691073

research-article2017
REL0010.1177/0033688217691073RELC JournalFreeman

Article

RELC Journal

The Case for Teachers’

2017, Vol. 48(1) 31­–52
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0033688217691073
https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688217691073
Proficiency journals.sagepub.com/home/rel

Donald Freeman
University of Michigan, USA

Abstract
New conceptualizations of English are challenging traditional norms of what the language is, as
well as how it is taught and by whom. These changes, coupled with the expansion of teaching
English across the educational spectrum from younger grades to tertiary levels, present challenges
to many national education systems. The role of teachers’ English competence, particularly in
public-sector teaching, is central to how these educational changes play out in countries around
the world. How classroom English language ability is described connects to many dimensions
of teaching. This article argues that conventional definitions that connect general English
proficiency, often based on generic statements about language use, do not address the type
of classroom language teachers need in order to teach. Further, language training focused on
general language fluency often does not directly address teachers’ particular professional needs.
Policies and practices based on these definitions disadvantage most English language teachers by
defining problems of teaching quality in terms of deficits in general English proficiency. English-for-
Teaching, a conceptualization of the English teachers’ use in classroom language teaching, is based
on a languages for specific purposes (LSP) methodology. The construct defines three functional
areas of classroom language use – managing the classroom, understanding and communicating
lesson content, and assessing and giving students feedback. The article outlines the construct
and a professional development programme based on it. Analyses from implementing these
programmes provided by ministries of education to pre- and in-service teachers in Japan and in
Vietnam are discussed.

Keywords
Professional training and development, English-for-Teaching, pedagogical knowledge, CEFR,
classroom English proficiency, NFL 2020, MEXT, English language teaching, public-sector
teaching, general language proficiency

Corresponding author:
Donald Freeman, University of Michigan, 610 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Email: donaldfr@umich.edu
32 RELC Journal 48(1)

“Any jackass can kick a barn down; it takes a carpenter to build one”
– Attributed to Samuel Rayburn
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (1940–1961)1

The place of English language teaching2 (ELT) in public-sector education3 is expanding.

English is increasingly becoming a part of the core national curriculum in many coun-
tries; it is taught often beginning in primary schools, and sometimes continuing as a
medium of instruction through tertiary levels. This expansion in English teaching is con-
nected to the global role of English as a lingua franca (e.g. Jenkins, 2000). New concep-
tualizations of English are challenging traditional norms of what the language is, as well
as how it is taught and by whom (Canagarajah, 1999). The role of teachers’ English
competence is central to how these educational changes are playing out in countries
around the world. The ways in which classroom English language ability is described
connects to many dimensions of teaching. The model of language that is used defines the
content of lessons, organizes methodology, and conveys connections to a world beyond
the classroom. These dimensions shape what students take from – or ‘learn’ in – their
English classes (Freeman, 2016). Likewise, English competence defines – at least osten-
sibly and publicly – who the teacher of English is. English competence functions as a
form of professional identity, within the syllogism that the more fluent in English, the
more effective the teacher. This logic substitutes the teacher’s English competence as a
measure of professional performance, shaping – practically and pragmatically – what the
teacher does in the classroom.
This article unpacks the conventional thinking about language fluency that underlies
generally accepted definitions of teachers’ English competence in teaching. The article
has two sections. The first outlines a three-part argument that challenges the widely pro-
moted notion that general English fluency is central in classroom teaching competence.
While not disputing the role that teachers’ control over English plays in teaching it, I
question some of the core ideas that are often invoked to support the premise that ‘the
more fluent in English, the better the teacher’. ‘Native-speakerism’ (Holliday, 2006;
Holliday, 2005) and general English competence are two of these core ideas, which I
argue promote a deficit view that if teachers are not fluent or ‘native-like’, they are not
likely to teach at their best. This is the ‘barn’ that has been built over the years. The think-
ing leads to a characterization of the vast majority of ELT teachers globally as lacking or
deficient linguistically. Common sense says it needs to be ‘kicked down’ if we are to
improve instruction in English classrooms around the world.
The second part of the article builds a different barn. It presents a view of teachers’
classroom English that is built on the ideas of Languages for Specific Purposes (see
Trace et al., 2015). The concept of English-for-Teaching (Freeman et al., 2015) as a
form of English used by the teacher in classroom teaching is summarized, and examples
from professional development programmes in Japan and Vietnam are discussed.
In these programmes, new and experienced teachers have had the opportunity to study
English-for-Teaching and to document what they can do through an independent assess-
ment that is fully aligned with the course. The article concludes with some observations
about how this new ‘barn’ can support teachers’ improvement of classroom English
Freeman 33

teaching. In making these arguments and proposals, the goal is not to ‘kick down the
barn’, in the words of the opening quote, but rather to contribute ‘as carpenters to
building a new one’.

