The Sociocultural Dimension of ELF in the English Classroom

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how web-mediated activities such as cooperative writing and fanfiction can bridge the gap between the scholastic dimension of English Language Teaching and the reality of English as a lingua franca as authentic communication contextualised in a multilingual and multicultural environment. This study examines the controversial nature of ELF from a social constructionist theoretical perspective on second language learning. It takes into consideration the typical double identity of most L2-users, who are simultaneously students of EFL attending regular language classes, and ELF speakers who use English as an additional language for real social interaction. The results of this research indicate that these two identities are not necessarily conflictual, but become more and more convergent and complementary in the L2-user's successful performance. A number of Italian high-school classes from Rome, Palermo and Messina were linked up online to create a web-mediated community of practice working on English literature and fanfiction. Students had the opportunity to a) use ELF as a mediational means to participate in an open forum with a large number of fellow readers and share their views on their favourite authors and novels, and b) use ELF as an affordance to express their creative power in writing fanfiction collaboratively, and share their work with other fanfiction networkers. In addition, working as a community of practice favoured the creation of a zone of proximal development (ZPD), whereby participants could improve their texts through peer review. At the end of the project, both a student and a teacher survey were distributed to collect information regarding the participants' use of digital tools at home and at school. In conclusion, this research indicates that the use of ELF to carry out real web-mediated activities is not a hindrance to language learning and could well be incorporated into the English language classroom as a valuable resource for a more effective communicative approach to English