control
group students and the experimental group
students had similar ESP levels, as far as their
speaking skills were concerned, before applying
cooperative learning.
During the experiment, two ESP units were
taught, i.e. Tomorrow’s World and Job
Interviews.
The control group students were taught through
traditional learning methods, focused on
teacher-centered instruction. The students were
asked to preview the text for each unit before
class, and the teacher instructed the whole
class by explaining the text to be discussed,
focusing on English grammar and vocabulary
items. The teacher interacted with the students
by asking questions and leading a discussion.
Therefore, there was little student interaction.
Questions were usually direct and the students
had to repeat the answers, this method
encouraging route learning and memorizing. The
teacher did not encourage communication
between students. The control group students
passed individual tests (focused on the two
above-mentioned units) at the end of the
experiment.
The experimental group students were divided
into small heterogeneous groups of four
members. In the first two weeks of the
experiment, the teacher spent about 10 minutes
at the beginning of every ESP class guiding
students to practise cooperative learning
speaking strategies and skills through
explanation and teaching. The cooperative
learning strategies used by the teacher during
the experiment included Jigsaw, Think-Pair
Share, Flashcards and Three-Step Interview.

In the cooperative learning classes,
students were asked to preview the unit text
and prepare individual questions before class,
and then bring the questions to class for
discussing them in groups and pairs. During
class cooperation, group members clarified
word meanings and confusing texts, with a
special focus on those embedding also cultural
concepts and values, such as ESP idiomatic
expressions (in this regard, see Leonte and
Istratie-Macarov, 2016; Istratie-Macarov and
Leonte 2016). Then, the students engaged in a
discussion to determine the answers to their
questions. During group discussions, the
teacher helped students cope with
misunderstandings, offered feedback, and
facilitated discussions. In addition, the students
were encouraged to engage in debates and short
dialogues, interviews, descriptions, storytelling,
summarizing, expressing opinions. Thus,
cooperative learning encouraged the students’

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mutual interaction; furthermore, it focused on their
active and task-oriented participation in student-
centered learning events.
In the Cooperative Learning activities, students
worked in groups or pairs. For instance, in one
activity, a student was given several elements
(for example a picture) displayed in a certain
way, and another student was given the same
elements. However, the latter’s elements were
loose and s/he was asked to arrange them in
the same order/way. He would figure the correct
order/way out by discussing with his/her partner
(s/he was forbidden to look at his/her partner’s
picture). In another activity, the students from
the experimental group were organized in pairs
and each student was given similar pictures, but
with several small differences. Then, the
students had to discuss and to highlight the
differences; this time they were forbidden to
look at each other’s picture.
After the experiment, the students passed a final
test, aimed at assessing their ESP teaching skills
and comparing the results in order to verify the
research hypothesis (i.e. the Cooperative
Learning Method in the ESP classroom helps
learner to feel more comfortable and enhances
their speaking skills).
The structure of the final test was similar to the
one of the initial test (i.e. it contained three
tasks: answer some questions, talking about
picture differences and expressing one’s
opinion about a particular topic). Moreover, the
assessment was based on the same criteria
presented above.
The scoring classification of the students’ results
in terms of their ESP speaking skills are shown in
the table below:

Table 4. The students’ speaking skills.
Classification and criteria (final test results)

C
la

ss
ifi

ca
tio

n
E
xp
er
im
en
ta
l
gr
ou
p
C
on
tr
ol
g
ro
up

Criteria
E
xc
el
le
nt

5
st

ud
en
ts

3
st
ud
en
ts

Ve
ry
g
oo
d
5
st
ud
en
ts

2
st
ud
en
ts

G
oo
d
4
st
ud
en
ts

2
st
ud
en
ts

P
as
s
3
st
ud
en
ts

6
st

ud
en
ts

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W
ea
k

1
st

ud
en
t
3
st
ud
en
ts

Ve
ry
p
oo
r
2
st
ud
en
ts

9
st
ud
en
ts

The student’s English is very poor;
s/he could hardly transmit a
message and made serious basic
mistakes in terms of pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary. There is
no evidence that they have
mastered their English speaking
skills practised in the ESP seminar
(a very weak level).

Source: Authors’ own processing

The marks obtained by the experimental group
students in the final Test are presented in the
table below, showing that 90% passed it and only
10% failed it.

Table 5. Final test marks – the experimental
group

M
ar

ks
under 5 between

5 – 6,99
between
7 – 8,99

between
9 – 10

2 4 9 5

P
er
ce
nt
ag
e

10% 20% 45% 25%

Source: Authors’ own processing

The final marks obtained by the control group
students showed that 72% passed the test, while
28% failed it.

Table 6. Final test marks – the control group

M
ar
ks
under 5 between
5 – 6,99
between
7 – 8,99
between
9 – 10

7 8 6 4

P
er
ce
nt
ag
e

28% 32% 24% 16%

Source: Authors’ own processing

The data presented above, obtained by observing
the traditional and the cooperative teaching and
learning processes and by analyzing the students’
initial and final test results, revealed that the ESP
speaking skills of the experimental group students
improved to a great extent (compared with those
of control group students), emphasizing thus the
benefits of cooperative learning. The
pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary and
interactive communication are ESP speaking
aspects that the experimental group students
improved and developed in their cooperative
classroom activities. Moreover, when speaking
English, they displayed more confidence, as they
had more occasions to express themselves and
speak up, within a more enjoyable class
atmosphere. Furthermore, it was easier and
simpler for the experimental group students to
study the provided materials with the other team
members, and they participated actively in the
cooperative activities, compared with the control
group students, who were more reluctant to
participate in the activities, being shy, nervous or
passive. Gradually, the experimental group
students spotted and understood the mistakes
they had made because the teacher always asked
them to give feedback on their peers’
performance.
Overall, the results indicated that the experimental
group students benefited from the cooperative
learning activities, obtaining comparatively better
marks in the assessment of their ESP speaking
skills, in comparison with the control group
students, who were involved in traditional and
teacher-centered activities, revealing that our
research hypothesis (i.e. cooperative learning
enhances the students’ ESP speaking skills,
compared to the traditional teaching methods) is
valid.

