The Role of ELF in Relation to the Target Language: Managing Language Choices in the German as a Foreign Language Classroom

Kristina Ehrsam (Universität Basel)

Much of the research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) in academic settings has focused on its use as a medium of instruction in non-language courses. Thus far, only little research has been conducted on the role of ELF as a mediating language of classroom interaction in non-English foreign language courses. The aim of the present PhD project is to shed light on this relatively underexplored area of multilingual foreign language education by investigating the use of ELF in three beginners’ classes for German as a foreign language (GFL) that were offered at university language centres in German-speaking Switzerland. Drawing on Spolsky’s (2004) tripartite framework of ‘language policy’, different types of data from different policy levels were collected to enable a multi-perspective exploration of the phenomenon of ELF as a mediating language in the investigated GFL courses. The present contribution will primarily focus on the component of ‘practiced language policy’ (Bonacina-Pugh, 2012) by discussing on the one hand, the extent to which English is employed by the teachers and students in the GFL classroom and, on the other hand, how linguistic choices are explicitly managed in interactions, especially the choice of English as a medium of classroom interaction.

References:

• Bonacina-Pugh, F. (2012). Researching ‘practiced language policies’: insights from conversation analysis.Language Policy, 11(3), 213-234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-012-9243-x
• Spolsky, B. (2004). Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.