Metacognitive and metalinguistic activities can raise ELF awareness: why and how

1 Introduction

Research in English as a lingua franca (ELF) has focused on two broad concerns, one being the linguistic and sociopragmatic study of ELF, the other being pedagogical matters, with the former historically preceding the latter. Both perspectives have yielded interesting insights that, in certain cases, have successfully merged the two research directions. This is the case, most notably, with the Lingua Franca Core (Jenkins 2000), which put forward a set of comprehensive recommendations for ELF pronunciation teaching that is grounded in an extensive sociopragmatic study of intelligibility in ELF oral interactions (Walker 2010).

While there have been many suggestions of integrating ELF research within English language teaching and teacher education/development contexts, to date these suggestions have been rather broadly specified. The study of ELF discourse has yielded many significant insights regarding, for example, the detailed description of accommodation strategies in ELF interactions (Cogo and Dewey 2012), and, more recently, in-depth analyses of ELF grammar (Laitinen 2020; Ranta 2018) and a comprehensive understanding of non-native users’ creativity (Li 2020). The various proposals for incorporating these rich insights into an ELF-related pedagogy for English language teaching (ELT) and learning (ELL) contexts can be roughly categorised into different groups. One group, to be found widely in papers discussing ELF discourse, includes brief discussions of the implications of these studies for pedagogy and teacher education. Another (smaller but rapidly growing, cf. Bayyurt and Dewey 2020) group includes more extensive descriptions of frameworks for integrating ELF in practice – cf. the ‘ELF approach’ to teaching (Kirkpatrick 2012), ‘ELF-informed’ pedagogy (Seidlhofer 2011; Seidlhofer and Widdowson 2020) and the ‘ELF-aware’ framework for teaching and teacher education (Sifakis 2019; Sifakis and Bayyurt 2018). Yet another (even smaller) group includes attempts at designing ELF textbooks (e.g., Kiczkowiak and Lowe 2019) which introduce ELF concerns and principles in comprehensive ways. What all groups share is a concern for a significant enrichment (or even a paradigm change, according to Seidlhofer and Widdowson 2019) of the ways English language teaching is conceptualised in language education, with reference to the findings of ELF research.

There is still a long way to go, of course, as there are always challenges with integrating the findings of ELF research within English language teaching, especially in Expanding Circle (or traditional English as a foreign language [EFL]) contexts. One such challenge is the fact that ELF and EFL are two different, sometimes seemingly incompatible, paradigms for using, teaching and learning English. For one, many Expanding Circle contexts have been characterised as native-speakerist (Holliday 2005). Also, learners’ and teachers’ attitudes show an acknowledgement of ELF when referring to real language use but, at the same time, when referring to what is expected of EFL contexts, they show a strong preference for native speaker models and norms (Boonsuk and Fang 2020; Kiczkowiak 2020; Sifakis and Sougari 2005).

This paper offers practical tools that can contribute to a new way of conceptualising the teaching of English as informed by ELF insights. For this reason, these tools can be implemented in teacher development courses aiming to raise teachers’ ELF awareness. I begin by showing that, if teachers and learners are to be better placed to use ELF in a world where ELF is the dominant mode of English language usage, they need to become aware not only of what ELF is but also become conscious of their own attitudes and convictions towards ELF-related concerns. In this light, I review recent research that highlights the importance of attitudes and the need to raise learners’ critical and reflective awareness of ELF concerns. I show that this perspective is what the pedagogical framework of ELF awareness proposes (Sifakis 2019) and briefly present its principles. I then present a proposal for raising learners’ ELF awareness through metalinguistic and metacognitive activities. I define what I mean by ‘metalinguistic’ and ‘metacognitive’ and put forward a series of steps for designing such activities that can be used by ELT practitioners either as entire activities (if time and context allow) or as additions to, or adaptations of, existing activities found in courseware used in these contexts. I then present examples of the use of such activities from the Greek state school context and explain how they can raise both teachers’ and learners’ ELF awareness in specific ways.