CONCLUSIONS
Through cooperative learning, ESP speaking activities can become highly motivating and students
involve themselves more actively instead of being afraid of making mistakes in front of the whole class.
After the experiment, the results and their analysis highlighted that cooperative learning activities helped
students to acquire, develop and improve their ESP speaking skills gradually, as they were provided more
reasons and opportunities to express themselves and to speak up, and also to employ their previous ESP
knowledge by learning and teaching cooperatively and actively. In order to encourage students to speak,
appropriate information, enough vocabulary items or correct grammatical structures should be provided.

112
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© 2017. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Moreover, the teacher should create a learning atmosphere that does not place a great emphasis on
mistakes and that offers students the opportunity to get involved into attractive cooperative activities that
motivate them to express themselves.
The experiment reveals that there are several elements that play a key role in the cooperative classroom,
such as working in small groups (i.e. students should be organized in pairs or in small groups), taking into
consideration different ESP levels, establishing team rules, working separately on different aspects involved
by the ESP speaking skills, the students’ assessment of their peers’ performance.
In our opinion, in the cooperative classroom, the control of the students’ discipline represented one of the
most challenging and important issues. This was triggered by the fact that the students had to work together,
and sometimes, especially at the beginning, this contradicted their wishes (for instance, some of them
wanted to solve the tasks only together with their friends, or some of them were shy and reluctant to
participate because of their new partners).
It is noteworthy that the teacher should explain the rules and objectives of each activity. During the speaking
activities, the experimental group students knew their responsibilities and complied with them (individually
and at team level). They became gradually aware of the fact that they were provided with many elements
and opportunities in order to express themselves and to communicate their messages successfully. The
experimental group students became aware that they can acquire, develop and improve their ESP speaking
skills only by constantly practising it, using some of the appropriate information provided by the teacher and
by their peers. Every activity ended with the teacher’s useful feedback, which helped them to get involved in
other group discussions. Moreover, they started to correct their mistakes because they were required to
check the new vocabulary items and expressions and their pronunciation constantly during the activity.
Furthermore, the cooperative activities established a different class atmosphere; the students did not feel
any anxiety and pressure and had a wide variety of opportunities to speak up and express themselves.
Therefore, the experimental group students discovered that ESP speaking activities are fun and easy when
they involve working with their peers and became aware of the importance of interacting with others, for the
development of these skills. Additionally, the experimental group students learnt how to implement several
values and social skills, such as honesty, tolerance, solidarity, respect, team spirit and self-esteem;
cooperative learning also helped them to establish new relationships with their peers.
Therefore, as far as our experiment is concerned, it was revealed that cooperative learning represented an
appropriate method for acquiring, developing and improving the students’ ESP speaking skills, this method
being enjoyable both for the students and their teacher. The students learnt more, they developed their ESP
skills, with a focus on the speaking ones, as they had more occasions to participate and get involved in the
cooperative activities and felt comfortable using ESP within their working groups, without the pressure of
grades or other students’ opinions. All in all, our experiment has shown the positive relationship between
cooperative group work and oral performance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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content in accordance with the terms of the License.

159PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate:
Sensitising Teachers of English as a Foreign Language Towards

Teaching English as a Lingua Franca

El debate del inglés como lengua extranjera o como lengua franca:
sensibilización de docentes de inglés como lengua extranjera hacia la enseñanza

del inglés como lengua franca

Gillian Mansfield*
University of Parma, Italy

Franca Poppi**
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

The function of English as a lingua franca for communication needs rethinking in the teaching of
English as a foreign language classroom as a consequence of globalisation. The present contribution is
an empirical study carried out in an Italian university environment which aims to show how teachers
should take on board awareness raising activities in the recognition of other varieties of English which,
albeit not exploited as benchmarks for language testing and certification, must nevertheless boast a rel-
evant place in the global scenario. This can be achieved in practical terms by interrogating an expressly
made corpus of Chinese English news texts and carrying out simple concordance activities.

Key words: Awareness raising, concordances, English as a foreign language, English as a lingua franca,
globalisation.

Debido a los procesos de globalización, la función del inglés como herramienta internacional o
como lengua franca para la comunicación exige un replanteamiento de la enseñanza del inglés como
idioma extranjero. En este artículo se presenta un estudio empírico llevado a cabo en un contexto
universitario italiano que pretende mostrar cómo los docentes deberían desempeñar actividades para
facilitar el reconocimiento de otras variedades del inglés que, al no ser utilizadas como modelos de
evaluación y certificación lingüística, exigen en cambio una mayor atención en el escenario global.
En la práctica, esto puede realizarse analizando un corpus específico de textos periodísticos en inglés
chino y llevando a cabo actividades sencillas de concordancias.

Palabras clave: concordancias, inglés como lengua extranjera, inglés como lengua franca, facilitación
del reconocimiento, globalización.

* E-mail: gillian.mansfield@unipr.it
** E-mail: franca.poppi@unimore.it

This article was received on June 30, 2011, and accepted on November 2, 2011.

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras160

Mansfield & Poppi

Introduction
The worldwide spread of English is just one

of the many different developments subsumed
under the general phenomenon of globalisation. It
is furthermore associated with boundless mobili-
ties and, as such, is the language of globalisation
(Gnutzmann & Intemann, 2008, p. 9).

