To Teach Standard English or World Englishes? A Balanced Approach to Instruction

To Teach Standard English or World Englishes? A Balanced Approach to Instruction

Thomas S. C. Far rell and Sonia Martin

The term Standard English sug­gests that we all share a similar under­standing of exactly what this means, yet it is not easy to define. One reason for this is that there is no world-recognized governing body that dic­tates what should and should not be included in such a standard.

If Standard English is supposed to be an example of only one norm of the English lan­guage, then the term World Englishes would be the norm that includes all varieties of the lan­guage. Kachru (1985) categorizes the usage of English into three concentric circles: the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle. the inner circle represents the more traditional bases of English that are used in places like the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The outer circle includes countries which “have gone through extended periods of colonization, essentially by the users of the inner circle varieties” (Kachru 1985, 12), and includes Nigeria, Singapore, and India. Unlike the outer circle, the expand­ing circle does not have the same effects of col­onization as the inner circle; in the expanding circle, English is used mainly for business and international purposes. The expanding circle includes such countries as China, Greece, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, and represents the largest expanding numbers of English speak­ers in the world today (Crystal 2003).

Teach­ers can inform their practices about the differ­ent varieties of English that exist and consider a balanced approach to teaching English. Such an approach would include three key consid­erations (each of which is discussed in more detail below):

1.     Teachers need to carefully consider their teaching context (McKay 2002).

2.     After choosing their target of instruc­tion based on that context, teachers should value their learners’ current English usage (El-Sayed 1991).

3.     Teachers need to prepare learners for future international English encounters by exposing them to other varieties of English (Matsuda 2003) and by teach­ing them strategic competence when interacting with speakers who speak other varieties of English.

What I have learned from that article are :

1.    Since teaching local varieties of English (such as Singlish) may be just as problem­atic as teaching inner circle Standard English, English language teachers may find them­selves in a quandary as to what type of English to emphasize to their students.

2.    To be culturally sensitive to the diversity of contexts in which English is taught and used

3.    Teachers should focus on teaching both strategic and intercultural competence skills which will help learners be able “to adjust their speech in order to be intelligible to interlocutors from a wide range of [first language] backgrounds, most of whom are not inner circle native speakers” (Jenkins 2006, 174).