This paper focuses primarily on Expanding Circle contexts where English tends to be taught as a ‘foreign’ language (Kachru 1985). My intention is not to oversimplify the complex picture of English language use, teaching and learning around the world today, but to offer a comprehensive framework for introducing key concerns of ELF research to teachers and learners who are also ELF users. This is why I believe that the discussion will still be relevant to many Outer Circle and even certain Inner Circle contexts, where users’ attitudes towards English interestingly raise issues of identity, ownership, and even linguistic insecurity (cf. Limin Foo and Tan 2019).

2 Attitudes in ELF research

Sociocultural and identity issues have seen a significant increase of interest in the past few years (cf. the recent review in Lei and Liu 2019). Within this trend, research into the attitudes of teachers and learners has been an ongoing thread in ELF research over the past two decades. Such research has offered many significant insights for the development of a comprehensive ELF-aware pedagogy. A key insight has been the predominance of native speaker norms and the need to develop learners’ critical and reflective awareness of these perceptions. Recent studies from different contexts show this quite clearly. For example, Hyejeong et al. (2020) studied corpora including South Korean news and social media and concluded that Koreans adopt a native-speakerist perspective in pronunciation teaching. The authors highlight the importance of ‘critically revisiting’ these perceptions in the English language classroom. Similar conclusions are drawn in a study by Morán Panero (2019), which analysed 53 h of talks with university students in Chile, Mexico and Spain. The author discussed students’ unwillingness to challenge native speaker norms despite their growing awareness of contextual variation in interactions. In the implications of this study, Morán Panero underlines teachers’ responsibility in dealing with this “attitudinal ambivalence” (Morán Panero 2019: 297). In another study, Otsu (2019) carried out extensive interviews with Japanese engineers during and after their intensive lessons. The study showed that, while they were critical of their teacher’s form-focused approach, they perceived native speakers’ English as having more power, authority and acceptance in interactions.

Clearly, learners’ attitudes are shaped by various established norms in these contexts (Sifakis 2009). Researchers have proposed several ways of dealing with these challenges and raising learners’ ELF awareness through, for example, exposing them to authentic ELF interactions; reinforcing learners’ digital literacies (Lee and Drajati 2019); intensive practice in employing communicational strategies (e.g., Sato et al. 2019; Sung 2018); and developing learners’ multilingual repertoire via activities integrating two or more languages (Cenoz and Gorter 2020). While these are worthwhile endeavours and can significantly help promote these learners’ ELF awareness, they may not necessarily have a lasting effect on their deeper convictions about key concerns that are heavily shaped by an ideology of Standard English (Jenkins 2007).

As recent studies show, similar perspectives are held by many Expanding Circle teachers as well. Bai and Yuan (2019) showed that Hong Kong English language teachers’ self-confidence in teaching pronunciation is negatively impacted by their non-native English status. In another study, Si (2019) interviewed 12 Chinese business English teachers about their perceptions on integrating ELF in their teaching practice and found that such an integration is impeded by these teachers’ bias towards the native speaker norm, a bias driven by testing concerns. A recent review of the impact of ELF awareness on English language teacher education over the period 2008–2018 (Kurt et al. 2019) concluded that teachers are still largely dependent on standard norms and are “somewhat confused in terms of the implications of an ELF aware pedagogy” (Kurt et al. 2019: 433). Similar concerns are raised in applications of World Englishes in ELT contexts – for example, a study by Sadeghpour and Sharifian (2019) showed that this is due to lack of resources, time constraints and learners’ expectations.

From the above we can conclude that, while English language teachers and learners are progressively becoming more aware of the existence of ELF and, at least in principle, are favourable towards integrating it in their formal teaching context, that integration is far from easy, due to the native-speakerist perceptions that continue to dominate in many contexts. If teachers are to integrate ELF into their teaching, more specific help is needed it seems. The questions that arise are: How can teachers working in such Expanding Circle contexts (where conventional ‘EFL’ practices are extensively institutionalised) introduce ELF-related concerns to their learners? What pedagogical ways can be developed that would raise learners’ appreciation of their own use of English outside the classroom? More specifically, how can this be done in Expanding Circle contexts that are heavily driven by a testing culture and that use courseware prioritising the teaching of Standard English and adopting rather simplistic ways of looking at intercultural communication?