If, on the one hand it is true that language is
a vital commodity in the globalised world, it is on
the other also true that globalisation raises issues
for second language learning and teaching. As a
result, the function of English as an international
tool or as a lingua franca (ELF) for communication
needs rethinking in the English as a foreign lan-
guage (EFL) classroom. This does not only require
that teachers help their students develop the lin-
guistic skills needed to understand various kinds
of accents and in turn be understood by others,
but it also paves the way for an enhanced aware-
ness of the existence of non-native speakers all
over the world who use English as a means of com-
munication. With this in mind, it is essential that
teachers respond appropriately (and pragmatically)
to equipping their students with the skills needed
in the face of cultural and linguistic differences
emerging between interactants in an international
context, as, for example, Mauranen (2006) has
highlighted in her study of misunderstanding and
repair strategies in ELF communication.

The present contribution is an empirical study
which investigates how instances of written ELF can
be used to make EFL teachers come to terms with
the concept of the other; in particular, the other
with respect to the standard (British or American)
English model, object and target of an institutional
teaching syllabus. This otherness exists in its own
right and as a natural consequence of cultural and
sociolinguistic realities in other parts of the world.
Thanks to developing technology and the wide-
spread availability of documents, teachers are now

in a position to access and save in electronic for-
mat –assembled as a general or specific corpus
and which they can subsequently interrogate– a
large amount of authentic English data from all
corners of the world. This innovative means of
retrieving and investigating information about the
language has clear implications for future teacher
training courses and the updating of EFL teaching
methodology.

The work we present is supported by corpus
evidence provided by a collection of articles from
the on-line version of the China Daily newspa-
per, published in China, a country belonging to
Kachru’s (1985) Expanding Circle1. The aim of our
analysis is two-fold, both purposes linked to each
other like a pair of stepping stones: 1) to sensitise
teachers of the existence of different Englishes
around the world, which represent the voices and
interests of different non-native speakers in their
sociolinguistic and cultural uses of the language
by identifying unfamiliar or even inventive lexico-
grammatical features that appear in the corpus; 2)
to propose an analytical framework that can be
applied to any variety of texts in order to enhance
EFL teaching methodology.

Thus we emphasize that the main aim of this
paper does not lie in an attempt to investigate how
much regularity/stability there actually is in the use
of a standard form of English (EFL), but simply to
raise awareness and acceptance of other Englishes.

From a contextual point of view, the paper will
first provide some background information on the
Italian university teaching context, and then focus
on some of the main issues prevalent in the EFL
and ELF debate. After a description of our objec-
tives, methods and materials, preliminary data will
be provided from a small-scale case study, carried

1 Regarding the Englishes spoken around the world, Kachru
devised a three circle concentric model – inner, outer and expanding.

161PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate: Sensitising Teachers of English…

out on a corpus of articles from the on-line ver-
sion of the China Daily newspaper. Results from
this study will serve as a possible instance of good
practice for teachers in creating awareness-raising
activities for themselves (and consequently their
students), such as interrogating a corpus of articles
from the above-mentioned newspaper (or indeed
others) and investigating unfamiliar localised
forms that may be identified (with respect to the
standard language) by means of a simple concor-
dancing software2.

The Italian Educational context
At present English is the dominant language in

the educational sector in Italy, as all over the rest
of Europe, where it is primarily taught as the first
foreign language and almost totally EFL biased,
where accuracy is considered to be the norm, be it
regarding productive skills in either the written or
the spoken code. Native and non-native speakers
alike demand allegiance to and achievement of the
native speaker standards; neither pronunciation
nor general written works are allowed to present any
L1 interference. Moreover, EFL teaching institutions
(in secondary and further education) design their
courses often to match the requirements of inter-
national examination boards such as the University
of Cambridge English for Speakers of Other Lan-
guages (ESOL), who base their examinations on the
descriptors of the Common European Framework
of Reference (CEFR)3. This design is also confirmed

2 The software used in this particular case was the freely
downloadable ConCapp.

3 The Common European Framework of Reference is available
at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN . It is
a document that consists of a series of levels (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2)
across five language strands – listening, spoken interaction, spoken
production, reading and writing. It has been designed with adult lan-
guage learners/users, as well as self-assessment in mind. It has the
benefit of not being specific to any country or context and offers a
continuum for identifying language proficiency within a self-assess-
ment grid.

by requirements in both academic and other pro-
fessional circles where international certifications
such as ESOL (First Certificate English, Cambridge
Advanced and Proficiency) and (Test of English as
a Foreign Language) TOEFL4 attest the non-native
speaker’s ability to produce native speaker-like lan-
guage and are seen as a kind of valid visiting card
or key qualification on a curriculum vitae. In the
particular case of Italy, university degree syllabuses
look to and apply the CEFR for benchmark levels
of students’ competences, where an “accurate” B1
is required of non-language specialists reading for
degrees in disciplines ranging from the sciences to
the humanities, and a highly desirable C1-C2 for
language specialists.

Interestingly enough, ESOL covers a less specific
130 countries around the world while on the TOEFL
site5, reference is made to acceptance in the Inner
Circle countries (Kachru, 1985). Both sites thus
imply, rather short-sightedly, that both British and
American standards are the only acceptable norms
on a worldwide scale. Indeed, what is emerging
(Seidlhofer, 2008, p. 169) with some clarity is
that in view of the present globalisation through
English and of English, insistence on a ‘mono-
chrome’ native-speaker standard has now become
an anachronism that inevitably leads to some con-
fusion in the discourse of and about linguistics and
language teaching which manifests itself in a num-
ber of contradictions and discrepancies.

