Implementing a global Englishes component in a university English course in Hong Kong : student perceptions and implications for course development and implementation
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
English Today
Publication Date
12-1-2015
Volume
31
Issue
4
First Page
42
Last Page
49
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Abstract
With the global spread of English and the emergence of different varieties of English around the world, World Englishes (WE) researchers have argued for the recognition of 'Englishes' in the plural and called for the need to acknowledge the diversity of English (Kachru, 1985, 1997). Apart from WE researchers who are interested in investigating nation-bound varieties of English in different parts of the world, a growing number of researchers have begun to examine the phenomenon of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) communication, given the growth of intercultural exchanges worldwide (Jenkins, 2000, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2011). Whilst WE researchers are primarily concerned with how varieties of English differ from each other, ELF researchers are interested in exploring how speakers of different Englishes communicate with each other in contexts where English is the common language. For example, these ELF researchers have studied the communicative and pragmatic strategies which people from different lingua-cultural backgrounds use to communicate with one another through English as a common resource in order to achieve mutual intelligibility (Seidlhofer, 2011). Despite their different focuses, both WE and ELF researchers deal with the same global phenomenon of English use and the pluricentricity of English, and share similar ideas about the ownership of English, and language contact and change (Seidlhofer, 2011). A relatively new field, Global Englishes (GE) (Galloway & Rose, 2013, 2014; Jenkins, 2014), has thus emerged to bring together researchers from both WE and ELF. With an inclusive orientation, GE places less emphasis on native speaker English, emphasizes the diversity of English, and questions the relevance of native speaker norms for English Language Teaching (ELT) (see Galloway & Rose, 2015).
DOI
10.1017/S0266078415000383
Print ISSN
02660784
E-ISSN
14740567
Publisher Statement
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015. Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Sung, C. C. M. (2015). Implementing a global Englishes component in a university English course in Hong Kong: Student perceptions and implications for course development and implementation. English Today, 31(4), 42-49. doi: 10.1017/S0266078415000383