The role of ‘correctness’ in the age of English as a lingua franca: implications for teaching practice

ABSTRACTThis study investigated non-English major students’ (N = 322) perceptions of non-standard lexico-grammatical features of English often considered to be acceptable when those without a common first language use English as a lingua franca to facilitate communication. The participants were recruited from diverse national origins (n = 18) studying in various majors (n= 31). A five-point Likert scale questionnaire was administered to students, asking them to rate the items according to how acceptable or unacceptable they considered them to be. According to the results, the students found just two of the items unacceptable; for the remaining items (n = 11) they expressed no strong opinion. This would seem to suggest a degree of ambivalence: on one hand the students in this study were reasonably tolerant of most of the targeted features, but on the other they held back from being openly accepting. Implications of these findings for teaching practice will be discussed with suggestions for further research.KEYWORDS: English as a lingua francaELFnative speakernon-native speakercorrectness Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.