ABSTRACT
The proponents of English as a lingua franca (ELF) have shaken up many 'Anglo-Saxon attitudes' concerning English teaching and the use of the English language in the expanding circle. Language awareness training cannot wholly replace more orthodox language teaching and learning in the earlier years of education. The same caveat applies to recommendations like 'highlight the particular environment and sociocultural context in which English will be used', and 'Engage in critical classroom discussion about the globalization and growing diversity of English'; you can't learn to run before you can walk. English as an international auxiliary language is, as Kirkpatrick puts it, in 'a post-Anglophone stage', widely used in the absence of native English speakers (NES). English is also a postcolonial language in the outer circle. Some people try to ally ELF with the hybridity, indeterminacy, pluralism, variety and contingency of postmodernity. And Dewey advocates 'a postnormative orientation to language learning and use'.