Section 1. Why ‘Kick Down the Barn’ that Equates General

English Fluency with Classroom Teaching Competence?
The argument that English competence equates to classroom performance can be traced
to three assertions – the idea of ‘native speakerism’; a mischaracterization of language
use (as in the Common European Framework); and equating purpose with language use
– each of which is examined in turn. I begin by summarizing the problematic assump-
tions that underlie what Holliday (2006; 2005) referred to as ‘native-speakerism’. These
assumptions amount to a de facto assertion that language competence, defined geo-polit-
ically, is key to effective classroom ELT.

Point #1: ‘Native-speakerism’ = Language Competence = Effective

Classroom Teaching
In language teaching generally, and in English language teaching (ELT) specifically,
‘native-speakerism’ asserts a supposed connection between language competence,
teacher identity, and classroom teaching performance. Holliday describes ‘native-speak-
erism’ as a social and theoretical position which asserts that ‘so-called “native speakers”
are the best models and teachers of English because they represent a “Western culture”
from which spring the ideals both of English and of the methodology for teaching it’.
(2005: 6) The view is based on the claim that being a ‘native’ member of a language
community fosters cultural and linguistic knowledge which can translate into both the
content and processes of classroom teaching. The argument connects implied linguistic
knowledge to power and social position generally; however, these judgments about who
is (or is not) ‘native’ are socio-geographic and not linguistic ones (Canagarajah, 1999).
In fact, a ‘native’ standard in a language cannot be defined in purely linguistic, sociolin-
guistic, or pragmatic terms (Jenkins, 2000; Braine, 1999).
Native-speakerism is basically an ideological position. It persists on the operational
level throughout ELT as an industry and socio-professional community, in how assess-
ments are promulgated; how teaching standards are set; and, to a lesser degree, how
language curricula and classroom materials are developed (see Garton and Graves,
2014). The persistence of native-speakerism, it could reasonably be argued, reflects the
continuing role in managing ELT by what Kachru (1982) called as ‘first-circle coun-
tries’. Although it may be ideologically anchored, the steadfastness of the term ‘native
speaker’ may be rooted in something more pragmatic. As a label, it provides a short-hand
for what seems to be a logical relationship between knowing a language and teaching it.
Native speakerism connects content knowledge with pedagogy and with teacher identity,
towards a goal of learning outcomes: that students will themselves use the language they
are studying ‘like natives do’. Beyond the fallacy in this simple causal formulation that
teaching causes student learning (Larsen-Freeman and Freeman, 2008), the label itself
34 RELC Journal 48(1)

creates a dichotomous socio-geographical world (Phillipson, 1992), which oversimpli-

fies the role of contexts in using language. As Holliday (2015) points out:

these concepts may be too limiting and prevent us from seeing a wider picture. They may imply
that educational problems reside in particular types of circumstances. … This search must not,
however, be stylised within prescribed notions of “context”, especially where they correspond
with national cultural profiling and any notion of cultural deficiency.

Holliday’s observations bring us to the second point in this three-part argument: the idea
of language use in particular contexts.

Point #2: Performance (Not Competence) = Language Use

The Common European Framework for Languages, or ‘CEFR’ (2001), has offered a
powerful conceptualization of language use, which was intended to blur the dichotomous
lines that Holliday speaks about above. By describing languages in terms of how speak-
ers could use them, in a set of can do statements, the CEFR meant to move away from
simplistic assertions of competence as native-speakerism. The framework was intended
to describe an architecture of language uses by providing a leveled set of generic descrip-
tions of those uses which could help in linking different national educational standards
for language learning outcomes across European countries. As Schaerer explained:

it is not the function of the CEFR to lay down the objectives that users should pursue or the
methods they should employ, it has to provide decision makers with options and reference
points to stimulate reflection and facilitate the formulation of coherent objectives for their
specific educational contexts (2007: 11).

