Exposing learners to global Englishes in ELT : some suggestions

In a recent issue of ELT Journal, Galloway and Rose (2014) reported on an interesting study on the use of listening journals in ELT to raise learners’ awareness of Global Englishes (GE). Given the widespread use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) (Matsuda 2003; Kirkpatrick 2007; Jenkins 2012), their study addresses an important and timely topic that considers the implications of ELF communication for ELT and showcases a meaningful attempt to implement a novel pedagogical task to expose learners to the diversity of English in ELT (see Morrison and White 2005; Kopperoinen 2011; Suzuki 2011). In this paper, I shall further develop their idea of exposing learners to different accents of English in ELT, particularly in relation to (1) the need to pay heed to learners’ perspectives; and (2) the incorporation of GE for classroom activities.