Teacher language awareness and world Englishes – where (corpus) linguistics, digital literacy and teacher training meet

Abstract

In the rapidly changing world of today, the role of English as a global language is not to be left unnoticed in pre-service teacher training. Teacher language awareness, encompassing knowledge of language, knowledge about language and knowledge of students, needs to be expanded with the wider sociocultural context in which language education takes place in different parts of the world. At the same time, the changes in the very shape of English and the emergence of World Englishes, New Englishes, English as an International Language and English as a Lingua Franca call for skilful implementation of these concepts in the practice-oriented teacher training module. The paper reports upon a study aiming at joining corpus-based investigations, student-made research into sociocultural context of English learning and use, coursebook analysis and lesson plan evaluation and adaptation into a single Teaching English as an International Language course included in a graduate TEFL module. Results of the study indicate that the experimental treatment brought about statistically significant, though small in effect size, changes in language awareness of prospective teachers in a great number of aspects.