Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

146 Language Planning and Education
Another quite different kind of democratisation, to which we have already
alluded, requires, so it is argued, the departure of British and North American native
speakers from the centre stage of ELT, the key political argument being that English
as a global language cannot remain the property of particular native speaker
populations (see Widdowson 1994: 2001). It must become possible rather for
non-native bilingual users of English to identify themselves, and be identified, as
competent, authoritative users of their own variety as opposed to imperfect or
deficient speakers of British or American standard English. Already widely debated
in the applied linguistics literature, the implications of such a decentring of the
native speaker for ELT are very considerable, and cut across a range of domains,
including:
1. Employment practices: to what extent, if any, is it appropriate in an era
of global English to count native speakerhood as in itself a significant
qualification for teaching? (See Braine 1999)
2. Classroom pedagogy: McKay (2003: 17) is one of those who argue that
communicative language teaching (CLT) is a culturally-influenced methodology
that cannot be assumed to be the best globally applicable method of
teaching English. What is required rather is a methodology that is sensitive to
local cultures of teaching and learning and that has plausibility16 for local
teachers.
3. The learning goal: is native-like competence an appropriate goal for those
learning English for lingua franca communication, and should the language of
learners be assessed against metropolitan British/American native speaker
standards? (See Davies 2003)
4. Norms and models for teaching: related to the above, should institutionalised
second language varieties of English (e.g. Indian English) or an emergent ELF
variety (English as a lingua franca) be recognised as appropriate, alternative
models for English language teaching alongside British and American standard
English?
Discussion of these various issues would take us well beyond the scope of this
chapter, since each could be, and has been, the subject of book-length treatments. In
the next chapter, however, we return to the fourth, perhaps most crucial, of the issues
above and probe in a little more detail the cogency of arguments calling for the
recognition in ELT of models and norms beyond those traditionally offered by
British or American standard English.
NOTES
1. There is evidence of several similar switches elsewhere from German to English as a
language of scientific discourse (see Gunnarsson 2001).
2. The position of Hindi in India has been most strongly contested by speakers of Dravidian
languages from South India.