What we need is a critical appraisal of language
use and language teaching analogous to what we
find in other areas of English study, and a fostering

4 While TOEFL does not take the CEFR into consideration
it likewise establishes the strict criteria candidates need to satisfy
in order to achieve a particular level of competence. The TOEFL test
measures your ability to use and understand English at the university
level. And it evaluates how well you combine your listening, reading,
speaking and writing skills to perform academic tasks. http://www.
ets.org/toefl/.

5 See above.

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras162

Mansfield & Poppi

of language awareness in the true sense of the word
with regard to how language functions in social
contexts of use.

To be able to move forward, it is necessary for
teachers to take on board the present reality which
does not rely on the hegemony of the norm-based
standard English, be it the British or the American
model. While noting the increasing need for a lin-
gua franca, which English may provide, Seidlhofer
(1997, p. 54) highlights its repercussions on the
teaching of English:

[This constellation of factors] creates the opportunity to use

the teaching of English, from early schooling onwards, as an

integrative force equipping young people with two crucial assets

simultaneously: the instrumental one of access to a lingua franca,

and the educational one of fostering language awareness.6

This move forward will have no chance of
survival unless, as Seidlhofer (1997, p. 54) affirms,
“teacher education is carefully re-evaluated, re-
thought, and re-formed”, implying that teachers,
both native and non-native speakers of English,
must no longer simply teach what they them-
selves were taught to do and how to teach it in their
teacher training courses. Seidlhofer (1997) supports
her claim by proposing a rather useful analogy with
other areas of life, such as healthcare:

While there are sound arguments and great demands for various

forms of ‘alternative medicine’, most doctors still rely exclusively

on a repertoire of drugs and surgery simply because this is what

they were taught in medical school. Genuine change in healthcare

can only come in the wake of changes in medical training. (p. 54)

Such a claim is still relevant more than ten
years on and needs to be applied, in our opinion,
more extensively in the Italian university system.

Furthermore, it is also our view that under-
graduates reading for language degrees come to

6 Bold in original. Changed to italics here.

the university under the false impression that they
will be learning the language rather than about
the language. Hence, teachers must set themselves
the task of helping students to overcome an initial
difficulty in adjusting to more theory-oriented
investigative lessons that focus not on the form of
the language but its particular meaning and func-
tion in the speech context.

This confirms the general consensus among
scholars reported by Jenkins (2006, p. 173) on the
importance of language awareness on the part of
teachers, teacher trainers and educators in all three
circles, and the need for them, together with their
students, “to learn not (a variety of English), but
about Englishes, their similarities and differences,
issues involved in intelligibility (the strong link
between language and identity, and so on)”. Indeed,
it is this conviction that triggered the suggested
awareness-raising activities proposed in the latter
part of this contribution, for the very reason that

Language teachers must move away from viewing the non-

native language as if operated in a social void. It is vital to realize

the essential fact that language is, above all, a social creation

and that communication is a social act. In most communities

the speakers’ status depends on their linguistic abilities; their

intelligence, personality and even value as human beings may

all be judged according to their style of speaking. Because of

these factors, a socially oriented linguistics is unquestionably

of immediate and practical relevance to non-native language

learners; sociolinguistic research and themes must be integrated

into L2 courses. (Loveday, 1982, p. 176)

EFL vs ELF
Teachers must come to terms with the fact

that university students will be confused by what
is meant by EFL and ELF. For them the acronyms
might seem synonymous, since their practical lan-
guage studies go under the name of EFL, yet what
learners are required to do is to make use of their

163PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate: Sensitising Teachers of English…

institutional language training to carry out pro-
spective future language activities in the outside
“international” world. Consequently, for the unini-
tiated Italian student, EFL and ELF could mean one
and the same thing, but it should be made clear
that in the Italian language learning environment
at least, the “variety” taught is only one, and more
importantly, not necessarily “the one” they will
encounter in other non-native speakers of English
from other nations.

Furthermore, in many Italian university
English departments, we are faced with a some-
what schizophrenic situation: while on the one
hand, in all parts of the course of studies except
practical language classes (i.e. cultural studies, lit-
erary studies, linguistics and language education)
we celebrate multiculturalism, pluricentrism, post-
colonial ‘writing back’, language variation and
change and pluri-and multilingualism, on the
other, the ideal, as far as language proficiency is
concerned, is very much that of a usually monolin-
gual native speaker of Standard English.

As we have already implied, the spread of
English has an ambivalent character: it is a lingua
franca necessary for international communica-
tion and it is a vehicle for the spread of a culture
influenced by the United States of America and,
to a lesser extent, Western Europe. The term
“spread” is of the utmost significance and used
in contrast to the potentially synonymous “dis-
tribution” as explained by Widdowson in his
dichotomy of the two terms (“Distribution denies
spread”, 1997, p. 140). Neither do we intend the
transplantation of a standard form of British or
American English according to a phenomenon of
“MacDonaldisation” or franchising of Pizza Hut
and Kentucky Fried Chicken around the world.

Teachers should get their students aware that,
paradoxically, aiming at native-like command of
the language may even prove counterproductive

and discouraging in successful ELF communi-
cation, especially in consideration of the risk of
unilateral idiomaticity, while it will make EFL
communication more rewarding psychologically.

