EIL in Pedagogical Practices

Perspective

a. Developing Communicative Competences

In order to engage effectively in global communication, EIL in the classroom is contextualised by the appropriation undertaken by its users, where communicative competence is one of many kinds of appropriation. Appropriation is defined as something done by “learners [who] make a foreign language and culture their own by adopting and adapting it to their own needs and interests” Kramsch, 1998, p.81. The initiative comes from the peripheral users’ values and their aspirations to become insiders of the language itself Canagarajah, 1999. Initially, Canale and Swain 1980 defined communicative competence as grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic competences. For the grammatical competences which include linguistic aspects, phonology becomes the important aspect for intelligibility among speakers from different L1 backgrounds. According to Jenkins 2000, intelligibility is traditionally related to the NS, being the resource which decides success of intelligibility in communication while negating the active position of the NNS at the same time. However, it is argued that intelligibility needs to be seen as a blanket term between speakers and listeners where they equally contribute to communication and its interpretation within the sociocultural context Bamgbose, 1998, as cited in Jenkins, 2000. Nelson 2012 tries to extend the terminology of understanding meaning in spoken and written texts by discussing the idea of the intelligibility of vocabulary as it is developed into a sentence within an utterance, of the comprehensibility of phrasing, and of the interpretability of complex mixing of linguistic and non-linguistic elements. To perform intelligible communication particularly among NNSs, code switching and code mixing can be useful for communication because they have the choice of particular codes in their repertoire to bridge cross-cultural communication. Code switching and code mixing are acts of borrowing from other languages such as an L1 Murray, 2012. These strategies are useful for managing power difference not only for power relations but for how the speakers negotiate themselves as legitimate speakers of English Canagarajah, 1999. Also, strategic competence can allow bilingual speakers a more comprehensive and effective interaction. Strategic competence becomes “extralinguistic cues such as gestures and drawings, gauging interlocutors’ linguistic repertoires, supportive listening, eye contact and adjusting the speech Perspective by simplifying, paraphrasing and slowing down” Kubota, 2012, p.65. These strategies will enhance the linguistic competence of the speakers. Furthermore, linguists try to scrutinise whether or not to modify the grammatical patterns in EIL. In spite of efforts to narrow the influence of NS norms on ELT, Prodromou 2007 suggests the use of SE concerning a grammatical core which comprises of NS norms. It refers to the lexicon-grammatical systems which exclude native speaker accents, lexical items within professions and regions as well as idioms which are culturally centralised to particular countries. Murray 2012 agrees, asserting that it is better for teachers to teach something more realistic and applicable in the classroom, and thus NS norms can help them to accommodate the students’ L1. However, teachers should be careful as they need to understand that these norms carry the power of the Centre which needs to be utilised carefully. An effective appropriation was found by Tupas 2010 in his study of one of the classrooms in the Philippines. The results showed that Filipino teachers rejected English imperialism, yet did not take Philippine English as an ideal norm in the classroom. Instead, they appropriated SE as a form. In fact, they resisted SE by teaching it. The sensibilities of SE function as social mobility and individual achievement which made it important to learn. Despite this reality, Philippine English was employed as the content in order to promote their identity as Filipino. In addition, cultural strategies such as code switching and the use of local content were highly regarded in their English teaching.

b. Raising Intercultural Awareness

Intercultural competence is also prominent for EIL speakers in multicultural interactions. Intercult ural competence refers to “the ability to communicate effectively in cross-cultural situations and to relate appropriately in a variety of cultural contexts” Bennett and Bennett, 2004, p. 149. When teaching EIL, teachers need to be aware that in intercultural communication, particularly in expanding-circle countries, cultures appear to be varied and dynamic Baker, 2009. Moreover, Sercu 2005 claims that the concepts of communicative competences and cultural competence are intertwined, because intercultural competence embraces communicative competence which concentrates on linguistic and pragmatics elements. It highlights that interpreting the meaning of language in communication is in