Jenkins observes that the overwhelming majority of speakers of English nowadays do not come from the traditional "native speaker" English countries, such as Britain, the USA, or Australia. Instead, they are from places such as China, Japan, India, Singapore, Nigeria, Brazil, France, Germany, and Brunei. Furthermore, most of their interactions in English are likely to be with other non-native speakers, and they may actually never need to talk to a native speaker. As a result, she proposes that the teaching of English should be based on English as Lingua Franca (ELF), the kind of English that is used by non-native speakers in international settings.
The problem with this is, of course, that there is a shortage of materials, both teaching and reference, for ELF. While efforts are now being made to develop such materials, and also to codify the grammar of ELF, it seems that teachers still have little option but to continue to make use of the existing materials from places such as Britain.
Nevertheless, there is likely to be an increasing adoption of an international perspective in the teaching of English, partly because training students to interact with people from Britain is not very useful when most of the people they will need to speak to in English do not come from Britain.
A vital skill in the modern world is the ability to adapt one's speaking and listening to the needs of others − in linguistics we call this 'accommodation'. Increasingly, teaching materials are likely to include a greater range of data from all kinds of different speakers, not just the polished recordings of a few native speakers. And when students are exposed to this rich variety of data, they will be well prepared to deal with visitors to Brunei from all corners of the world.
