English as a lingua franca. A new teaching paradigm?

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Variety in English, language: English, abstract: "If you stay in the mind-set of 15th-century Europe, the future of Latin is extremely bright," predicts Nicholas Ostler, the author of a language history called "Empires of the Word" who wrote a history of Latin. "If you stay in the mind-set of the 20th-century world, the future of English is extremely bright." Indeed, the history and the world-wide distribution of the English language has been a most remarkable and unparalleled one. The language has developed into a global language which "[...] is dominant in a way that no language has ever been before." Yet what makes English so important is its use as a lingua franca. Today, English is spoken by three times as many non-native speakers as native speakers. This phenomenon raises the question whether a standard should be established and how it should be taught at school. English as a lingua franca - a new teaching paradigm? This question will be discussed in this term paper. I will begin with a short presentation about the distribution of English and its development into a global language. Kachrus famous three-circle model describing the diversity of English speakers around the world will be examined with a critical eye. The chapter goes on by trying to define the term lingua franca. In chapter 3 the following current research projects will be presented: Lingua Franca Core (LFC) by Jennifer Jenkins, Basic Global English (BGE) by Joachim Grezga and Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) developed by Barbara Seidlhofer. Chapter 3 deals with the question of teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF). "English has become the second language of everybody. [...] Its gotten to the point where almost in any part of the world to be educated means to know English" says Mark Wars