Native speaker varieties, therefore, might be
considered to be ‘unrealistic standards’ and conse-
quently unreachable goals for non-native learners
who need the language for different purposes than
do native speakers. Non-native speakers have to be
intelligible to other non-native speakers as most of
them will never communicate with a native speaker
of English. As a consequence, it will be the task of
EFL teachers to help their students develop com-
mon pragmatic strategies of achieving reciprocal
understanding.7

Awareness Raising
Awareness raising means incorporating into

the learning curriculum a familiarity with other
realities that students are more than likely to
meet in any of the inner, outer and extended
circles, of which they may themselves become a
permanent or temporary member once they have
left their formal learning environment. While it is
indeed not difficult for students to envisage inter-
acting with native speakers in a native-speaker
environment e.g. London or New York, teachers
must realise that EFL training does not prepare
their students to cope with the pragmatic diffi-
culties of communicating with other non-native
speakers like themselves in Paris, Milan, and
Singapore according to the professional activity
they take up after graduating. As Jenkins (2006,
p. 173) aptly claims,

Awareness raising fits well with another area of broad

agreement among WE’s (World Englishes) and ELF researchers:

7 See studies by Mauranen (2006), Seidlhofer, Breiteneder
and Pitzl (2006) on misunderstanding and repair strategies between
non-natives.

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras164

Mansfield & Poppi

the need for a pluricentric rather than monocentric approach

to the teaching and use of English. This approach, it is believed,

would enable each learner’s and speaker’s English to reflect his

or her own sociolinguistic reality, rather than that of a usually

distant native speaker.

This has direct consequences when it comes
to setting the objectives for L2 learners who
happen to be living in inner circle environments:
“The critical question to ask is, with whom do
L2 speakers of English (want to) interact? This
is a crucial question for TESOL countries such as
the United States and the United Kingdom, but
one that is rarely asked” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 173). It
seems that it is just taken for granted that learning
activities will simulate face to face interaction with
a native speaker standing opposite, or “at the other
end of the line”.

The transition from EFL speaker to ELF user
should be clear in the minds of the EFL teachers
who will no longer look then to the benchmark
levels of competence as the only objectives of
their language teaching. Acceptance and recog-
nition of such a transition will be proof that they
themselves have become advocators of awareness
raising and that they are in a position to transmit
it to their students. Indeed, it is with this dichot-
omy in mind that we suggest greater and more
constant attention should be paid by the teacher
not just to language competence according to the
native speaker norm, but to exposure to other
varieties that are becoming more prominent in the
world today. For this reason we decided to create
an example corpus of World English to make our
point. The choice fell on Chinese English as repre-
sented in the China Daily online newspaper, but
the analytical framework that we devised could be
used according to individual interest or curiosity
regarding any other particular variety.

Methods, Objectives
and Materials
As we have attempted to stress so far, ques-

tions about the relationship between ELF and EFL,
particularly their impact on the English language
classroom, must be addressed in view of learning
objectives. While there is no getting away from
the fact that any teaching requires the definition of
goals and objectives i.e. something that the teaching
and learning is directed at (in pedagogical terms,
prescription), learning goals in language teaching
have traditionally been formulated with reference
to standard language (Seidlhofer, 2008, p. 159)
as we have highlighted in previous paragraphs.

What we, as Seidlhofer (2008, p. 168), are advo-
cating is not a rejection of all norms and standards,
but a reappraisal of their justification. Particular
attention should be paid to such issues as commu-
nication, accommodation and identity formation.
There is no thoroughly described –let alone insti-
tutionalised– variety of EFL as yet and so it is not
possible to teach and learn it, yet necessary to rec-
ognise it. As Widdowson (2003) puts it, “linguistic
description cannot automatically meet pedagogic
requirement” and it would therefore be wrong to
assume that “findings should directly and uniquely
inform what is included in language courses”
(p. 106). Language teachers should thus refer to, but
not defer, linguists.

In light of the above considerations, the present
study has been devised with the main aim in mind
of raising teachers’ and subsequently students’
awareness of the existence of several Englishes
and not just the standard one on which their
institutionalised learning is based. Accordingly,
the present writers have devoted their focus of
attention to articles published in the China Daily,
the only national English-language daily newspaper
distributed in China. Headquartered in Beijing,

165PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate: Sensitising Teachers of English…

with bureaus in Shanghai and Guangzhou, and a
web site (www.chinadaily.com.cn) that projects 6
million hits a day, China Daily has long been the
prime news source for foreign businessmen, dip-
lomats, and academics engaged in China. The
newspaper has a world-wide readership, as it is dis-
tributed in 150 countries. The corpus includes 130
articles from the local news section, collected over
a period of two years (2006 and 2007) totalling
about 100,000 tokens and 9,100 types.

Media language in general never fails to pres-
ent a rich source of material for awareness raising
activities; newspapers in particular offer numerous
written text types worthy of study as confirmed by
Kachru’s analyses (1992, pp. 309-311) on Headline
Language, Matrimonial Advertisements, Obitu-
aries in South Asian newspapers, which illustrate
what he calls variety specific “meaning” in devia-
tion. He notes how a native speaker of English,
who is not familiar with the cultural and linguis-
tic pluralism in South Asia, would consider these
language varieties deviant and/or erroneous from
a lexical, collocational and semantic point of view.

Corpus collection is indeed becoming a more
frequent kind of activity which teachers themselves
can carry out with specific tasks in mind for their
students, rather than relying on readymade, more
generalised reference corpora (e.g. The British
National Corpus; The Bank of English) for the
simple tasks of meaning searches as well as lexico-
grammatical patterns. O’Keeffe, McCarthy and
Carter (2007) emphasise the relevance of corpora
to language teaching materials, writers, course
designers and language teachers and the peda-
gogical relevance of corpus findings in terms of
understanding the vocabulary needs of language
learners. Recent research (Anderson & Corbett,
2009) has more particularly addressed the explo-
ration of English with online corpora, suggesting
numerous activities for students to explore the lexis,

grammar, discourse and pronunciation of given
text types and genres. More recently still, Mansfield
and Poppi (in press) suggest ways in which stu-
dents can also be encouraged to create their own
specialised corpora to pursue investigations into
areas of particular interest (e.g. evaluative adjec-
tives on promotional websites, discourse markers,
use of personal pronouns in political speeches, and
so on). From the above, a clear development can
be traced in methodological procedure with an
emphasis on authenticity of materials and research
purpose, whereby creative responsibility is gradu-
ally handed down /passed on from textbook writer
to teacher, that is, from readymade authentic mate-
rials for teachers to exploit albeit with guidance, to
authentic material that they collect themselves for
their students. These can either be tasks searching
for recurrences of linguistic phenomena in a more
norm-directed context by means of generalised
reference corpora, or those that will highlight the
kinds of linguistic variety that emerge from the
China Daily corpus devised for the present study.

