[LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ] High-school teachers’ attitudes toward english as a lingua franca (EFL) and classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING BARIA-VUNGTAU UNIVERSITY

CLASSROOM TEACHING PRACTICES IN BA RIA VUNG TAU PROVINCE

Nguyen Lan Phuong

Supervisor: Tran Quoc Thao, Ph D

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching Ba Ria- Vung Tau University

[02/2021]

MASTER’S THESIS REPORT

I- Thesis title:

HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA (ELF) AND CLASSROOM TEACHING PRACTICES IN BA RIA VUNG TAU PROVINCE

II-Objectives and contents:

This study aims at investigating high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and their classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province The research objectives are as follows:

- To explore high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in their EFL classrooms in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province

- To investigate the classroom teaching practices using ELF implemented by high school teachers in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province

This study was conducted at 11 high schools (including both public and private high schools) in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province where there are more than 109 high-school teachers of English In order to gain the results, I applied the mixed method: quantitative and qualitative, two instruments were used: questionnaire and semi-structured interview for the collection of the data

III- Starting date: (as stated in the Decision issued by the University)

IV- Completing date:

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled:

HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA (ELF) AND CLASSROOM TEACHING PRACTICES IN BA RIA VUNG TAU PROVINCE

In terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee of Faculty of English Language, Ba Ria Vung Tau University

Vung Tau City, February 2021

NGUYEN LAN PHUONG

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, NGUYEN LAN PHUONG, being a candidate for the degree of Master ofArts (English Language) accept the requirements of the University relating to theretention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis depositedin the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordancewith the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction for theses

Vung Tau City, February 2021Signature ……….

NGUYEN LAN PHUONG

Secondly, I would like to express my thanks to the school board staff, including the principals, the vice principals and teachers of English at high schools in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province who have given me encouragement, support of time and finance and permission to implement this thesis there

Last but not least, my deepest and sincerest gratitude goes to my family, including my parents and younger brother with their unconditional love, understanding and help

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore the high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and their classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province The mixed-methods approach was employed in this study, i.e., both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from questionnaires and semi-structured interviews

There were 109 high school teachers of English from 11 high schools in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province who participated in the survey, and 22 of them were selected purposively for the individual interviews As for data analysis, descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, standard deviation, and frequencies/ percentages) were used to analyse quantitative data, whereas qualitative data were analysed through content analysis

Based on the results obtained from the data analysis, there were two findings which were explored in this study First, the collected data showed that high school teachers had positive attitudes toward ELF in three attitude components, including cognitive, affective and behavioral attitudes Second, high school teachers conducted some activities for the promotion of ELF among their students relating to eight sub variables from cultural knowledge, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar to four language skills of students These included inviting non-native English speakers to talk to students about ELF, asking students to make dialogues and play roles using ELF in groups, organizing seminars for the students to compare English varieties, creating activities containing aspects relating to ELF for students to take part in, asking students to discover any aspects relating to ELF in the content of the textbook, and introducing pictures or posters used ELF as well Finally, high school teachers found uneasy to create activities relating to ELF because of preparation time limit and scarce of source of materials Notwithstanding that, teachers still tried their best to introduce the existence of ELF and help their students be accessible to ELF in language learning

Keywords: ELF, cognitive attitudes, affective attitudes, behavioural attitudes

high school teachers, Vietnamese ELF classrooms

1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Statement of the problem 3

1.3 Aim and objectives of the study 4

1.4 Research questions 4

1.5 Scope of the study 4

1.6 Significance of the study 5

1.7 Definitions of key terms 5

1.8 Organization of the thesis 6

Chapter 2:Literature Review 7

2.1 The status of English 7

2.2 World Englishes 8

2.3 The three circles of Katchru 11

2.4 English as a lingua franca (ELF) 12

2.5 Attitudes toward ELF 18

2.6 Classroom teaching practices 21

3.3 Sample and sampling procedures 33

3.4 Research instruments 35

3.5 Data collection procedures 37

3.6 Data analysis procedures 38

3.7 Reliability and Validity 39

3.8 Pilot Study 41

3.9 Summary 41

Chapter 4:Results and Discussions 43

4.1 Results 43

4.1.1 Teachers’ attitudes towards ELF……… 43

a) Teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in terms of cognitive attitudes………… …… 44

b) Teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in terms of affective attitudes ………… …… 46

c) Teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in terms of behavioral attitudes……… … 49

4.1.2 Teachers’ classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province………52

a) Teachers’ knowledge of teaching practices in EFL classrooms……….52

b) Other teaching activities in the EFL classrooms……….55

4.2 Discussion 57

4.2.1 Teachers’ attitudes towards ELF……… 58

4.2.2 Teachers’ classroom teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province….……60

4.3 Summary 62

Chapter 5:Conclusion and Recommendations 63

5.1 Summary of the main findings of the thesis 63

APPENDICES

Appendix A1: Questionnaire for Survey (English Version)

Appendix A2: Questionnaire for Survey (Vietnamese translation) Appendix B1: Interview Protocol (English Version)

Appendix B2: Interview Protocol (Vietnamese translation) Appendix B3: Sample of interview data analysis (English Version)

Appendix B3: Sample of interview data analysis (Vietnamese translation)

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.2 Mean scores for analyzing the quantitative data 40

Table 4.2 Teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in terms of cognitive attitudes 44 Table 4.3 Teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in terms of affective attitudes 47 Table 4.4 Teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in terms of behavioral attitudes 49

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AEC ASEAN economic community

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter first presents a background of the study with a brief introduction of the English language teaching and learning at high school level in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province The Statement of the problem is followed to raise the gap of the study context Then, Purpose of the study is established and research objectives and research questions are introduced In addition, Significance of the study, Definitions of key terms and Organizations of the Study are provided at the end of this chapter

1.1 Background of the study

The prediction made by Kachru (1983) that the continuous spread of English led to the huge increase in non-native English speakers in the world (p 3) proved to be true by Harmer (1985) when he claimed that “native speakers” are “increasingly out - numbered by people who have English as a second or third language and use it for international communication” (p.13) Until now, there is an indispensable truth that English these days is “a mother tongue for many people in the world” (Harmer, 1985, p.13) and the most common studied foreign language for the time being Additionally, the development of economy and technology create more and more opportunities for communication all over the world, which raised the obligatory need for a mutual language for people from different nations all over the world The term “English as a lingua franca” (ELF) was introduced by Tonkin (2003) under the emergence of a common language for different first language speakers (Seodlhofer, 2005a)