In what follows, I adopt the perspective of ELF awareness and put forward a framework for developing metacognitive and metalinguistic activities that address (and possibly change) teachers’ and learners’ attitudes and convictions about using and learning English today. I then offer examples of adapting courseware activities in a specific English language learning context.

3 ELF awareness in English language teaching: the relevance of metacognitive-metalinguistic activities

ELF awareness was put forward (Sifakis 2019; Sifakis and Bayyurt 2018) as a framework that attempts to comprehensively integrate ELF principles and concepts within ELT. The framework fundamentally addresses the need to expose learners to ELF discourse and the strategies that ELF users implement in ELF interactions (to that extent, it subsumes the concept of ‘ELF-informed pedagogy’ proposed in, e.g., Seidlhofer 2011; Seidlhofer and Widdowson 2020). However, the ELF awareness framework goes beyond mere exposure to ELF. It also incorporates a framework for engaging in critical reflection that attends to the need to incorporate and possibly change learners’ and teachers’ attitudes. Within the ELF awareness framework, critical reflection is two-tiered. One tier focuses on prompting participants to become aware of the processes and underlying assumptions involved in instruction, e.g., what tasks are designed and how they are taught, how feedback is provided, and so on. The other tier focuses on recognising that language learning is informed not only by classroom teaching and study but by actually using the language, in whatever way, outside of the typical ELT context (e.g., when playing online games, chatting online, travelling abroad, etc.).

4 A framework for developing metacognitive and metalinguistic activities in EFL contexts

On the basis of the above, what follows is a practical guide for EFL teachers on developing metacognitive and metalinguistic activities for their learners. The guide is intended to be used with any given ELT courseware, whether print-based or online.

The trend here is (a) to start from the given and lead towards the imagined and (b) to go from the general (real-life people leading their lives) to the specific (how these people would use English in different circumstances). All the while, the metacognitive and metalinguistic activities the teacher raises offer learners opportunities to think beyond the context of the given textbook inputs and activities and focus on:

1. the language as experienced by learners, both inside and outside of the EFL classroom (focus on metalinguistic questions), and

2. their attitudes towards, thoughts, and perhaps deeper convictions about aspects of the language and these experiences (focus on metacognitive activities).

It is important to note that the proposed ways of developing metalinguistic and metacognitive activities can be implemented with any given ELT courseware, no matter its approach to ELF-related concerns. This is because existing courseware activities and inputs are viewed as an opportunity for prompting learners to reflect on their own use of English and perhaps see more critically the perspectives adopted in the textbook. In this way, they become increasingly ELF aware without necessarily challenging the specific ELT context in which they are embedded. It goes without saying that the extent to which these metalinguistic and metacognitive activities will go depend on many issues: the learners themselves, their willingness to engage, but also time, curricular pressure, teacher autonomy, etc.

5 How metalinguistic and metacognitive activities can raise EFL learners’ ELF awareness: examples from a Greek EFL print-based textbook

In what follows, I present four examples of incorporating metalinguistic and metacognitive activities into the activities of a specific ELT textbook in ways that will raise both teachers’ and learners’ ELF awareness. I would like to stress that these examples are localised and should not be overgeneralised. They are used in an attempt to specifically show to teachers in other Expanding Circle contexts how ELF awareness can be raised through appropriate metalinguistic and metacognitive activities, even when the ELT textbook adopted uses topics that on the surface are culturally/interculturally sensitive but does not fully exploit them.