Redressing the Balance
in Course Objectives
Teachers should take into account not only the

short-term objectives of their courses (the achieve-
ment of a certain level of competence in some or all
of the language skills that match the norm-based
EFL inner circle standards of learning the language),
but also long-term ones, which should reflect the
reality of the world outside the institutional envi-
ronment and the actual use or performance of
English in a myriad of circumstances/situations,
that is, also by learning about the language.

One objection from ELF scholars to the stan-
dardised forms of international examinations is
that they clearly aim to test the standard norm
(British English for Cambridge ESOL and Ameri-
can English for TOEFL) and consequently require

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras166

Mansfield & Poppi

candidates to produce as near as possible native
speaker competence in the contextualised task
they are set. We would suggest that this is a form of
“tunnel vision” on the part of examination boards.
Indeed, little or no space is allowed for the presen-
tation of “non-standard” or more localised varieties
of English in the written texts used for comprehen-
sion. As far as receptive skills are concerned, while
varieties in accent (British, American, Austra-
lian, Scottish, etc.) in the listening comprehension
section may be included, the same cannot be
said of the content of written documents, which
will remain within the bounds of the standard
structural, lexical and pragmatic forms.

Therefore, in an age where teaching and testing
are so clearly dependent on each other, the one
justifying the relevance and existence of the
other, as it would appear above, it is high time
that we started proposing new contents in the
EFL learning programme (also in view of possible
future assessment at the end of the learning
process) that truly reflect both the productive and
receptive skills of non-native speakers of English,
skills that they are likely to need in the world of
global communication.

As far back as 1982 Kachru8 was already
advocating a certain awareness on the part of the
language trainer in devising a particular meth-
odological and attitudinal approach that would
incorporate the following points into the language
syllabus, and which are applicable to the kind of
sensitizing we are advocating for our Italian stu-
dents, many of which are retrievable from the
corpus collected:
1. Sociolinguistic profile: an overview of English

in its world context with discussion of selected
major varieties, their users and uses. A clear
distinction to be made between the use of

8 The text referred to is the 1992, 2nd edition, pp. 360-361.

English in a monolingual society, as opposed
to a multilingual society; and its implications
(e.g. code mixing, code switching).

2. Variety exposure: an exposition of the reper-
toire of major varieties of English, native and
non-native: their uses and users, specific texts
related to various interactional contexts, shared
and non-shared features at different linguistic
levels.

3. Attitudinal neutrality: for teaching purposes,
one might focus on one specific variety and
at the same time emphasise awareness and
functional validity of other varieties.

4. Range of uses: the functional appropriateness
of the lectal range of varieties within a specific
variety (e.g. from educated varieties to pidgins
and basilects).

5. Contrastive pragmatics: the relationships of
discoursal and stylistic innovations and their
relationships to the local conventions of
culture (e.g. strategies used for persuasion,
phatic communion, apologies, condolences,
regrets).

6. Multidimensionality of functions: the linguistic
implications of the functional range as in,
for example, the media, literary creativity,
administration, and the legal system.
It is worth mentioning here various studies

carried out in Europe in general concerning the
acceptance of native speaker norms both on the
part of the teacher and the learner. As far as the
latter is concerned, Timmis (2002) carried out
a survey on 400 English students in 14 different
countries which revealed that it was the learners
themselves who were highly oriented to achieving
a native-speaker competence. On the other
hand, Murray (2003, p. 160) revealed that Swiss
non-native teachers (more than native speakers
teaching in Switzerland) were not inclined to
accept a model based on European lingua franca

167PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate: Sensitising Teachers of English…

English, probably due to the fact that they had
invested heavily themselves in near-native speaker
competence and did not wish to see their achieve-
ment devalued. In the Italian situation, with
examination-oriented teaching requiring specific
competences, and students requiring recognition
of language achievement in the form of certifica-
tion, there appears to be no escaping the fact that
the emphasis is still predominantly on the native-
speaker norm.

Sample Activities
Considering the relevance of identity in

media texts, and in particular newspapers, it is
always good practice for teachers to ask students
to note the sociolinguistic elements peculiar to
news texts, that is, linguistic features that indi-
cate concepts such as identity, relevance and
proximity (Mansfield, 2005) with reference to
readership. Newspapers are written with a par-
ticular readership in mind; a national newspaper
will cover both national and international news-
worthy events, while a more local one will focus
on more local events. It is interesting to note
how local newspapers create a local identity rel-
evant to its local readers who are identified in and
through the way news is reported. From a qual-
itative study of several local newspapers in the
county of Yorkshire (United Kingdom), Mans-
field (2005) noted how a local newspaper creates
its own identity, of which it is also proud, as
clearly indicated in the masthead (The Yorkshire
Post: Yorkshire’s National Newspaper; The Asian
Express: Yorkshire’s No.1 Asian Newspaper).