And the spread of English as a lingua franca leads to a great many changes in language teaching and learning Seidlhofer (2005a) suggested incorporating ELF in language education in order to facilitate the globalization of English in many aspects Since then, there have been a great many studies on ELF in wide range of aspects relating to language teaching and learning at different levels In the context of international education, ELF is regarded as a tool for communication and medium instruction in multi-national contexts where lectures and students are from different countries In the context of Vietnam, this is a country of ‘the expanding circle’

(Kachru, 1985, 1992), where English is not an official language, ELF is still really necessary for communication and interaction in EFL classrooms in particular and in daily life in general in order to help Vietnamese generations to be more fluent and confident in English communication

Furthermore, since being a member of ASIAN, along with WE's recognition among ASEAN regional groups, Vietnam government have taken a lot of actions to promote “mutual intelligibility” (Kirkpatrick, 2007, p.193) through ELF The importance of English has been enhanced through the project “Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages in the National Education System, 2008-2020” (Decision No 1400/QĐ-TTg, 2008), and then updated on December 22nd, 2017 named “Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages in the National Education System, 2017 - 2025” (Decision No 2080/ QĐ-TTg, December 22, 2017) for students to use English independently, communicate confidently, study, work in an integrated environment, multilingual, multicultural, turn foreign languages into strengths Especially, students should explore more English varieties outside the classroom for more effective communication with non-native speakers Moreover, the ability to communicate successfully should be the main goal of the learner, instead of acquiring the proficiency and standards of native speakers

In the context of Ba Ria Vung Tau Province, the “National Foreign Languages Project, period 2017 - 2025” encouraged the changes in language teaching methodology, especially at high school levels, Ba Ria Vung Tau Education and Training Department held training courses for all the high school teachers and appealed them to apply innovative and creative ways of teaching in order to motivate students to communicate and interact with each other in EFL classrooms Therefore, the majority of high school teachers are aware of ELF and its roles in language education However, most of the students and their parents, even teachers preferred native language to this kind of non-native language because native language is always luxurious language in their mind set Apparently, there should be more research on teachers’ attitude toward ELF and incorporation of ELF in the EFL classrooms in order to draw an overall picture of ELF in the context of language teaching in Vietnam

1.2 Statement of the problem

Relating to ELF and the incorporation of ELF in the classrooms, a large number of studies on ELF in academic contexts were conducted in the western countries (Bjorkman, 2011a) The findings of those research revealed that the majority of teachers expressed strong preference on native language than non-native language in spite of Bjorkman’s (2011a) a modern view of language teaching is that teachers should pay attention to teaching comprehensibility in English first and help students to be exposed to different varieties of English as ELF

In the context of Vietnam, the research done by Ton and Pham (2010) made a suggestion for the real interaction in ELF in the EFL classrooms because this helped students to be familiar to different types of voices or English accents, which is really important for communication in authentic contexts According to Crystal (2002), the purpose of learning English is to build up students’ communicative competence and communicative skills in English in daily life instead of spending too much time on native language In reality, the norm British English or American is always considered a selected or desired standard language, which attracted a lot of attention and efforts from all learners of English Obviously, it is normal to try to imitate British English or American English in order to have a more appealing speech in front of other people; however, it is better for learners to use English in their own way but still express their meaning and conduct the goals in communication in English

More importantly, the administrators of Ba Ria Vung Tau Province paid much attention to English language teaching and learning The government held English eloquence contests and awarded students who had international certificates in English as well as held courses relating to English for the purpose of bettering student’s language skills in the province Because the majority of students preferred to use standard English rather than ELF, teachers should initiate using ELF and applying it into their EFL classrooms in order to change their mind set and help them to be familiar to different kinds of English accents, which is really important for their learning process to communicate in English outside the classroom

Practically, the term English as a lingua franca (ELF) has interested a lot of researchers and educators, especially in international universities recently (Jenkins, 2011) In contrast, there have been few researchers in Vietnam who investigated ELF

and its implications in the setting of higher education In Ba Ria Vung Tau Province, though high school teachers attended some training courses instructing to teach English as ELF, there are not any studies to explore high school teachers’ attitude toward ELF and the implementation of ELF in the classrooms Thus, this thesis was conducted in order to investigate ELF and its incorporation of ELF in language teaching and learning in terms of teachers’ attitudes and teaching practices

1.3 Aim and objectives of the study

The aims of this study are to investigate high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and their classrooms teaching practices in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province The research objectives are as follows:

- To explore high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province

- To investigate the classroom teaching practices used by high school teachers in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province

1.5 Scope of the study

ELF has been put into a lot of research in the world in terms of a means of communication at high school level (Bjorkman, 2011b); the implementation of ELF in international universities (Jenkins, 2011), or Lingua Franca interactions (Bjorkman, 2011b), teachers’ perceptions (Incecay, 2014; Ho, 2018) Thus, this current thesis aimed to explore teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and classroom teaching practices for the promotion of ELF in the EFL classrooms

The researcher chose high schools in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province as the research site for the government in this province are asking teachers to be more

creative and active in language teaching in order to build up communicative skills in English for students As a teacher, the researcher wants to examine whether high school teachers are favor of ELF and willing to apply it in their EFL classrooms or not after some training courses held by the Education and Training Department

Methodologically, the mixed methods design including questionnaire and semi-structured interviews provided the quantitative data of 109 participants and qualitative data of 22 interviewees All of them were high school teachers in 11 high schools in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province No students participated in this study

1.6 Significance of the study

As mentioned above, this study aimed at investigating high school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and explore teaching practices they carried out in the era of ELF in their EFL classroom Thus, the study expected to provide both theoretical and practical significance to language teaching and learning in Ba Ria Vung Tau in particular and Vietnam in general

On a theoretical basis, this study is hoped to make a big contribution to the literature of ELF in Vietnam with in-depth information on teachers’ attitude toward ELF in the EFL classrooms Besides, it will cast light on the application of ELF in the EFL classrooms in terms of teaching practices

On a practical basis, the results of the study may be beneficial to not only educators regarding to teacher training in ELF setting but also teachers who are trying to implement ELF in their classrooms The study provides fundamental foundation for ELF classrooms in the future so that high school teachers can have more motivation and more understanding of activities for employing ELF in EFL classrooms

1.7 Definitions of key terms

In order to help elucidate a specific perspective on the discussed issues for the purpose of the research, some key terms are defined as follows

