English as a lingua franca. A new teaching paradigm?

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy Literature Studies grade: 13 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. Kachru's 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. [...] It's gotten to the point where almost in any part of the world to be educated means to know English says Mark Wars