The textbook is called ThinkTeen and was developed in 2008 by the Greek state for the advanced classes of the second grade of junior high school, addressed at 14-year-old learners. The textbook is still in use as I write this paper in May 2023.^[1] According to the authors, the textbook focuses

on the teaching of the language not as an end in itself but rather as a means by which Ss can function as social individuals and can communicate effectively in real-life situations. One of the primary objectives of the textbook is the development of learners’ cultural awareness.” (ThinkTeen, Teacher’s Book, p. 5)

As the authors write in the teacher’s book:

Language is much more than simply a medium of communication, though. It is connected with our identity as individuals and as members of a community, as well as with our culture, our values and our interpretation of the world. Real communication, therefore, does not only mean using the same words as other people but also understanding their culture, values and interpretation of the world. Consequently, another major goal of this course, is to prepare Ss to use English not only as a contact language, but also as a means of discovering the culture of other people and appreciating their diversity. (ThinkTeen, Teacher’s Book, p. 5)

The authors underline that “there is strong emphasis on the content of the input material in order to create interest in the theme and promote discussion and other kinds of work on the relevant topic” (ThinkTeen, Teacher’s Book, p. 7). It is clear, therefore, that the textbook authors invite teachers to develop further activities that build on the input and tasks provided, which will make the integration of metacognitive and metalinguistic activities, for the purposes described above, relatively easy.

For our purposes, we will be referring to excerpts from the first unit of the students’ textbook which addresses the theme “People and places” and is titled “Unity in diversity”.

(1)

(ThinkTeen, Student’s Book, p. 10)

This is the first time that the learners are referred to the boys in the two pictures in Example (1). The questions in activity 2.1 ask learners to draw on the visual information provided in the drawings and, using that information, together with their knowledge of the world and their imagination, do the following: (a) describe the boys’ dressing habits, what activity they are involved in, and the weather (questions 2–4), and (b) identify the place that they live in (question 1). The questions in (a) are relatively easy to answer, but the question in (b) is harder.

It would appear that, because of its nature and inherent simplicity, activity 2.1 does not lend itself to raising learners’ ELF awareness. However, it is possible to use the information provided in the drawings and add the following metacognitive questions and activities that achieve this aim:

1. If Nuru and Tikki were able to communicate with you, what language do you think they would use? Why are you making this assumption?

2. Provided that Nuru and Tikki had at least a basic competence to use English to communicate with you, what kind of English do you think they would use?

3. Do you think it would be British or American English?

4. Do you think you may have a problem understanding them?

5. What would you/they do in order to be understood?

6. In what ways would the English used by Nuru and Tikki help them understand and appreciate their cultural differences?

7. In what ways would it help them ‘connect’ and identify their cultural similarities?

What these metacognitive questions aim to do is prompt learners to draw on their own experiences as ELF users outside of this ELT context, however limited, and, using their imagination, bring the characters in the drawings to life and project their own perspectives about English on those characters. It is expected that the learners’ responses about Nuru and Tiki would refer to competence levels in English, but also habits, specific experiences and perceptions and attitudes about using English that they themselves have. In this regard, the teacher’s role would be to reinforce these responses. The metacognitive activities proposed above work around the following themes that are relevant to ELF:

1. Nuru and Tiki use English because it is the default go-to language internationally (A). They are non-native users of English who have very probably learned the language in ways that are similar to those of the Greek learners, i.e., in Expanding Circle teaching contexts. Those contexts would have similarities and differences to the specific Greek learners’ experience. Also, the use of English by Nuru and Tiki outside of their ELT classrooms would also differ, but it would not be zero (B, C).

2. The fact that Nuru and Tiki are non-native users of English does not mean that the way they use English is problematic, but just different to native-speaker uses. Learners are invited to discuss the importance of being a native speaker or trying to use native speaker norms as opposed to being understood when using your own “version” of English, according to the demands of each different communicative context (D). This means using accommodation techniques – learners can come up with different ways of rendering their use of ELF intelligible and comprehensible to different interlocutors (E).

3. Beyond comprehending ELF discourse, questions F and G invite learners to voice their opinions on the issue of ELF users’ cultural identity as an integral part of ELF interactions.

The starting point of the metacognitive activities added to Excerpt (1) is the information presented in the given courseware (Step 1). They then progressively move to addressing issues that are central to raising ELF awareness, such as the learners’ experiences and understanding of real-life ELF interactions, their perceptions about normativity, intelligibility, comprehensibility, and the ways in which non-native ELF user identity is progressively formed, expressed and perceived by different users of English (Steps 2–4).