Attitude is considered as a crucial factor which have a great effect on teachers

who play different roles in language teaching such as an instructor, a facilitator, a supervisor and a monitor in the language classroom

English as a lingua franca refers to the use of English as a common means of

communication for those who have different mother tongues

Classroom teaching practices refer to a set of actions a teacher can carry out

in order to engage the students into the lessons relating to a certain topic in the classrooms

High school EFL teachers are those who teach English in foreign language

classrooms at high schools in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province

1.8 Organization of the thesis

This study report is divided into 5 chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the study including background of the study, the statement of the problem, purposes of the study, research objectives and research questions, significance of the study and definitions of key terms as well

Chapter 2 concentrates on literature review, consisting of the information related to the status of English, World Englishes, Three circles of Katchru and English as a lingua franca In terms of ELF, definitions, linguistic features and the roles of ELF Additionally, the definitions and components of attitudes are also presented, then followed by definitions of classroom teaching practices, their importance in EFL as well as classroom teaching practices in the era of ELF This chapter ends with previous research on ELF and classroom teaching practices related to ELF and a conceptual framework for this study

Chapter 3 elaborately describes the research methodology of the study in connection with the research design, the research site, the sample and sample procedures, the research instruments, the data collection procedures as well as the data analysis procedures

Chapter 4 presents the results of the study by analyzing the data collected from questionnaire and semi-structured interviews Then, the study discusses the results compared and contrasted with the findings in previous studies

Chapter 5 makes a conclusion on the main findings of the thesis, supplies some implications and limitations of the research and makes some recommendations for further research

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This chapter establishes the theoretical background of the study Firstly, it presents the status of English in Vietnam, World Englishes and Three Circles of Katchru Next, it describes the definitions of ELF from various perspectives, ELF linguistic features and the ELF roles in language teaching and learning Then, definitions of attitudes, its components as well as models are included in the next section Besides, classroom teaching practices in terms of definitions, their importance as well teaching practice perspectives in the era of ELF are summarised in details Plus, an in-depth review of previous studies in relation to high-school teachers’ attitudes toward ELF and classroom teaching practices in the era of ELF are necessarily presented The last section highlights the framework of the study which depicts the issues discussed in this chapter

2.1 The status of English

Kirkpatrick (2012a) announces that the demand for English has become more and more heated in Vietnam since 1986 One of the main causes of the changes in the status of English is the accessions as the official member of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007 and ASEAN economic community (AEC) in 2015 (Duong, 2015) The open - door policy for foreign investment long for the skilled workforce with good language communicative competence for the deeper and wider international and developmental process Thus, English is no longer a language in limited contexts as in schools or for examination In other words, English is not only used for communication but also correspondence in trading and services (Walkinshaw, 2018)

According to Vu (2015), the requirement of English competence is for all professional employment in Vietnam And the number of people using English around the country has been increasing at the high speed Those significant signals urgently the changes in language teaching and learning in Vietnam in order to train Vietnamese young people to be better at English communication skills as well as more confident in using English outside the classrooms A great many detailed measures have been taken by the government and the MOET for the purpose of enhancing Vietnamese young people’ communicative competence in English

Relating to the changes in language teaching and learning, English is taught and learned in all levels of education from primary school to tertiary level according to the project called “Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages in the National Education System, 2008-2020” by MOET (Decision No 1400/QĐ -TTg, 2008) This decision was then updated on December 22nd, 2017 named “Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages in the National Education System, 2017 - 2025” (Decision No 2080/ QĐ-TTg, December 22, 2017) The project calls for the changes in teaching methods, teaching materials and language assessment so as to have a more balanced and positive assessment to students’ performance Besides, the appeal for paying more attention to communication skills makes both teachers and students more comfortable while conducting speaking and listening activities in the class

Briefly, thanks to the integration into the world community in terms of economy and society, English teaching and learning has received more concentration than before More importantly, the need for communicative exchange reduces the pressure for teachers and students in terms of standard-English Therefore, there is a current tendency that non-native speakers outnumber native speakers in Vietnamese streets and in tertiary institutions as Ngo (2015) presented Crystal (1997) presented that non-native speakers are the decision-makers of the future of English and there will be much more varieties of English English is the combination of different ways which totally belong to the countries where it is used To put it differently, English is known as mutually used tool of communication spreading and accomplishing transactional goals in a wide range of geographical areas (Kirkpatrick, 2011)

2.2 World Englishes

Since English was regarded as an international language, there has been a ceaseless increase in the number of English speakers and learners, which makes the spread of English faster and faster all over the world However, there is a phenomenon that the ways of using English in different countries are not the same; for example, Australians did not employ the same English as the Americans, the south Africans, the Canadians and the Indians (Kachru, 1986), which led to the new concept of English called World Englishes by Kachru (1986) World Englishes refers to the emergence of localized varieties of English, especially varieties that have

developed in territories influenced by the United Kingdom or the United States

Thus, the study of World Englishes consists of identifying varieties of English used

in diverse sociolinguistic contexts globally and analyzing how sociolinguistic histories, multicultural backgrounds and contexts of function influence the use of English in different regions of the world

Also, the number of territories where English is spoken either as first language or as an institutionalized second language in domains of government, law and education is rising for the time being The more widely English is used, the newer varieties of English are constantly being developed and discovered, which lead to the difficulties in knowing the accurate number of Englishes in the world, not to mention the reality that “a speaker can speak various dialects, depending upon the circumstances of a discussion” (Kachru & Nelson, 2009, p.73) Therefore, it is very normal that the American and British voices are also two of many varieties of English (Kachru & Nelson, 2009, p.73) More importantly, what speakers of English need to care about is the pragmatics factors such as appropriateness, comprehensibility and interpretability, which justifies the use of English

Native accents

Generally, standard native accents always receive more preferences over standard accents or non-native accents (Ladegaard, 1998; Zhang & Hu, 2008) Also, Ladegaard (1998) adds that despite the high rate on status and competence, standard varieties are often adjusted at fairly low on social attractiveness and personal integrity According to Meerleer (2012), evaluation on the same standards is different across cultures and countries; however, the results of the studies of non-native speakers about English accents in many contexts are respectively similar to each other; that is native-like competence is always long-term outcome of language learning

non-Two varieties which have gained most attention are British and American accents; particularly, British accent is a representative of “traditional loving”, “conservation”, “reserved” and “high class” (Cargile & Giles, 1998) while American English is regarded to be “cool” or “dim and uneducated” (Sjostedt & Vranic, 2007) However, the result of the study by Zang & Hu (2008) revealed that “L2 learners have more positive attitudes toward the varieties they have most been exposed to” (as cited in Meerleer, 2012, p 342) More importantly, speakers’ intelligibility is not related to their attitudes toward an accent (Zhang & Hu, 2008, as cited in Meerleer, 2012, p 342)

