Diffusing Linguistic Experience: Contextualizing the Growth of the EIL Education Movement in Turkey and Pakistan

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Ethnicity and language issues in schools

Proposal

Perceived priorities towards students’ linguistic needs in EFL education have shifted away from Native Speaker Models (NSMs) and towards English as an International Language (EIL) due to the global growth of non-native English speakers in the later part of the 20th and early part of the 21st Century, partially. As a result, the growth and development of the EIL movement has sought to better serve these students via the implementation of de-nationalized and more needs-based language curricula. This study explores the philosophical development of the EIL movement before comparing its diffusion, via local application, into the contexts of Turkey and Pakistan. Overall, while the findings of this particular study suggest a convergence around the development of EIL-principled curricula within these particular settings, the differing adoption rates of the EIL-inspired curricula between these two contexts suggests a divergence in acceptance as a result of the different historical context of English-use in Turkey and Pakistan. These findings suggest a connection between the historical and cultural role of English within a cultural setting and how a particular environment adopts a particular pedagogical philosophy towards English education.

Author

• Benjamin Warren Oliver, Florida State University