A study of elf awareness among College of Education tutors of English in Ashanti region of Ghana

Abstract

English continues to maintain its status as a global language. It is spoken by a third of the world’s population. However, majority of its users are non-native speakers. The concept of ELF awareness orientates a set of principles that refer to knowledge, attitudes and skillset of ELT stakeholders and ELT products. This study investigated ELF awareness among tutors of English in Colleges of Education in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Using a convergent parallel mixed method, forty-eight tutors participated in the study by providing quantitative data while nine out of the forty-eight tutors provided qualitative data for the study. Questionnaires were used to elicit responses from the participants while interviews were carried out to obtain qualitative data. The responses from the questionnaire were analyzed by means of the SPSS and the interview responses transcribed and analyzed thematically. The results of the data in terms of the benefits of ELF awareness indicated that ELF awareness equips teachers with the skills needed to prepare their student teachers to teach basic school learners. What is more, participants revealed that ELF awareness can help improve practice in terms of assessment, and designing test items around attainable non-native speaker norms. From the results, it is argued that ELF awareness is beneficial and therefore tutors would have to decide how it can help them teach English better in the colleges of education