In reality, there are a number of studies which have supported for one standard native accent over the other and vice versa For example, a survey by Mobärg (1999) (founded in Le, 2016) concluded that some groups of Swedish students liked American English more than Bristish English This was similar to the results of the study by Barros (2009) that American accent appeared to be clearer, more useful and more straightforward In contrast, British accent received preferences by participants in the study by Ladegaard (1998) Or a study by Botterman in 1995 (as cited in Tavernier, 2007) presented that participants preferred the British accent to the American one Another study by Norrborm (2008) showed the finding that most of the textbooks were designed and taught with British accent while they really wanted to use American accent Nevertheless, Barros (2009) revealed that many respondents in his study rejected the idea of standard varieties of languages by not choosing a British or American accent when being asked

Non-native accents

According to Meerleer (2012), the investigations of beliefs and attitudes toward non-native English have been paid more attention in order to explore whether there is any negative evaluation on non-native speakers or there are any prejudices against the non-native accents or not Bresnahan et al (2002) emphasizes that “speaking with a foreign accent identifies the other as a member of an out-group is likely to evoke negative stereotypes” Or Ryan et al (1977, as cited in Cargile & Giles, 1998) presented that the strength of the accent was able to cause some negative effects on the more or less favorite ratings toward the speaker’s status and attractiveness However, the study by Flege and Fletcher (1991) suggests that the respondents in their study became familiar with the sentences produced by the non-native speakers after the duration of the experiment

Moreover, the study by Phan (2016) presents that nearly half of the respondents suggested accepting and respecting different varieties of English or non – native accents Also, she confirmed that despite the different pronunciation among American, British and non-native accents, teachers and learners need to learn to tolerate and stop judging as well as making bad criticisms on those varieties of English because the long – lasting desire of language learning is the ability for real-life communication in the future In order to do this, teachers should have knowledge

of the changes in English in the world as well as understand the importance of the use of English worldwide these days

2.3 The three circles of Katchru

The American linguist Kachru developed the three-circle model of World Englishes in 1985, which remains one of the most influential models for grouping the varieties of English in the world (Mollin, 2006) The spread of English was described in terms of three concentric circles: The Inner Circle, The Outer Circle and The Expanding Circle According to Kachru (1985), these circles represent "the type of spread, the patterns of acquisition and the functional domains in which English is used across cultures and languages"

The first Kachru’s model called Inner Circle referring the original bases of

English, dominated by the mother-tongue varieties (White, 1997) The countries involved in the Inner Circle include the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada,

Australia and New Zealand The Outer Circle is the second model which consists of

the earlier phases of the spread of English in non-native countries, where the language has become a part of a country's chief institutions or as an important 'second language' in a multilingual setting (Rajadurai, 2005) Most of the countries included in the Outer Circle are former colonies of the United Kingdom or the United States, such as Malaysia, Singapore, India, Ghana, Kenya and others

(Rajadurai, 2005) The third model named Expanding Circle refers to the territories

where English is learnt as a foreign language

According to the statistics of Walkinshaw (2018), there are about 375 million users in the inner and outer circles while the number of people in the expanding circle is about 750 million to one billion Kachru (1992) stated that the characteristics in the use of English within three circles are also distinctive under the influence of its historical background, economic and education policies on the use of English For instance, with a majority of immigrants, a multiethnic nation like the United States has a mixture of varieties of English Or, the English of Canada and North America are not the same in terms of phonology and syntax due to the dominance of American in 18th century (Crystal, 1997) Not mention to that the countries in the expanding circle such as China, Japan, Greece and Poland are not the colonies of members of the Inner Circle, so the language is taught because of the usefulness of English as vehicle of international communication Therefore, the model is not

sufficiently dynamic to reflect the reality of English use in the world for the time being Kachru (1985) himself noticed that the concentric circles may be oversimplified because some special cases like South Africa and Jamaica are difficult to be classified

Figure 2.1 Three concentric Circles of English (Kachru, 1985, p.16)

2.4 English as a lingua franca (ELF)

This section aims to present the background knowledge of ELF and ELF linguistics features (Figure 2.2) so as to make ELF understood fully and exactly in every aspect The section is accompanied by the roles of ELF in language teaching and learning in order to emphasize the importance of ELF in the classroom practices

Figure 2.2 The background knowledge of EFL 2.4.1 Definitions of English as a lingua franca (ELF)

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (p 377) presents that the term lingua franca derives from the Middle Age between the 15th and 19th century This term was first based on Italian and French and developed by the traders for illegible communication Then, this term relating to the spread of Latin appeared in the ancient times along with the development of science, philosophy and culture among European scholars in the 18th (Encyclopedia Britannica, Lingua franca) The history recorded that Portuguese was served as a lingua franca in distinct parts of Africa and Asia in the 15th – 18th for trade and diplomatic purposes All the languages mentioned above showed that a lingua franca was the significant position of a language in distinct parts of the world for social and economic purposes Then, in the 17th century, since settlers left Britain for colonies in the Americas, English began to spread around the globe (Graddol, 1997) By the 19th century, there was a dramatical increase in the number of people speaking English because of the raise in colonies around the world which had been established by Great Britain (Graddol, 1997) Currently, English is the mother tongue to more than 375 million speakers, a second language to around 375 million speakers and a foreign language to additional 750 million foreign users (Graddol, 1997, p.10) Thus, English surpassed all languages in the past and becomes the dominant language in technology, science, publishing, education, media, international trade as well as politics around the globe (The

Hutchinson Encyclopedia, p 363, 1999) Bjorkman (2011a, p 3) also confirms that

English can nowadays be marked as the world’s lingua franca

However, the concept of English as a lingua franca did not catch the attention much in the literature until the 1980s (Jean & Chern, 2017) Only when Jenkins (2000) and Seidlhofer (2001) mentioned ELF in the seminal publications, this research field began to attract people’s attention (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey, 2011) To put it differently, the birth of lingua franca has spirited many researchers to explore this field of language such as Jenkins, Berns, Crystal, etc (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey, 2011)

