Revisiting English as a Foreign Language (EFL) vs English Lingua Franca (ELF): The Case for Pronunciation

Abstract

The spread of English as the world lingua franca has evoked the rethinking of the significance of native-speaker (NS) norms and models in teaching English, and as a result, the target of pronunciation teaching and learning has shifted from imitating native accents to achieving speech intelligibility. The Lingua Franca Core (LFC) proposal introduced a list of phonological features in English that are, arguably, the minimum required to achieve intelligibility and argued that mispronouncing these features is expected to cause a breakdown in communication among non-native speakers. As a consequence of this, it has been suggested that LFC be prioritized in teaching and learning English pronunciation. In response to the LFC proposal, researchers have become polarized; while some have found LFC a promising approach, others have argued against its appropriateness as a target of pronunciation teaching and learning. This paper evaluates the controversial position of the LFC proposal in the literature, focusing on three main dimensions: the LFC’s potential to result in intelligible communication, its teachability and its scope of function as an alternative target to the NS models (Received Pronunciation and General American), and the influence of different attitudes on the success of implementing the LFC.