Beyond monolithic English

Abstract

The Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT) paradigm has recently emerged as a comprehensive approach that aims to bring together innovative pedagogical proposals. This paper argues that pop culture materials such as telecinematic representations can purposefully be integrated into innovative GELT-oriented classroom practices. The use of this material can assist teachers in the double task of (i) raising the learners’ critical awareness of sociolinguistic variation and problematizing the stereotypical image of monolithic English; (ii) shifting the focus of the ELT classroom from prescriptive grammar and standard English towards fostering the learners’ receptive and communicative skills. This is a conceptual paper that gives several broad suggestions as to how to adopt pop culture materials into innovative GELT-oriented classroom practice and mentions a select few examples of said telecinematic representations.