That is the reason why there are a variety of definitions of ELF in this field of linguistics (Seidlhofer, 2011, p.4) For example, according to Seidlhofer (2005, p 339), a “lingua franca” refers to a common language for communication between people who do not share their first language To put it differently, interlocutors demand a language for their communication in reality The language in such situations is either the native language of one of the speakers or a foreign language of both speakers Or, Jenkins, a linguist specializing in the EFL phenomenon, defines a lingua franca as “a contact language used among people who do not share a first language, and is commonly understood to mean a second (or subsequent) language of its speakers” (Jenkins, 2007, p 1) Or, Crystal (2012) suggests that gradually people must accept different kinds of use of English as a price of being global Also, Berns (2008) makes a suggestion that the outer circle should not include the accent of native speakers and outer circle speakers should feel free to use the rules of

pronunciation in EFL contexts

2.4.2 EFL linguistic features

According to Zikmundová (2016), every speaker is able to create his/her own variety of English due to the reason that “no one owns the English language anymore” (Zikmundová, 2016, p 14) That means the linguistic features of EFL may be much more challenging since each person has his/her own way of transferring elements from their native language into English (Zikmundová, 2016) In this section, some characteristics in terms of lexicogrammar, phonology and pragmatics of ELF are presented to depict the common differences between the forms of the Inner Circle and ELF

Lexicogrammar of ELF

In relation to lexicogrammatical features, Breitender (2005, p 13) has the idea that non-native speakers tend to misuse or omit the grammatical rules of the

native language as long as the content of the communication is successfully transmitted The lexicogrammatical features of ELF are discovered by Seidlhofer (2004) as followed:

• Omitting the 3rd person singular -s in the present tense

• Confusing and incorrectly using the pronouns who and which in the

relative clause

• Misuse of definite and indefinite articles (using a definite article where there should not be one in Standard English and not using one where there should)

• Overusing prepositions where they are not needed (such as in We have

to study about …… instead of We have to study ….)

• Using incorrect forms in tag questions (such as in isn’t it? instead of

shouldn’t you?)

• Overusing certain verbs with a very general meaning (such as do/

have/ make/ put/ take)

• Using that -clause rather than infinitive constructions (as in I want

Phonology of ELF

With regard to phonology, Zikmundová (2016) expresses that non-native speaker also has his/her distinctive pronunciation which is definitely from the Standard English of the native speakers This is also the topic which attracts a lot of attention from many linguists around the world in identifying phonological features

of ELF (Zikmundová, 2016) Zikmundová (2016) notices that every non-native speaker carries his/her own unique accent as a portrait of his/her mother tongue pronunciation, which may cause the difficulties and even the complication during the conversation Relating to this, Jenkins (2007) also mentions the phonological features of ELF in her book in a set of recommendations for maintaining the communication

For example, non-native speakers of English often have problem in pronouncing dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ because these two consonant sounds do not exist in their mother tongue The consonant clusters in English might lead to the decrease of intelligibility according to Jenkins (2007) Or the distinguishing vowel length and placing the nuclear stress correctly within a sentence are also kind of challenge to non-native speakers (Jenkins, 2007)

To prevent the misunderstanding or incomprehension between speakers, they must adjust their own pronunciation to ensure the mutual understanding Zikmundová (2016) uses the term “accommodation” to illustrate for the necessary adjustment among the speakers Jenkins (2007) makes some suggestions such as adding the sounds for consonant clusters or choosing what information which needs emphasizing to mark a nuclear stress

Pragmatics of ELF

The field of pragmatics is also in great importance of linguistic features of ELF, so there have been many studies on the role of pragmatics in ELF so far Zikmundová (2016) affirms that interlocutors have a tendency to prioritize for the intelligible communication rather than the use of perfect English It means that ELF refers to the smooth of the conservation rather than the form of the language; therefore, in order to make the message fully understood, the speakers naturally make some adjustments in the use of language based on the context

Jenkins (2011) provides some strategies that ELF should employ in order to reduce or avoid the misunderstandings as followed:

• Repetition is one of the effective ways which helps the communication intelligible; and the speakers also use clarification and self-repair to check the information during the communication • Paraphrasing, saying in their own words or using minimal response

from the other counterpart also help avoid prolonged silence

• Inserting or creating idiomatic expressions helps create the incorporation among speakers of ELF though idioms may seem to be really challenging to non-native speakers Even, those creative idiomatic expressions are considered as a signal of a group of ELF speakers

• Using discourse markers is used to introduce the new topic among non-native speakers of ELF although in the native language, this is a way of expressing politeness or involvement in communication (Jenkins, 2011, p 293- 294)

Generally, those introduced linguistic features of ELF in terms of lexicogrammar, phonology and pragmatics aim to show that there are varieties of ELF around the world and in the field of research, ELF has received a lot of attention among linguists Breitender (2005) proposes to establish a set of rules for native and non-native speakers to use for the purpose of avoiding misunderstandings as well as increasing the mutual intelligibility Furthermore, in education, the rise in a number of speakers of ELF implies that teachers of English might introduce these features to the students of English in EFL classrooms in the future in order for students to get acquainted with these features during their English learning process as well as making up for the situations in which there are unusual forms of the language or grammatical errors (Zikmundová, 2016)

2.4.3 The roles of ELF in language teaching and learning

EFL has been proved to hold a dominant position in many areas such as international business, Information Technology, aviation, transportation and even in education (Zikmundová, 2016) According to Zikmundová (2016), EFL creates a great many chances for the trade in the globalized world; for example, the negotiation process, goods - ordering and selling activities and partnership-establishing activities for company This is totally consistent with Graddol’s (2012) opinion that English tends to be widely for business outside the borders of European countries Or the ASEAN Charter in 2009 stated that ‘the working language of ASEAN shall be English’ (Jenkins, 2011), which means that English is a tool for ASEAN to connect to other international organizations In a broader extent, Zikmundová (2016) reveals that due to the rise in international travel, a uniting

language became really necessary to manage transportation, save lives as well as operate the international airplanes and ships; that is why English has been a worldwide lingua franca in air and sea transportation

Based on the studies on EFL, it is obvious that English is being more widely used by non-native speakers than native speakers for the need of communication as well as science and technology as what Crystal (2003) says in his study that “English is the medium of a great deal of the world’s knowledge, especially in such areas as science and technology” (p 110) The statistics by Walkinshaw (2018) showed that English is a second language to 375 million speakers and a foreign language to additional 750 million foreign users Ramírez (2005) claims that non-native speakers use other intonation range and variety of contours than native speakers The differences between English by native speakers and non-native speakers should be focused in class in order to meet learners’ communicative purposes