In the quantitative/qualitative analysis we
propose here, teachers should invite students to
observe similar newsworthy features of identity
and relevance in the readers of the China Daily
and their particular implications and signifi-
cance in the context of this national paper’s

“local news sections”. The first step is to carry
out a frequency sort of the types and tokens
in the corpus. By scrolling down the list
and leaving aside for the moment function
words that are bound to be highly frequent
(definite/indefinite articles, prepositions, etc.) it
is possible to note the frequency of content words
and also “unusual” tokens/types, whether they
occur as singletons or are more recurrent, as the
following analysis will show. This is the starting
point for investigating the data.

Investigating features
of identity
A word frequency sort of the China Daily

corpus will highlight the number of times the
possessive “China’s” occurs (259 occurrences –
0.2711 %), as seen in the sample extract in Figure 1.
One preliminary investigation using the concor-
dance would be to identify the right collocates to
determine the “objects” of China’s possession. As
the examples in Figure 1 show, it can be seen that
“China’s” collocates with “national” in N+1 and
“defence” in N+2 position, revealing national pri-
orities relating to defence and economy (China’s
national defence policy, China’s national defence
and armed forces; China’s national economic
development). Already emerging from this small
sample are long noun groups with heavy pre-
modification, which further investigation will
confirm as a recurrent linguistic feature. In fact,
there are numerous occurrences of China’s defence
expenditure, China’s border and coastal defence,
China’s GDP, and so on. It could be hypothesised
then that this type of Chinese English text will
reveal a tendency to information packaging in
noun phrases (e.g. China’s second-largest trading
partner, China’s comparatively underdeveloped
capital markets, China’s deepening reform and
opening up to the outside world).

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras168

Mansfield & Poppi

Similar investigations could then be carried out
on post-modification to discover a possibly similar
phenomenon.

ELF Users as Agents of Change
Scrolling down the frequency sort also reveals

“unusual” lexical items, such as “surnamed” (41
occurrences – 0.0429 %). An EFL expert would nat-
urally expect to find “named” or “called” relating to
a person or people and indicate this as erroneous.
A concordance will subsequently present all the 41
occurrences on the screen (Figure 2). Looking to
the left of the keyword, the student can identify all
the kinds of people, more or less specific (woman,

Figure 1. Sample Concordance of “China’s” – Right Sort

Figure 2. Sample Concordance of “Surnamed” – Right Sort

man, Shanghai man, wildlife expert, dog’s owner)
that are “surnamed”.

Returning to previous considerations on noun
group structuring, we think it would be interesting
to investigate pre-modification of other terms in
what appears to be unusual noun groupings and
expressions. Such a case found in the frequency sort
was the hyphened “left-at-home” which occurred
17 times (0.0178%); investigation then showed that
a) it was always followed by the noun “children”
and b) contextual features indicated references to
demands, needs, helping of such children, thus
relating to a socio-cultural factor prevalent in the
lives of Chinese families.

169PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate: Sensitising Teachers of English…

This particular example may be discussed in
terms of Sinclair’s (2003) concept of semantic pros-
ody as identified through corpus investigation:

A corpus enables us to see words grouping together to make

special meanings as to the reasons why they were chosen

together. This kind of meaning is called SEMANTIC PROSODY; it

has been recognised in part as connotation, pragmatic meaning

and attitudinal meaning, but it rarely appears in reference works

that do not derive their evidence from corpora. (p. 178)9

According to Firth’s famous claim, “You shall
know a word by the company it keeps” (1957, p. 11),
an examination of the co-text around the key word
(to the left or to the right) will give insights into

9 Capitals in original.

whether the term has positive or negative connota-
tions. In the case of “left-at-home”, while we have seen
that it is always followed by “children”, it is the other
words surrounding it (help, want, needy) that con-
tribute to suggesting a negative prosody (Figure 3).

National Sociolinguistic Impact
Sociolinguistic insights can be noted in other

uses of “unusuality” in words or newly created ter-
minologies coined to reflect the changing realities
of China in recent years. An example that was again
taken from the frequency sort was “information-
ization” (31 occurrences – 0.0324%) with purely
technological connotations (Figure 4).

Figure 3. Sample Concordance of Unusual Pre-Modification in Noun Groups “Left-At-Home Children”

Figure 4. Sample Concordance of “Unusual” Words – Informationization (Unsorted)

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras170

Mansfield & Poppi

Cultural Impact
Likewise “harmonious society” appears as

a frequent collocation (18 times – 0.018%) and
catchphrase10 that is seen in the context of positive
semantic prosody with the recurrence of noun and
verb forms to do with building, establishing and
creating a harmonious society. Lines 2 and 3 also
evidence premodification with “socialist”.

On similar lines to the formation of abstract
nominalisation (“informationalisation”) there is
also a singleton in the corpus of “good-neighbour-
liness” (“It works to promote good-neighbourliness,
mutual benefit and win-win”), which again is an
unusual term relating to harmonious societies.

So it can be seen that corpus investigations
are a useful tool in order for the teacher to orga-
nise awareness raising activities that will stimulate
students to reflect on the question of otherness.

