Dr. Fan Fang

Where Local Languages Meet English – Promoting Global Englishes and Translanguaging in ELT  

The background of English as a global language has generated various debates on how English should be viewed and taught from a broader perspective and in different contexts to meet the various needs of learners. Currently, English is used as a medium of instruction (EMI) in many settings, whereas students’ L1s are often ignored or even erased. While EMI as a language policy offers students opportunities to use English for both academic and daily communication purposes, the policy needs further research in terms of its effectiveness and ‘side effects’. On the one hand, adopting EMI as a top-down policy ignores the students’ English level, while on the other hand, students tend to ignore their L1s, and other multimodal and trans-semiotic practicess as resources in the language learning process. Therefore, the aim of English language teaching (ELT) should reflect the current linguistic landscape. The paradigm of Global Englishes (GE), however, recognizes that language use and language contact are far more dynamic and complicated, thus challenge the native-oriented ideologies and practices in ELT. Therefore, both researchers and language practitioners need to reconsider the meaning of the ‘E’ in ELT and realize that the dominance of English, in particular, the Anglophone versions of English does not promote linguistic diversity but rather marginalizes local languages. In this presentation, by showing linguistic landscape, classroom observation and some interview data, I argue that the native-speakerism ideology used in both English classes and traditional EMI content courses should be challenged. I argue that students should be empowered to maximize their linguistic repertoire and semiotic resources in and beyond language classrooms. I will end my talk with an argument that the “E” in EMI courses should be critically implemented from the multilingual and translanguaging perspectives of the GE paradigm.