With a greater number of non-native users of English, language teaching and learning need to pay attention to ELF in order to have more understanding of ways which English is spoken by non- native speakers, from which teachers have more knowledge of teaching English in the classrooms This is the same as Jenkins (2007) considers EFL as an independent variety of English which should be considered and taught; or to put it differently, teachers and students should be provided with ELF knowledge and exposed to the used of ELF in the classroom

Obviously, the influence of English in the education field was reported by Crystal (2003) as follows: since 1960s, English has been a common medium of instruction tool in higher education in many countries As a result, the English language teaching (ELT) major has grown rapidly around the world In other words, ELF makes a great contribution to the changes in teaching methodology; that is to stop focusing on linguistic forms such as pronunciation, morpho-syntactic features and to priorize non-linguistic forms which affect mutual understanding (Nagy, 2016) The focus of language teaching and learning is on communication skills as well as interactive skills

2.5 Attitudes toward ELF

2.5.1 Definitions of attitudes

Many researches consider investigating teachers’ attitudes the indispensable aspect in the exploration of the in-depth insights of each topic, especially researches

in the fields of psychology and education That is why there are a great many definitions of attitude from different contexts and perspectives (Alhmali, 2007)

First, attitude which is simply defined in Oxford Learner’s Dictionary is the way people think or feel about something or the way people behave toward someone or something Based on the scientific theory of planned behavior, Rokeach (1969, as cited in Smith, 1981) defines attitudes as the consistent organization of beliefs toward a certain object or a certain situation to some extent, which lead to the predisposing respondence in some preferential manner Or Gardner (1985) has his own definition of attitudes that the evaluative reactions or opinions about a certain referent reveals the attitudes of a certain individual Briefly, “attitude is generally conceptualized as a learned predisposition to respond in a consistent evaluative manner” which is “a dimension as pro-con, favorable-unfavorable, positive-negative, supportive-hostile, or desirable – undersiable” (Allport, 1935; Katz and Scotland, 1959; Rosenberg and Hovland, 1960, as cited in Thomas, 1969, p 12)

2.5.2 The components of attitudes

In theory, attitudes are psychological phenomenons which may be indirectly observed or gradually acquired over a period of time and attitude is classified into three interrelated components; namely, affective, behavioral or cognitive components (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960; Katz and Scotland, 1959; Wenden, 1991)

Cognitive component

Based on how a person thinks about the attitude objects, this aspect of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts of the language learners about the knowledge as well as their understanding in their learning process In other words, cognitive component is the combination of the experiences of attitude objects and the information in different courses, which are called information and perceptions as Schiffman and Kanuk (2004) defined In language learning, cognitive factors include the connection of the previous knowledge with the new one, the creation of new knowledge, the check of new knowledge as well as the application of the new knowledge in different situations

Affective component

The definition of affective component presented by Eagly and Chaiken (1998) that “feelings, moods, emotions, and sympathetic nervous system activity which people have experienced in relation to an attitude object and subsequently associate with it” (p 272) are affective factors In other words, affective component is related to the emotional experiences and preferences such as the likes or dislikes toward an object As the operational mechanism of emotion is simultaneous with cognitive factor, the evaluation of affective factor is a combination of feelings, emotions and evaluative judgement on beliefs which are called an integrated model of attitude and choice (Agarwal & Malhotra, 2005) Regarding to language learning, Feng and Chen (2009) presented that learning process is an emotional process influenced by different emotional factors It means that the inner feelings and emotions of learners should be taken into consideration (Choy & Troudi, 2006) for the purpose of bettering their learning process

Behavioral component

Behavioral component defined by Defleur and Westie (1963) is associated with individual response or reaction toward attitude object To put it differently, the way a person behaves or reacts in particular situations are behavioral aspects of attitude Therefore, the student’s participation in the tasks and their actions during tasks are concerned to attitude object It means that the behavioral component helps enhance students to be exposed to the target language and the English environment in the classroom According to Kara (2009), positive attitudes lead to positive behaviors toward language learning, which can encourage the eagerness as well as enthusiasm of students And students engage themselves emotionally and feel strived to learn more and acquire more information and skills for daily life

On the whole, the affective component refers to the emotions and feelings, cognitive component is based on perceptions and beliefs whereas the behavioral component is related to the expression of behavioral intentions Therefore, attitude concept should be viewed from the three above dimensions because each of those dimensions consists different features which are absolutely necessary for students’ language learning Toward ELF in ELF classroom, statistics analysis of research over the past years have showed that the majority of teachers preferred using native speaker norms to features which are frequently associated with ELF However, ELF

has been considered as an acceptable alternative to non-native speakers in Soruc (2015) and there should be more research on other participants in a wider variety of contexts according to Soruc (2015)

2.6 Classroom teaching practices

Richards and Rodgers (2001) stated that “different philosophies at the level of approach may be reflected in the use of different kinds of activities and in different uses for particular activity type” It means that the choice of teaching principles and practices are based on teachers’ knowledge and attitudes in language teaching and learning That is why different contexts lead to the differences in teaching practices and attitudes of the teachers Accordingly, there have been a lot of investigation on classroom teaching practices in different contexts, which lead to the diversity of definitions of classroom teaching practices suitable for specific settings

2.6.1 Definitions of classroom teaching practices

Gage (1978) defines teaching practices as “any activity on the part of one person intended to facilitate learning on the part of another” (p 14) However, in order to clarify what teaching practices are, it is better to explain what the two terms “teaching” and “practice” mean

Flinders (1989) suggests some areas of teaching as follows:

✓ Communication: the ability of the teacher to initiate and sustain a multitude of personal interactions with students

✓ Perceptions: the ability of the teacher to pick up on such things as students’ attitudes, motives, and beliefs, and to adapt a lesson appropriately

✓ Co-operation: the ability of the teacher to negotiate a collaborative and open relationship with students

✓ Appreciation: the ability of the teacher to feel an intrinsic sense of self-worth from doing a difficult job well

(p 24)

Whereas, Brown (1994) defines teaching in a shorter way that teaching is the facilitation of learning (p 17) Teaching is not only transforming knowledge but also enhancing relationship among learners, creating interesting atmosphere for learning, choosing materials and understanding students’ needs And Ellis (1985)’s definition

of teaching is that stimulating learning through facilitative instructions, raising learners’ awareness of language features, motivating learners and reinforcing learners’ knowledge (p 74)