10 The whole context of use is explained in one of the
texts in the corpus: The catchphrase “harmonious society” first
appeared in November 2002 in the report of the 16th CPC Nation-
al Congress, which discussed building a moderately prosperous
society in the first 20 years of this century. In September 2004,
“building a harmonious socialist society” was first put forward by
the 16th CPC Central Committee at its fourth plenary session, and
in 2005 President Hu Jintao addressed the topic in his keynote

Corpora are indeed a double-edged investigative
tool for both teachers and learners in the sense
that the teachers can use them to enhance their
own awareness and also to introduce students to
an awareness raising instrument and methodol-
ogy that they themselves can be trained to apply
in other varieties of ELF. Simple user-friendly con-
cordancing software makes the task a fruitful one
in terms of discovery learning. These activities
also train teachers (and students in turn) to search
beyond limited dictionary definitions which are
not likely to come up with many of the above words
and expressions in the particular contexts in which
they have been examined in the examples. For
this reason, it is our view that corpus investigation
work provides a welcome means of best practice in
teacher training and teaching methodology due to
the wealth of insight it brings to ELF.

speech at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. In Octo-
ber 2006, the CPC identified the general requirements of “building
a harmonious socialist society” as “democracy and the rule of law,
equity and justice, honesty and fraternity, vigor and vitality, stability
and order, and harmony between man and nature”. “The building
of a harmonious society is a process of mass involvement and can
only be achieved when every individual’s interest is respected and
fulfilled,” Wang says.

Figure 5. Sample Concordance of “Harmonious Society” Noun Group

171PROFILE Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2012. ISSN 1657-0790. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages 159-172

The English as a Foreign Language / Lingua Franca Debate: Sensitising Teachers of English…

Conclusions
Globalisation changes the conditions under

which language teaching and learning take place.
In this sphere, as in others, some of the most sig-
nificant changes are economic. People have always
learnt languages for economic reasons. Some
commentators have suggested that languages are
coming to be treated as economic commodities,
and that this view is displacing traditional ideolo-
gies in which languages were primarily symbols of
ethnic or national identity.

Even without going as far as to claim that lan-
guages are nothing but commodities, however, we
feel that the teaching of English at Italian univer-
sities should accommodate students’ global needs
for the language –most specifically the teaching
of English as an international lingua franca and
as a world possession (Gupta, 1999). English lan-
guage education should reflect the diversity of the
language and prepare learners with the co-oper-
ative skills that they require in their daily lives.
This approach would include more emphasis on
pragmatic fluency (House, 2002), intercultural
communicative competence (Gnutzmann, 1999)
and enhanced language awareness as the present
study has tried to show.

We have particularly wanted to show how in
the re-visiting of any teacher training programmes
it is essential to include awareness raising in the
recognition of other varieties, which albeit not
exploited as benchmarks for language testing and
certification, must nevertheless boast a relevant
place in the global scenario. This is the ultimate
challenge that EFL teachers have to meet if English
language learning is to take concrete strides
forward in today’s globalised world.

References
Anderson, W., & Corbett, J. (2009). Exploring English with

online corpora, an introduction. Basingstoke and New
York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics 1934-1951. London:
Oxford University Press.

Gnutzmann, C. (Ed.) (1999). Teaching English as a global
language: Native and non-native perspectives. Tübingen:
Stauffenburg.

Gnutzmann, C., & Intemann, F. (2008). Introduction: The
Globalization of English. Language, politics, and the
English language classroom. In C. Gnutzmann, &
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the English language classroom (2nd ed.) (pp. 9-24).
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Gupta, A. F. (1999). Standard Englishes, contact vari-
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House, J. (2002). Developing pragmatic competence in
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(Eds.), Lingua franca communication (pp. 245-267).
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world
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Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and socio-
linguistic realism: The English language in the outer
circle. In R. Quirk, & H.G. Widdowson (Eds.), English
in the world: Teaching and learning the language and
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Kachru, B. B. (1992). Teaching World Englishes. In B. B.
Kachru (Ed.), The other tongue, English across cultures
(2nd ed.) (pp. 355-365). Urbana and Chicago: University
of Illinois Press.

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras172

Mansfield & Poppi

Loveday, L. (1982). The sociolinguistics of learning and using
a non-native language. Oxford, New York, NY: Per-
gamon Press.

Mansfield, G. (2005). Small World? The foregrounding
of identity, relevance and proximity in local news
reporting. La Torre di Babele. Rivista di letteratura e
linguistica, 3, 225-243.

Mansfield, G., & Poppi, F. (Forthcoming). Bridging the gap
between the academic classroom and the professional
world through the transfer of knowledge and skills.
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Knowledge across Disciplines and Academic Communi-
ties”, 29-30 June 2010.

Mauranen, A. (2006). Signalling and preventing misunder-
standing in English as lingua franca communication.
Int’l J. Soc. Lang, 177, 123-150.

Murray, H. (2003). Swiss English teachers and Euro-
English: Attitudes to a non-native variety. Bulletin
Suisse de linguistique appliqué, 77, 147-65.

O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From
corpus to classroom. Language use and language
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Seidlhofer, B. (1997). Rethinking teacher education: Setting
an agenda for applied linguistics. Vienna English
Working Papers, 6(2), 53-62.

Seidlhofer, B. (2008). Standard future or half-baked
quackery? Descriptive and pedagogic bearings on
the globalisation of English. In C. Gnutzmann & F.
Intemann (Eds.) The globalisation of English and the
English language classroom (2nd ed.) (pp. 159-173). Tüe-
bingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.

Seidlhofer, B., Breiteneder, A., & Pitzl, M. L. (2006). English
as a lingua franca in Europe: Challenges for applied lin-
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Sinclair, J. (2003). Reading concordances. London, New
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About the Authors
Gillian Mansfield is associate professor of English Language and Translation at the University of

Parma. Her research interests include discourse analysis, pragmatics and corpus linguistics with reference
to the analysis and translation of media language texts. At present, she is researching the interactional fea-
tures of verbal humour in the TV sitcom.

Franca Poppi is associate professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Modena
and Reggio Emilia. Her initial work was concerned with learner autonomy and advising in self-instruction,
but she has since then concentrated on the linguistic, social and psychological dimensions of discourse
analysis. Her current research areas include, besides discourse analysis and language variation, inter-
cultural communication and the sociolinguistics of English as a lingua franca.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.

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