If time allows, the teacher can supplement the metacognitive activities suggested above with further metalinguistic questions. They can present learners with a couple of examples, e.g., taken from YouTube, of ELF users, ideally the same age as his/her learners, using ELF to interact with other (native or non-native) interlocutors. The metalinguistic questions would not aim at analysing the actual discourse of these interactions (although this would also be possible if the opportunity arises) but seek to prompt learners to think about the context of each interaction and the accommodation strategies that may be observed. As ELF use is dependent on the different users and the different interactional settings, discussing actual ELF interactions is a unique opportunity to zoom into and discuss specific aspects of ELF and the specific communicational strategies implemented by ELF users. For example, the discussion can focus on raising learners’ appreciation of observed ‘mistakes’, the purpose of these mistakes, whether there is evidence that they are deliberately employed (, to assist intelligibility and comprehensibility) or not.

While thinking about and responding to these metacognitive and metalinguistic activities, it is expected that learners might raise concerns and opinions with which other learners may agree or disagree, at times even forcefully. Eventually, such questions encourage the dialogue among the learners that is necessary for the communication of ideas and attitudes and will lead to not only being informed about ELF but becoming conscious of their own deeper convictions about the issues raised and, perhaps, in time, transforming some of them (Sifakis 2007). It is important that the teacher is ready to monitor the discussion and allow all learners to voice their opinion about the issues raised. After all, these questions are nothing more than prompts, opportunities for discussion that link to the specific courseware inputs and activities – and that is how they are meant to be used by the teacher. It is also expected that the time available for these questions may not be extensive, and this is an important constraint that has to be incorporated in their design and monitoring. Teacher development programmes can build such activities into their curriculum, thereby raising participant teachers’ awareness of both the possible restrictions of certain courseware and helping them to develop ways of improving them and, as a result, become more ELF aware.

(2)

(ThinkTeen, Student’s Book, pp. 11–12)

Excerpt (2) is a follow-up from the previous one. In Excerpt (1) (activity 2.1), learners were involved in a speaking activity based on visual prompts. The aim of that speaking activity was to prepare them for activity 2.2, which focuses on reading. Learners are asked to read the text, an interview with an anthropologist “about the way people look” and carry out two tasks: (a) complete a table with their own notes from the text on peoples’ characteristics and scientists’ opinion (2.2), and (b) answer two questions that draw from the text, one on the main idea of the text and another one on the reasons people’s bodies and characteristics have changed over the years.

It can be argued that the interview raises issues about the environment and people’s physical characteristics that represent an entrenched and rather old-fashioned way of perceiving the world. For the purposes of using the content of the reading input to raise learners’ ELF awareness, it would be more relevant to ask them to think about linking such differences to cultural and communicational differences. This would then lead to discussing the role of an anthropologist and invite learners to consider becoming ethnographers of their own world and describe its patterns. The idea of language learners as ethnographers is a well-established one and this seems a more useful starting point than anthropology linked to physical characteristics. As Byram states:

the language learners as ethnographers is a concept which enables learners to gain declarative and procedural knowledge with which they can analyse and reflect in new ways and, in using all their communicative skills, be a participant-observer in other worlds and their own, and act as mediators between the two. (Byram 2020: 101)

In this light, what follows is a list of metacognitive activities and topics that can be integrated with the input and activities of Excerpt (2) in an attempt to raise learners’ ELF awareness. These questions follow the steps presented above, except that, in this specific example, the focus is not on any characters presented in the text but on the learners themselves. The teacher can kick off this session with a statement like the following:

Now that we have discussed the interview, let’s put on the hat of an anthropologist ourselves. I think it would be more interesting and fun to use ourselves as the focus of anthropological analysis and, in particular, talk about our own habits and hobbies.