Despite these intentions however, the CEFR has been operationalized as a set of English-
language standards that are now invoked prescriptively around the world. Essentially, the
‘can’ in the ‘can do’ descriptors has been buried under the ‘do’ of generalized descrip-
tions of language use. In this way, descriptions of general language performance have
supplanted the individual’s goals for using the new language in ‘specific educational
contexts’ that Schaerer described. In spite of its original spirit and motivation, the CEFR
is now often used as a globalized set of generic language-learning outcomes in which an
individual’s language learning intentions are co-opted by a set of generic obligations for
all users at a certain level. Schaerer seemed to foresee the socio-political process that
befell the CEFR when he observed almost a decade ago in 2007, ‘Tools and documents
once published lead their own lives. They tend to be interpreted, used or not used,
applauded or criticised out of a wide variety of perspectives’ (2007: 11).4
Although the CEFR has been operationalized in ways that generally run counter to the
intentions of its original design, the notion of language use is a powerful one. Conceptually,
ideas of language use shift thinking away from trying to define the endpoint of profi-
ciency. Instead language use focuses on social context to define particular language in
terms of ‘what users mean to do with it’. In this way, language use becomes about per-
formance in particular circumstances, which was Hymes’ original (1964) argument: that
while competence supports performance, it is performance that furnishes the point of
reference. Competence is actually a moot point; it is a theoretical notion linking similar
Freeman 35

performances across diverse contexts. Competence itself can never be seen; it only
shows up in how speakers are using language in specific social circumstances, as de
Saussure (1916/1983) and others pointed out. In other words, we attribute this idea of
consistent language use across settings to competence, when all we really have to work
with are contextual performances.
The idea of performance – that languages are always used in specific social contexts
and circumstances – seems straightforward, but it collapses or blurs two dimensions that
are often either ignored or else over-differentiated (see Widdowson, 1983 for an early
discussion). One is the dimension of use, which is defined as what people generally do
with the language in these ‘specific’ circumstances. The other is the dimension of
purpose, what they are trying to do in using that language. Consider a simple example:
A teacher will often say ‘please sit down’ as students arrive at the beginning of the class.
The phrase is generally used to get students to take their seats, which may be why the
teacher is using it under these circumstances. But the purpose could also be to quiet
students down in order to start the lesson. Thus the phrase ‘please sit down’ could be
being used for two purposes: to get the students seated and to quiet them down. The point
is that social contexts can define uses of language generally, but the specific purposes
that actually animate these uses in particular circumstances have to be inferred. Use is an
observable behaviour, while purpose must be attributed to the language user.
These two dimensions of language performance are combined in the phrase, ‘what
users mean to do with language’. ‘Mean to do’ links circumstances – the opportunity for
language – with the idea that when particular language happens in these particular circum-
stances, it is creating both purpose and use simultaneously. In the preceding example,
there is an opportunity at the beginning of class, as students are coming in and settling
down, for the teacher to say, ‘Please sit down’. The opportunity creates a context of use,
which the speaker’s purpose can define. In this instance, the purpose for which the phrase
is being used is to get students organized to begin the lesson. However it can mean both
for students to be seated and to be quiet. Separating the two doesn’t make sense.
These ideas of purpose and use have been central to a Languages for Specific
Purposes (LSP) approach to materials development and teaching. Strevens’ statement
is often cited as the operating definition of the LSP approach which aims to develop
materials and curricula that are ‘designed to meet specified needs of the learner; related
in content to particular disciplines, occupations, and activities; [and] centered on the
language appropriate to those activities, in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics, etc’
(1988: 1–2). In ELT, the LSP approach of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has
sometimes been contrasted with English for General Purposes (EGP) and to TENOR,
Teaching English for No Obvious Reason (Abbot, 1981). Beyond the facetiousness
underlying the latter acronym, the fundamental contrast is clear. As Trace et al.,
summarize it:

Language for specific purposes (LSP) courses are those in which the methodology, the content,
the objectives, the materials, the teaching, and the assessment practices all stem from specific,
target language uses based on an identified set of specialized needs. Common examples
include courses like Japanese for Business, Spanish for Doctors, Mandarin for Tourism, or
English for Air-traffic Controllers. In each of these cases, the content and focus of the language
instruction is narrowed to a specific context or even a particular subset of tasks and skills
(Trace et al., 2015: 2).
36 RELC Journal 48(1)

These three conventions – that curricula and materials are 1) based on professional activ-
ities and content, 2) oriented to learners’ needs and purposes, and 3) employ language
from those activities– help to describe what a user does with the language under particu-
lar circumstances (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987).

