The ELF of English language teachers

This article reports on an exploratory study which aimed to investigate the use of ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) by a small group of English language teachers from different first language backgrounds working in Italian secondary schools. The teachers were asked to take part in focus groups where they discussed two topics supplied by the researchers and related to the participants’ common professional interests. Their interaction was analysed with a view to ascertaining whether the participants’ English output resembled or diverged from the English as a Lingua Franca variety and whether any features were to be considered ‘distinctive’ of these ‘expert users’, who, as English language professionals, were thought to be particularly sensitive to established native-speaker norms of correctness. Data analysis showed that while the five speakers’ output featured most of the lexicogrammatical traits described in the recent ELF literature, some aspects of their English use (use of repairs, ‘overdirectness’) were better accounted for by the fact that they have a professional involvement with the language as EFL teachers. The study is the preparatory stage for a more extensive research study which is aimed to create a corpus of ELF used by English language teachers from several European countries in computer-mediated interactions. In reporting on the preliminary findings, our aim is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the description of ‘actual’ ELF use, highlighting possible implications for further research on language awareness in teacher education.