This article first appeared in TESOL Journal, Volume 8, Number 2, pgs. 250–276. Subscribers can access issues here. Only TESOL members may subscribe. To become a member of TESOL, please click here, and to purchase articles, please visit Wiley-Blackwell. © TESOL International Association.

With its ever-increasing use and spread by people of different nations for communication in global migration and flow, English is widely accepted as an international language. As an international language, it enables speakers to share ideas and cultures with others across the globe, and its varieties become established alongside local languages and embedded in the culture(s) of the countries in which they are used. English as an international language (EIL), therefore, refers to a function that the English language performs in international, multilingual contexts in which users from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds communicate through different varieties of English (Friedrich & Matsuda, 2011; Kumaravadivelu, 2012; McKay, 2002).

In the globalized contexts in which varieties of different Englishes and cultures are in constant contact, there are increasing tensions between the use of idealized “standard English” and other Englishes in English teaching, for example, between British English and Pakistani English in Pakistani schools (Mahboob & Talaat, 2008), Ghanaian English in Ghanaian schools (Wu & VanderBroek, 2008), and Singaporean English in Singaporean schools (Rubdy, 2007). The emergence of other varieties of English, such as China/Chinese English (Yun, 2013), Korea/Korean English (K. Park, 2009), and Japan/Japanese English (Takeshita, 2000), suggests growing user awareness and recognition of the existence and legitimacy of local English varieties and cultures that are increasingly being used for intercultural communications (Murata & Jenkins, 2009).

With expanding complexity and diversity in the varieties of different Englishes and cultures presented in global communication, the teaching of English, then, is more about gaining “the ability to shuttle between different varieties of English and different speech communities” (Canagarajah, 2014, p. 6). In these contexts, a successful language user needs to have the awareness of multiple English varieties, develop intercultural sensitivity to contexts and constraints, and possess interactive and collaborative skills (Canagarajah, 2014; Friedrich, 2012; Kubota, 2012). Thus, teaching from an EIL paradigm needs to focus on facilitating intercultural communicative competence in multilingual and multicultural contexts, rather than mastery of an idealized “standard English” and its associated cultural norms where English is the native language or mother tongue of most people (e.g., the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Anglophone Canada and South Africa, and some of the Caribbean territories) (Kachru, 1992).

Although the field has made significant advances in theorizing methods, approaches, and materials in EIL teaching (Canagarajah, 2014; Matsuda, 2012; McKay, 2002; Zacharias & Manara, 2013), the question of how to prepare teachers for this epistemic shift remains to be addressed. As Matsuda (2009, 2017) argues, changes in EIL cannot be successfully implemented without changing teachers. English teachers in the field of TESOL come from different backgrounds and include those considered native-English-speaking and those identified as nonnative-English-speaking teachers or multilingual users of English. The former group may lack knowledge and awareness of local English varieties and cultures while the latter group often are learners of standard English and are unfamiliar with its cultures and societies. With the global expansion of English and the increasing number of English learners and users across the globe, it is important to consider what English teachers need to know and how they should be prepared to teach in the new EIL paradigm.

For this purpose, in this article I first outline the major developments in EIL pedagogy and their implications for teacher education. I then describe the challenges of preparing teachers with EIL-oriented competencies in TESOL teacher education programs. Finally, drawing on my teaching experiences in TESOL programs in North America, I illustrate a three-step pedagogy that can help overcome these challenges and prepare teachers with much needed border-crossing EIL-oriented competence.

MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS IN EIL AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER COMPETENCE

In recent years, the field of TESOL has witnessed a steady growth in publications that discuss English teaching from an EIL perspective (e.g., Marlina & Giri, 2014; Matsuda, 2012; McKay, 2002; Sharifian, 2009; Zacharias & Manara, 2013). As a group, EIL scholars reject the use of a dominant “standard English” (such as British English or American English) as the only possible medium of international and intercultural communication. Instead, they propose to legitimize all English varieties and their users and promote teaching English as “a heterogeneous language with multiple grammars, vocabulary, accents, and pragmatic discourse conventions” (Marlina, 2014, p. 7).

This article first appeared in TESOL Journal, 8, 250–276. For permission to use text from this article, please go to Wiley-Blackwell and click on "Request Permissions" under "Article Tools."
doi: 10.1002/tesj.322