Purpose, Use, and the Example of SeaSpeak

SeaSpeak (Weeks et al., 1984) was one of the early transnational efforts to work within
the LSP approach. The aim was to simplify the maritime communication that takes place
in English primarily among ship captains and between captains and harbour pilots. To
this end, standard tasks (or language uses) were defined and particular language exem-
plars where then elaborated based on these tasks. Seaspeak was developed out of a spe-
cific, well-established social and institutional context, which had accepted ways of using
English. Like other LSP curricula, there are language users in this context who are
socially acknowledged as established members of the language community; we might
call them ‘natives’ in it. Their ‘nativeness’ stems from their roles in the particular prac-
tice; it is expressed in their language, which is used for a particular purpose. In this sense,
nativeness to the particular ESP world comes from a mix – or intersection – of socio-
institutional positioning and the appropriate use of the language that accompanies it.
Whether the position defines the appropriate language use or the appropriate language
use contributes to the position is difficult to unpack; indeed it is probably not that impor-
tant. Medical personnel in a clinic, for example, use certain language to do their work as
nurses, technicians, or doctors, and using medical language is part of what defines who
they are and what they do in the setting.
SeaSpeak, and similar ESP efforts like ‘airline English’, refine this general LSP
approach in useful ways. They start from the premise that English is being generally used
between people for whom it is not the first language. The situation of language use is
primary; the roles become secondary. In other words, while there are ships’ captains who
use English in other circumstances as their first language, they are a subset of the com-
munity that uses SeaSpeak. As first-language users of English, even these speakers need
to learn how to adjust their general English in order to function effectively in these cir-
cumstances. Consider the example below in which a range of possible statements in
general English are captured in a single SeaSpeak version:

Table 1. SeaSpeak Example.5

General Language SeaSpeak Version

• Could not hear what you said, please repeat!
• I did not understand, say that again.
• Too much noise, repeat what you said!
• I am having difficulty hearing what you are saying! Please repeat Say again
what you were trying to say.
• There is too much noise on the line – I cannot understand you.
• What did you say?
Freeman 37

While general English certainly provides the language resources that these English
speakers draw on for the specific statement in Seaspeak, their proficiency does not give
them additional authority or standing in this situation of captaining or piloting the vessel.
In learning a specialized language, like Seaspeak in this case, users draw from their exist-
ing linguistic resources along with their understanding of the use situation: This is the
use dimension. They are guided by what they need to accomplish – the tasks they need
to do to carry out the work of the situation: This is the purpose dimension. In this way,
the purpose drives the language use, and the use draws on a defined domain of language.
A ship captain is a captain, and SeaSpeak English helps him or her to do the job and carry
out that role. While the professional purpose circumscribes the language use in the con-
text of the professional practice, other language resources can certainly be available.
These are separate from getting the work done, however. For instance, airline pilots are
likely to use their first language (providing it is mutually available) when they are chat-
ting in the cockpit, but they use a version of aviation English when they do routine tasks
like taking off or landing the aircraft or interacting with the air-traffic control.
This situation of purpose and use differs from someone learning medical English, for
example, who cannot do any of the work without the specific language. The full identity
as a medical practitioner is only available through the use of the specialized language in
the circumstances of the medical clinic. For example, medical personnel who immigrate
to an Anglophone country can often function effectively in the medical role in their first
language, however they need ‘medical English’ in order to use their medical knowledge
in an English-medium clinical setting. If they want to play a professional role in these
circumstances, they need to use medical English. In these situations, the use of the lan-
guage dominates the individual purposes.

Point #3: How the Idea of General English Competence Leads to Deficit
Thinking
In the context of ELT, this intertwining of purpose and use suggests a different strategy
for supporting teachers to improve their classroom language use. Broadly speaking, gen-
eral English language proficiency has been treated as the language resource necessary
for ELT teachers to do their jobs. This view assumes that language use, defined as gen-
eral English fluency, should support the individual teacher’s purposes in classroom
teaching. The assumption, which amounts to an assertion rather than a researched propo-
sition, is flawed in several ways, however. First, it contributes to enshrining the standard
of ‘native-speakerism’ discussed earlier. If general English proficiency (however defined)
is necessary for classroom teaching, and if some people are socio-geographically quali-
fied in that proficiency as ‘natives’ of the language, then those who bring these ‘native’
language attributes are, by definition, prepared to teach. Arguing that there is additional
knowledge needed, although that may well be the case, does not fundamentally alter the
assumption. Language fluency is still the marker of teaching competence in this view.
But as the assertion of ‘native-speakerism’ has become both unpalatable socio-politically
and untenable as a feasible criterion for the global ELT teaching force, it has been
replaced by measures of general fluency in English, as in the CEFR levels that predomi-
nate in many national policies.
38 RELC Journal 48(1)

