engleski

English language education in Croatia: Elitist purism or paradigmatic shift?

The aim of this paper is to contextualise the ELF debate and investigate Croatian teachers’ perspectives on the potential integration of ELF into language education. Using a mixed- method approach, the data were collected by means of a questionnaire administered to 114 teachers, and follow-up interviews with ten teachers. The findings reveal that although the majority think that it might be useful to raise students’ awareness of different users and uses of English, they also maintain that applying ELF principles in the classroom would confuse learners and reduce the quality of language education ; hence, not many are ready to diverge from mainstream practice and their own language learning experience. Although communicative competence is identified as central to language education, the perspectives on the notion differ. According to the majority, it is contingent on native-like proficiency, which is believed to foster international intelligibility, while the others believe that the development of communicative competence could be facilitated by distancing language education from the NS ideal. However, their willingness to adapt classroom practice to modern realities is largely hindered by uncertainty about how to operationalise ELF. Additionally, their decisions are largely guided by the curriculum, the CEFR, and the National Secondary School Leaving Examination.

ELF ; language education ; English teachers ; NS ideal ; communicative competence

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