ENGLISH FOR SALE

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• ENGLISH FOR SALE
• Ben Goldstein

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• 1 Cultural content of ELT materials
• - Approaches / icons / texts / role models
• - Stereotyping / aspirational values, etc.
• 2 The marketing of English
• - Language schools, courses, etc.
• 3 Dominance / Ownership of English
• - The native speaker package
• A Third Space

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• 1 Cultural content of ELT materials

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• Students increasingly wanted to learn the
  language in an international, business or social
  context, rather than with reference to British
  culture "There's much less interest in the red
  telephone boxes and black London taxis in text
  books, or in English learning that has a close
  relationship with the UK," the report said.
• D. Lepkowska UK Under Threat as English Teaching
  Goes Global, Guardian, 12/2006

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• Dominant paradigm
• Surface / essentialist target culture in
  background
• Sts as skills acquirers (pragmatic/semantic
  slant)
• Native speaker model setting an unattainable
  target
• Aspirational role models/ celebrities take centre
  stage

• Proposed alternative
• Deeper / glocal cultural content foregrounded
• Sts as apprentice ethnographers (aesthetic/
  sociological slant)
• Intercultural speaker model asserting right to
  sound foreign
• Models brought in line with students own lives /
  experience

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2 The Marketing of English
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Marketing techniques

• Embarrassment (at lack of knowledge / sounding
  foreign, getting it wrong )
• Sense of Guilt (for speaking L1)
• Status (adapting to a superior model, not
  allowing for personal response)
• Associations of culture language (often
  negative stereotypes / weak English)
• Emphasis on the semantic and pragmatic

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3 Dominance / Ownership of English
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• Every learner has a distinct story to tell, and
  teaching culture is about constructing and
  hearing these stories
• Moran, 2001

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A Third Space

• Learners seek out a personal space where two
  worlds exist simultaneously, (here) they will
  make their own meanings and relevances, often
  challenging the established educational canons of
  both native and target cultures.
• Kramsch, p.238

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• A way forward
• 1 Promote a flexible model of English open to
  student appropriation and emergent forms.
• 2 Allow learners space to bring out their own
  culture and fashion their own voice.
• 3 Encourage a context-sensitive and
  culture-specific approach to language teaching
  (e.g. determine cultural content according to
  local needs).

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• A way forward
• 4 Incorporate a cultural studies perspective
  into teacher training and teacher education.
• 5 Reassess the native speaker model and its
  dominant culture as prototype in marketing of
  English.
• 6 Develop critical awareness and reflection in
  terms of presentation of culture. Challenge the
  familiar.

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• bengoldstein_at_wanadoo.es