English for the real world

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a medium of communication between people with different mother tongues. For example, the language used between a French, a Russian and an Argentinian chatting at a coffee break of an international conference held in Germany


ELF has its own characteristics; I mentioned some of them in the presentation on Teaching Pronunciation two weeks ago.

This concept is very important, especially if you are teaching English to learners who need the language to communicate with people from different nationalities (for example, the cases of English for travel, Business English, English for the hospitality industry, etc).


Here I'm posting two videos on the topic, explained by David Crystal. Veeeeeeery interesting!!