Then the teacher can invite learners to discuss the following metacognitive activities:

1. Do you enjoy playing online games?

2. Do you chat with other players?

3. What do you chat about? How often do you talk about stuff other than the online game? What is this stuff about?

4. What language do you use when you chat? Why?

5. What do you do in order to understand/be understood by the other players?

6. How would you describe the English that you use when you chat/Skype with fellow players?

It is important to note that the teacher makes a bridge between the given reading input and activities and the topics addressed by the metacognitive activities. Also, it should be noted that the teacher does not have to criticise the actual content of the text or the activities if they disagree with them, they can carry them out and move to putting forward the metacognitive activities. As can be seen, these questions begin with referring to activities and hobbies that learners enjoy carrying out in real life (A). Progressively, the focus shifts to communication with other online players (B, C). It is only when learners are prepared to discuss ELF-related concerns that the questions move to talking about the language they use in these chats (an opportunity to discuss the function of English as an international lingua franca) (D) and issues of intelligibility and comprehensibility (E) – in discussing this question, the teacher can refer them to the term ‘adaptation’ used by the anthropologist in the interview and ask them to draw parallels with the accommodation strategies employed by ELF users. Finally, learners are prompted to exchange their viewpoints about the nature and characteristics of English that they use during these interactions (F).

(3)

(ThinkTeen, Student’s Book, p. 13)

In Excerpt (3), learners are asked to listen to an African girl describe her daily routine. They should consider the information in the table, make inferences about the missing information, then listen to the actual interview (twice, according to the teachers’ book) and fill in the missing information.

The following are some metacognitive activities that can be used to raise learners’ ELF awareness on the basis of the listening input and activities presented in this excerpt:

1. Would you like to get to know Imani?

2. What would you learn from Imani that you did not know before?

3. Do you think that Imani speaks English? What level would you say her English is?

4. Where do you think she has learned English?

5. How often do you think she communicates with others in English?

6. Do you imagine that Imani makes mistakes when she communicates with her foreign friends in English? How serious would these mistakes be? Would they impede communication between her and her friends?

7. Do you think that Imani has/needs a B2/C2 formal certificate? Why? Why not?

As always, the questions follow the steps described above, beginning with building on the information provided in the listening input (A, Step 1) but prompting learners to consider that Imani is a real person living a real (if imagined) life (B, Step 2). Questions C and D invite learners to create the character of Imani (by drawing on their own personal experiences that they then transfer to that character) and discuss her experiences while learning English (Step 3). The discussion then moves to issues related to ELF interactions (E, F) and focuses on learners’ perceptions about the importance of each communicational context, the accommodation strategies employed and the function of mistakes vis-à-vis ensuring intelligibility and comprehensibility (Step 4). If time and the discussion allow it, the teacher can play the listening input once again and ask learners to identify aspects of Imani’s use of English that promote her cultural identity as an ELF speaker (e.g., her accent or possible mistakes she might make) (Step 5). Whether such elements can be found in the listening input or not could be the subject of further discussion: to what extent are courseware authors informed about ELF concerns and interested in portraying ELF speakers in realistic ways? Finally, question G invites learners to position standardised language certificates of competence in a broader context with reference to ELF-related concerns and could be used to prompt learners to challenge the ubiquity of such certificates, especially in a country like Greece, where such certificates reign supreme.

(4)

(ThinkTeen, Student’s Book, p. 14)

Activity 6 in Excerpt (4) uses a letter describing another person and asks learners to (a) use adjectives and nouns of description (6.1) and (b) write a similar text describing an interesting person (6.2). The metacognitive and metalinguistic activities that follow focus entirely on the information presented in the letter and, following the steps presented above, asks learners to think about issues and concerns that will raise their ELF awareness:

1. Eva and Olga are friends, but Olga’s Greek is not very good. What language do you think they use to communicate beside Greek? Why?

2. When Eva and Olga talk, is it OK to shift between different languages?

3. Do you have a friend/friends like Olga? What language(s) do you use when you talk?

4. Do you always try to use “perfect” English? Why?

5. What would “perfect” English be for you?

6. What if your interlocutors don’t fully understand what you’re saying?

As the letter that Eva wrote presents a lot of information about Olga, questions A and B shift the focus to the use of English as an international lingua franca even when interlocutors share another language as well (in this case, Greek, which is not Olga’s first language). In this case, learners can be introduced to the concept of translanguaging (perhaps the two girls share other languages as well – cf. Turner and Lin 2020), and specifically discuss the concept of “pedagogical translanguaging” (Cenoz and Gorter 2020), which refers to “intentional instructional strategies that integrate two or more languages and aim at the development of the multilingual repertoire as well as metalinguistic and language awareness” (Cenoz and Gorter 2020: 307).

