Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

New Englishes and teaching models 167
Singapore but SCE isn’t. If the L variety, SCE (aka Singlish) dies, it may be that it
was simply a stage Singapore was going through. 7
What we are left with, then, is mainly pronunciation and lexis, by no means trivial
areas, of course. A pedagogical implication, reinforcing the arguments of Jenkins
(2000) above, is that it would be unwise to insist on teaching to British or American
pronunciation norms, and not just because to do so would be to infringe against the
sensitivities of identity, but because the British RP model is inappropriate on other
independent grounds: its prestige is waning, it is the accent of only a minority of
Britons and many of its features are either unteachable or difficult for learners to
approximate (Jenkins 2000). As regards lexis, there is also, given the rapidity of
lexical change within British or American English, a good case for accepting the
lexical, and collocational, innovations of the New Englishes, or at least not
proscribing them in educational contexts.
The second point has to do with recognition, and different levels of recognition.
The fact that particular linguistic features of the New Englishes – grammatical,
phonological, lexical, discoursal – index valued identities certainly provides grounds
for recognition if one means by recognition an acceptance that these forms, and the
varieties of which they are part, are legitimate and should not be stigmatised as in any
way sub-standard or ‘bad English’. It does not, however, provide sufficient grounds
for adopting these varieties as teaching models any more than accepting or
recognising Tyneside English, say, as an important constituent of a Geordie8 identity
necessarily commits one to teach that variety in school.
The reason for this is that it has long been regarded (see, for example the Kingman
Report 1989) as part of the business of education to impart knowledge of, and skill
in using, a standard variety – a variety, that is, that is common and uniform, and has
wide currency beyond the local or regional. The standard variety also tends to have
the greatest social prestige; not just because the most socially prestigious dialect gets
chosen as the standard but because, once selected, it accrues to itself further layers of
prestige. And so it becomes that variety, associated with education, that employers
and other social agencies expect the educated person to control. It is therefore – and
this is a crucial reason for teaching the standard – a variety that confers socioeconomic
mobility on those with competence in it.
There are, however, different standard and standardising Englishes – British,
American, Australian, Indian, Nigerian and so on – to choose between, and this is
a complicating factor. But, at least, it is clear that whichever model of English is
adopted for teaching, it will, for the reasons mentioned above, very likely be a
standard variety. As Davies (1999c: 176) puts it:
Which model is, of course, a matter for those responsible for the examination,
normally those with decision-making powers at national level. The choice may be
British English, American English, Singapore English, Zimbabwe English: but a
standard English it most certainly will be.