English language teachers' perceptions of ELF in Turkey: Are they ready to embrace ELF in their teaching practices?

The study aimed at understanding in-service English language teachers' attitudes towards English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) paradigm which have arisen as a result of the use of English in the global world. The study investigated teachers' attitudes in relation to their own English learning, their students' English learning, and ELT environments along with their preferences for intelligibility and accuracy. A questionnaire, which consisted of 19 Likert-scale items, was adapted from Jaramillo (2014). The questionnaire results were also used in order to explore teachers' attitudes in terms of their experience and institutions (MoNE and HEC). Also, a Judgement Task was adapted from Dewey (2011) and 7 lexico-grammatically deviated sentences were rated in terms of a) correctness, b) acceptability, c) intelligibility and d) importance for classroom correction by the participants. The participants were chosen in line with convenience sampling method. 133 teachers who were teaching English at kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, high schools and universities took part in the study. Moreover, structured interviews were conducted with 7 of the participants in order to understand the reasons behind their preferences. The interviews were analyzed in accordance with qualitative data analysis procedures put forward by Creswell (2012) and the quantitative data obtained from questionnaire answers were analyzed in SPSS 25. The study revealed that teachers had a dual orientation in their perceptions of ELF and the varieties of English in that they favored native-like attainment in speaking both for themselves and for their students while they acknoewledged the importance of the integration of non-native varieties (Indian, Asian, etc) in English language classrooms. Considering the differences in teachers' preferences in terms of experience, Kruskal Wallis Test did not show any significant differences. However, Mann Whitney U Test revealed significant differences in terms of teachers' institutions (MoNE and HEC) for some of the items in the questionnaire. Furthermore, structured interviews showed that teachers emphasized the integration of elements from non-native varieties of English and they found the non-native varieties as acceptable and comprehensible. On the other hand, they labeled native varieties with correctness and intelligibility criteria. Also, the participants found the lexico-grammatically deviated sentences, which were common characteristics of ELF interactions, as acceptable and intelligible. These deviated sentences, on the contrary, were found to be incorrect and important for classroom correction. Another significant finding of the judgment task was that teachers found grammatically deviated sentences less correct than lexically deviated ones. The findings of the present study provided evidence for Turkish in-service teachers' current understanding of ELF and pedagogical implications in ELT were presented at the end of the study.