Practice in Morris’s (1973) opinion that it is “a customary action or way of doing something” (as cited in Zain, 2007, p 16) To put it differently, practice is a set of actions done regularly in order to achieve something

Therefore, teaching practices consist of giving feedback, interaction with students, transforming information, managing the classrooms and setting activities as well as choosing the materials Stones and Morris (1977, as cited in Gujjar, 2008, p 2) mentions three major descriptions in the definition of teaching practice as follows: the practicing of teaching skills and acquisition of the role of a teacher, the whole range of experience that students go through in schools, and the practical aspects of the course as distinct from theoretical studies Or, Wang, Haertel and Warburg (1993) state that classroom teaching practices with regards to classroom management and classroom interactions have certain effects on students’ cognitive competencies However, the effectiveness of classroom practice depends on the cultural context and professional traditions

To sum up, teaching practices are the way the teacher interacts with learners, choose the materials, build up good relationship based on confidence, admiration and motivation, vary in different teaching methods and techniques as well as increase learners’ interests during the lessons More importantly, many researches on teaching practices affirm that teachers’ beliefs or attitudes make a strong impact on teaching practices at some certain extent (Handal, Bobis, & Grimison, 2001; Lovat & Smith, 1995) In other words, teachers’ lives and behaviors can result in a lot of creativeness and inventiveness in their classes

2.6.2 The importance of teaching practices in EFL classrooms

As mentioned above, classroom teaching practices refer to what and how teachers teach as well as assess students in their classroom in order to develop students’ communication skills in English as well as build up their confidence in using English in the international environment In order to do this, it is absolutely necessary to investigate the influence of teaching practices in EFL classrooms in order to depict the importance of teaching practices in EFL classrooms taught

Generally, Borg (2003) states that the choice of activities during the lessons have great impact on the students However, teachers’ decision is dependent on a set of ideologies that teachers hold about their students as well as pedagogical practices (Farrell & Bennis, 2013) In other words, various actions by the teachers reflect their values and beliefs (Verloop et al., 2001), which mainly derived from their own philosophies of teaching (Andrews, 2003) Besides, teachers’ experience and language backgrounds also are important factors influencing the choice in techniques, aids or activities used in EFL classrooms (Ngnidi & Sibaya, 2003; Marais & Meier, 2004)

Relating to the choice of aids, the study by Nalliveettil and Ali (2013) about the usefulness of Audio-Visual Aids in ELF classroom in Arabia affirmed that the combination of textbooks with audio and video as supplementary resources for classroom language learning activities helped provide motivation and increase inspiration among students Lessons taught with the help of technological aids are viewed as an effective technique which teachers should conduct so that EFL classrooms are more interesting and inspiring to students because the sounds and images attached in the learning activities make the teaching-learning process effective and attractive, which appeal for the interest and attention of students more

The use of materials in the EFL classroom also plays an important role in increasing students’ participations in the activities According to Basturkmen (2001), authentic texts helped to raise the students’ awareness of language use and promote more interactions among students McCarthy (1998) emphasized that “learners trained to be good observers of data have taken an important step toward facilitating features of talk” (p 52) And once they are active observers, they are engaged to be exposed to contribute their ideas and initiate discussions as well as join the activities more dependently (Basturkemen, 2001)

The way teachers give feedbacks on the students’ mistakes also make huge influence on students in their learning The study about how to correct students’ mistakes showed that almost students felt worried and too sensitive to teachers’ feedback (Kepner, 1991; Semke, 1984; Sheppard, 1992) Therefore, negative feedback may not totally correct student’s mistakes but reduce their production as participation in the and feedback should be selective so as not to prevent students’ attempt to communicate activities (Pica, 1996) According to Al-Hasnawi (2016), when reaching at a certain level, students may have a sense of self-correction

strategy which help them avoid mistakes which might repeatedly appear in similar communicative situations

Classroom management is of great importance in building effective EFL classrooms because teachers with good classroom management skill can create a positive classroom environment, meet classroom expectations and reinforce appropriate behavior as well as correct inappropriate behaviors skillfully (Simonsen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers & Sugai, 2008) Classroom management refers the organization of the physical classroom environment such as floor plan, seating chart or the daily classroom routines such as daily procedures, homework giving and checking or the creation of a predictable schedule across days, weeks … All of these strategies aim at creating a classroom layout, rules and structure in order to reduce the noise or distractions among students in the classrooms

Obviously, teaching practices which teachers apply in EFL classrooms directly impact on the effectiveness of learning activities during the lessons More significantly, teachers have a range of teaching practices to select for their EFL classrooms so as to better their teaching and students’ learning And teachers are responsible and accountable for designing and delivering a high quality of language teaching and learning Therefore, classroom teaching practices need to be carefully chosen for the suitability of their settings and objects as well as the level of their objects

2.6.3 Teaching practices in the era of ELF

The global expansion of ELF in the world put a big question in language teaching and learning in the world That is, whether EFL should be taught in the same way as English as second language is being taught In the countries where English is not their mother tongue and English is mainly used for international communication of the majority of the population, internal communicative functions and sociopolitical status in the use of a language receives more supports (Nayar, 1997) Moreover, there are not enough professional and native English teachers to cover all the English classes (Nayar, 1997), which requires the changes in people’s and teachers’ attitudes toward in the norm English as a lingua France, so that there need to be necessary alternatives in classroom teaching practices which are accessible to English in a non-native way

ELF classrooms refer to the language ones where English is considered as a medium instruction or communication tools Teachers and students have chances to update knowledge, gain communicative competence, balance accuracy and fluency The use of different varieties of English is accepted along with the lesson and the freedom in the choice of useful English varieties as long as the communicative purposes are gained and the language learning takes place smoothly Therefore, it is absolutely necessary for the pedagogical training as Seidlhofer (2005b) stated, teachers will need a more comprehensive education which enables them for their own teaching contexts and to adapt their teaching to the particular requirements of their learners Although teachers cannot teach all varieties of English in classrooms, teachers’ encouragement to their students to explore different English varieties of English through out-of-class activities should be highly appreciated (Ehrenreich, 2018, p 37- 48)

