Que inglês ensinamos? A visão de professores de uma escola de inglês em relação à dicotomia inglês como língua estrangeira x inglês como língua franca

Abstract

Although the concept of English as a global language has become a commonplace in English teaching, some teachers might not be conscious of how their perspective towards the language may influence their pedagogical attitudes. Considering this fact, the aim of this work is to investigate the teachers’ view of an English school from Curitiba regarding the dichotomy of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). During this study, 10 teachers answered a group of questions about elementary issues, such as intelligibility, the role of the native speaker and the importance of teaching pronunciation, in order to verify their awareness concerning these aspects. The collected data was mainly analyzed based on the works of Jenkins (2000, 2002, 2007); McKay (2002); and Walker (2010). The results point out that teachers recognize the ELF context as a reality. However, they struggle to distinguish the implications of this panorama to their practice.