Educating pre-service teachers about world englishes: Instructional activities and teachers perceptions Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Copyright rests with authors. The growth of English worldwide has brought about myriad variations of the language, but many teachers in the United States are still relatively unfamiliar with these World Englishes (WE). Pre-service teachers must be made aware of the legitimacy of WE to become culturally responsive educators. We will describe six different activities designed to promote understanding of WE and English as an International Language (EIL) that pre-service teachers completed during one undergraduate course. The effectiveness of these activities was examined based on written reflections and pre- and post- intervention assessments. The data indicated that all activities were beneficial for raising participants awareness, tolerance, and respect of WE, especially activity six. Results emphasize the importance of using experiential approaches for the promotion of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching. EIL pedagogy and instructional activities used in this study provides practices that promote the awareness and competence of preservice teachers to use skills necessary to meet the needs of diverse users of English language in their future teaching. Such transformative approaches will foster multilingual appreciation in preservice teachers and provide them with the competences necessary to effectively meet the challenges of the changing demographics of schools.

published proceedings

  • TESL-EJ

author list (cited authors)

  • Eslami, Z., Moody, S., & Pashmforoosh, R.

complete list of authors

  • Eslami, Z||Moody, S||Pashmforoosh, R

publication date

  • January 2019