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An overview of research on the pedagogy of English as an international language

English language teaching, as McKay (2010) highlights, was long dominated by the English as a foreign language (EFL) paradigm, according to which native speaker competence was the ultimate goal that teachers, students and other relevant educational stakeholders sought. The incremental increase in the number of non-native speakers of English worldwide and the subsequent need for effective intercultural interaction, however, led ELT scholars, almost from the early 1980s, to rethink the adequacy of the century-old native speaker model. Several scholars began to criticize that the model is utopian and unrealistic, hence doomed to failure (e.g., Seidhofer, 2005). Others, such as McKay (2010), further maintained that it implies that second language learners should ignore their social identities in cross-cultural communication. These scholars, in fact, argue for the legitimacy of all varieties of English, a recent ELT paradigm that has come to be known as English as an International Language (EIL). This perspective towards English has confronted the field with a serious question: How to teach English with an international perspective? This edited volume brings together 17 papers focusing on the pedagogy of English as an international language. The book, overall, describes the way this new paradigm has been implemented and experienced by key educational stakeholders in a wide variety of social contexts. The organization of the book is straightforward. In the introductory chapter, the editors elaborate the conceptual framework employed in the chapters (i.e., EIL). This discussion is followed by an explanation of what is generally meant when one talks about the pedagogy of EIL, and the chapter is closed by the editors’ reasons for compiling this volume. The remaining chapters are organized around three main sections, each including a number of articles. The first section, ‘Consider change’, primarily attempts to convince readers that the recent position of English as a means of communication among nonnative speakers necessitates changes in the field of English language teaching. Kirkpatrick introduces six language teaching and learning principles that current ELT in Eastern and Southern Asia and other similar EIL contexts should observe. These include: (1) mutual intelligibility is the linguistic goal, (2) intercultural competence is the cultural target, (3) local multilinguals provide the most appropriate English language teachers, (4) lingua franca environments provide excellent learning environments for lingua franca speakers, (5) spoken language is not the same as written, and (6) assessment must be relevant to the local context. The two following chapters of the section then trace the issue in Australia and Korea. Sharifian addresses the major reasons for avoiding standard English in ELT pedagogy in Australia and brings reasons (e.g., the development of numerous varieties of English) to justify the adoption of an international approach to English. Park and Kim discuss the issues that impede the full implementation of the recently adopted EIL paradigm in Korea and in turn suggest practical ways to remove these hurdles. The second section of the book, ‘Dimensions of Change’, includes six papers, each addressing a particular ELT dimension that requires major shifts to fit the international character of English. Honna and Takeshita (Ch. 4) argue that ELT in Japan needs to be revamped in three main respects including the pedagogical model, students’ perspective toward their own culture and that of speakers of different varieties of English. To emphasize the significant role that language