Relating to some significant ways in the ELF classrooms, Smit (2010) proposed that using materials, sharing experience, using audio or visual means, self-learning, seminars, exploring the value of pair work, groupwork, etc.… are what teachers should do in ELF classrooms The purposes of using these kinds of aids are to facilitate academic communication among students in and out of the county However, teachers in a single unified curriculum as Vietnam may encounter some barriers which prevent the application of ELF in the classrooms (Kuhn, 2011) In other words, the exam-driven curriculum in most Vietnamese schools nowadays may be a challenging to teachers in conducting ELF classrooms Therefore, teachers need a lot of changes in their attitudes toward ELF in order to be more flexible to choose teaching methods and teaching strategy for the promotion of students’ communicative skills as well as the stimulation of students’ engagement into English discussions

With regard to the structures of the lesson, Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey (2011) showed the differences in the lesson plan of the EFL classrooms in the era of ELF Instead of following the basic structure with pre-teaching part, a while-teaching with a discussion of “fill in the blanks” exercises and a post-teaching with listening activities and specially only giving priority on speaking activities if required, ELF focuses on extensive oral interactions with classroom activities such as group work, pair work, presentation, and so on in order to increase the incorporation among students Additionally, the materials such as coursebooks, curriculum also need to be

designed in an ELF lesson-plan; especially, according to Matsuda and Friedrich (2011), the publishers need to pay attention to promoting an ELF perspective in teaching materials The materials are proposed to have practical examples of how to incorporate the view that English is the language for international communication within EFL classrooms (Matsuda & Friedrich, 2011)

To sum up, the era of ELF not only makes a great contribution on the promotion of English learners’ communicative competence but also leads to great changes in teaching methods and teaching practices in EFL classrooms

2.7 Previous research

The field of ELF has undergone dramatic developments since the ELF first conference was held in 2008 This theme flourished with a growing number of research and the annual conference series were then held in around Europe and Asian by scholars at different stages of their careers This is equivalent with Jenkins’s (2015) opinion that the exploration of the ELF phenomenon at all linguistic levels, in a wide range of domains and in different geographical regions In education, the developments of ELF create a lot of opportunities for teachers to get access to practical problems relating to ELF teaching practices (Sifakis, 2014) Therefore, many numerous studies have been carefully carried out in order to point out what teachers have to do in the classroom with ELF – aware and attitude perspectives

For the importance of teachers in teaching English in the ELF perspective, there is a lot of research in terms of teachers’ perceptions and attitudes toward the global spread of English and ELF in the world; for example, from English – speaking countries in the Inner Circle, Outer Circle and non- English-speaking countries of Expanding Circle In those research, norms, principles and challenges of teaching ELF are also mentioned and discussed to find the most appropriate ways for the implementation in the language classroom in their own contexts

In the context of Europe, one of the studies on the attitudes of the teachers toward ELF was done by Soruc in 2015 The purpose of this study is to explore the practices and perceptions of non-native English - speaking teachers from five - expanding circle countries including Turkish, Italian, Egyptian, Germany and China The questionnaire consisted of forty-four non-native English - speaking teachers, and ten of whom were later interviewed Unfortunately, the qualitative and quantitative

data revealed that most of the teachers from those different expanding circle countries preferred to use native speaker norms rather than features associated with ELF Similarly, in the particular context of German, Decke-Cornill (2003) investigated the attitudes of teachers of English in two different types of schools The result of the study showed that teaching proper English was more popular than ELF features Another study done in Turkey by Incecay and Akyel (2014) had collected and analyzed the questionnaire and semi-structured interviews of a hundred Turkish EFL teachers working at two universities regarding to ELF and its roles The data presented that teachers were familiar with ELF though they tended to highly appreciate native-speaker English as the correct model and all of the teachers said that they still had tolerant attitudes toward their students’ use of ELF features

In the context of UAE and Georgia, Tamar and Khalid did a research in 2018 for the purpose of investigating non-native English – speaking teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward ELF in two different places; particularly, UAE is the country where English has the status of ELF and Georgia is the country where English is considered a foreign language With 20 teachers each region took part in the online questionnaire including four sections; that is, demographic characteristics, behavioral factors, attitudinal factors and questions association with teachers’ practice, opinions and awareness of ELF The set of questions including multi-item, close-ended, specific open – ended and clarification questions helped to prove that ELF was a crucial topic for both regions and provided future expertise on ELF and some ways of its incorporation in language courses

In the context of South-East region, the study on teachers’ attitudes toward ELF was carried out by a Malaysian researcher named Kaur in 2013 in a Malaysia university The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of the trainee teachers toward ELF or non-native speaking English accents compared with native speaking English accents Seventy - two participants from a teacher-training course took part in the survey with a questionnaire adopted from Jenkins (2007) The results of the study revealed that native English accents were more favorable than to non-native English accents though they were exposed to ELF in their training curriculum The explanation for this negative description on non-native English accents resulted from the native speaking-centric textbooks and materials, which made those trainee teachers more familiar to the norm provider of native speaking accent

In the context of Vietnam, the increasing popularity of English has attracted a great substantial attention which led to the birth of language governmental policies for the purpose of developing Vietnamese students’ communicative competence However, the development of English in terms of a lingua franca is still a new perspective toward Vietnamese teachers and learners because of the influence of native speaking accents existing in all the English materials in Vietnam The research of ELF in language teaching and learning in Vietnam mainly focus on the teachers’ awareness or perceptions on World Englishes, global English and ELF as well as challenges which teachers face with in the implementation of those above aspects in the classroom

The study conducted by Tran (2015) aimed at uncovering the perceptions of teachers of English in Vietnam toward the norm World Englishes The study called for the participation of one hundred and fifty - seven teachers at university and college level into the online questionnaire survey and five of whom were invited to take part in the semi-structured interviews individually and in group With a mixed – method approach, the quantitative and qualitative data presented that Vietnamese English teachers at the university/college level have a broad range of perceptions toward English varieties, which resulted in various benefits and challenges for language teaching and learning Besides, the research showed that the number of studies in terms of World Englishes is still limited in Vietnam; therefore, there should have teacher training courses in order to improve teachers’ knowledge and awareness of global English, World Englishes and ELF in real life and in modern society

Another study which was more closely related to ELF in the context of Vietnam was carried out by Ngo (2015) in the Hue University There were twenty-five teachers and one – hundred students participating in the online questionnaires and Skype interviews The purpose of this study was to investigate Vietnamese teachers and students’ perceptions of ELF and find out the rising concern in the application of ELF to language classroom in Vietnam The qualitative and quantitative data from two main instruments of data collection revealed that Vietnamese teachers and students’ perceptions of ELF seemed to be complex and contradictory because there was a conflict between what students longed for and what teachers and students preferred Most of the participants understood that there was a high increase in the spread of English all over the world as well as its