The remaining questions invite learners to talk about themselves and discuss their own use of ELF in their “real lives” (C), their perspectives about normativity and whether what they actually produce is “perfect English” (D), which they are then asked to define (E), and debate the differences between a standard variety of English and different instances of ELF with regard to the need to be intelligible and comprehensible when interacting with others.

6 Conclusions

In this paper I have presented a step-by-step framework for designing metacognitive and metalinguistic activities in ELT contexts as a means of raising teachers’ and learners’ ELF awareness. I have presented some examples from the Greek ELT context that show ways of adapting courseware activities to render them ELF aware. The examples are localised, of course, but are used in the hope that they can inform teaching practice in other ELT contexts around the world. What is important to note is that such questions and topics do not aim to teach ELF explicitly but rather to expose teachers and learners to a dimension that may be different to what they are used to in such teaching contexts but valid because it refers to real-life uses of English. Furthermore, these questions do not primarily aim to inform participants about ELF but draw on their own experiences as ELF users first and foremost and progressively prompt them to reflect on issues that are directly relevant to ELF interactions (such as the concept of employing accommodation strategies). In this way, metacognitive and metalinguistic activities can go a long way towards raising teachers’ and learners’ ELF awareness and, as a result, help them develop and expand upon their own ELF user identity, and ultimately gain confidence as ELF users.

The process of becoming ELF aware is a slow and perhaps painstaking one because it involves participants in thinking about, expressing and perhaps transforming their attitudes towards and deeper convictions about key aspects of English language teaching and learning. This way of engaging with ELF concerns, however demanding, involves participants in what Kohn calls the social constructivist approach of “my English” and essentially is able to empower them to creatively develop their own English learning trajectories within a safe “pedagogical space” (Kohn 2015: 51; also see Kohn 2018). Metacognitive and metalinguistic activities can be used with any type of courseware to whatever extent the teacher or teacher educator decides and, if organised following the steps presented above, they can raise participants’ ELF awareness in ways that mere exposure to ELF discourse cannot.

As teachers and learners engage with the various metalinguistic and metacognitive activities, it is expected that different and perhaps contradicting perspectives will emerge. This is why, in every case, the teacher (and the teacher educator) is responsible for researching extensively local constraints such as time limitations, curricular pressure, and, most importantly, participants’ predisposition and deciding on the extent to which their learners are ready to engage in such discussions. The appropriate integration of such questions does not have to challenge the status of the textbook, as such questions take as their starting point the reading or listening inputs and accompanying activities that are available and slowly guide participants through the process of shifting the focus to ELF concerns. This is why, for such activities to succeed, that the following prerequisites apply:

1. teachers, learners and other stakeholders should embrace it (at least to some extent);

2. teachers should be in (some) control of their teaching context;

3. teachers should integrate appropriate activities that raise learners’ confidence as ELF users;

4. teachers should target learners’ attitudes towards ELF concerns; and

5. teachers should realise that for ELF awareness to be raised learners’ attitudes should be targeted – ELF awareness is so much more than simply being aware of ELF.

Probably the greatest advantage of developing metacognitive and metalinguistic questions and activities in raising ELF awareness is that the same process can be implemented in teacher education programmes as well as in ELT and ELL contexts. Teacher educators can use the dynamic nature of such activities to discuss multiple issues of local and international language learning materials in ways that are participant-centred and promote dialogue and reflection. These activities can be further complemented by exposure to examples of ELF discourse that may be drawn from online resources, published courseware, or even participants’ own discourse. If designed and applied carefully, metacognitive and metalinguistic questions and activities can prompt teachers to become better informed about both the implications of English as a lingua franca and the idiosyncrasies of their local teaching context. Ultimately, they can help them in their journey to becoming more reflective and autonomous practitioners.