Second, at this point we have only a partial understanding of how a teacher’s language
use in the classroom contributes to student learning. There are commonsense intuitions
– such as the argument that when the teacher uses the target language regularly in the
classroom, the language becomes more authentic for students. Research has also identi-
fied particular ways in which teachers’ language use seems to support students’ class-
room language learning, but these practices do not automatically happen if a ‘native
speaker’ is teaching. For example, learning to adjust language input so that it is compre-
hensible to students is a skill that any teacher needs to master regardless of first language
or general proficiency.
Third, connecting these assumptions – that general English proficiency directly and
automatically qualifies some to teach, and that the teacher’s general English proficiency
directly and automatically improves student learning outcomes – has contributed to
creating a situation which de facto undermines the sense of teaching competence for the
majority of ELT teachers around the world. The reasoning creates a tightly knit argu-
ment that:

•• Labels the majority of ELT teachers globally as ‘non-native speaking teachers’ (or
NNESTs).
•• Who usually learn through professional preparation that they ought to use English
in the classroom.
•• Yet they often remain uncertain about the specific teacher language to use in these
situations (perhaps because they themselves did not learn in a classroom that was
taught in English).
•• And they are positioned to accept, through national policies and professional pro-
nouncements, that improving their general English proficiency will address the
issue.

I use the term ‘argument’ to describe the way in which this closely organized, cumulative
reasoning builds towards, and anchors, a conclusion. Taken together, these assertions
have contributed in powerful ways to a wide-spread deficit view of the classroom teach-
ing abilities of a majority of ELT teachers around the world.
The argument operates on several levels. In terms of policy, national decisions often
use general English proficiency measures to define optimum indicators of teacher qual-
ity. In Vietnam for example, as Minh, Hoa and Burns (2017: 22–23) explain, the Ministry
of Education and Training (MOET) established, in a series of policy decisions, a national
target for teachers’ general English proficiency. The policy states that ‘Teachers must
satisfy the minimum requirements for language proficiency, that is, [CEFR] B2 for pri-
mary and junior secondary teachers, and [CEFR] C1 for high school teachers, to be eli-
gible to teach these curricula’. In Chile, ministry (MINEDUC) standards introduced in
2015 also define the CEFR B-2 level as the English language outcome for pre-service
teacher education. Societally, in national contexts in which English functions as an eco-
nomic lingua franca, such policies may inadvertently foster views that ‘those who can’
use English well will do so for economic and social access, while ‘those who can’t’ will
teach it. These assumptions are most pernicious at the classroom level, however, where
Freeman 39

they can erode teachers’ classroom confidence and sense of efficacy. This deficit argu-
ment may be creating a problem in ELT teacher competence, rather than promoting ways
to address it and improve classroom instruction.

Part 2: What Does ‘It Take to Build a New Barn’?

The aim of the critique in the first part of this article is not to simply ‘kick down the barn’
of general English fluency as the measure of teachers’ classroom English proficiency.
Rather, the focus should be on what ‘it takes to build [a new] one’. My colleagues and I
who have worked on this problem contend that what is needed is a form of Seaspeak for
teachers in the English classroom. This strategy entails using an ESP-based approach to
define the particular English that teachers use in teaching, the construct that we have
called ‘English-for-teaching’ (Freeman et al., 2015). We have discussed elsewhere
(Freeman et al., 2013) how the construct was used to design the English-for-Teaching
course.The language was identified through an iterative process of global review of
standards and policy documents, drawing on the specifics of 13 national curricula, refer-
ring to research on classroom language use in various countries, and consulting with two
international consensus panels. Then a completely aligned assessment, the Test of
English-for-Teaching (or TEFT) was developed, piloted, and validated (Young et al.,
2014). The designs – of the course and the aligned assessment – constitute the ‘new
barn’, the blueprints of which I turn to now.

English-for-Teaching as a Construct
As a construct, English-for-Teaching is defined as ‘The essential English language skills
a teacher needs to be able to prepare and enact the lesson in a standardized (usually
national) curriculum in English in a way that is recognizable and understandable to other
speakers of the language’(Young et al., 2014: 5). The user of this professional language
is described as a teacher who:

•• May or may not use English partially or completely as the medium of instruction,
although he or she is familiar with the curricular content.
•• Is familiar with classroom routines, including basic classroom management and
teaching strategies, and can carry out these classroom tasks and routines that are
predictable.
•• Is expected to use a defined (often nationally prescribed) curriculum.
•• Draws English language support from instructional materials.
•• Is teaching students who are at the beginning or intermediate levels of general
English proficiency.
•• Uses English to interact with students in simple and predictable ways (2014: 6).

These descriptors outline a set of interactions between language use and the teacher’s pur-
poses. How, then, are they enacted in teaching? As represented in Figure 1 below, the lan-
guage knowledge draws on and is supported by the national curriculum as it is being taught
40 RELC Journal 48(1)

Figure 1. The construct of English-for-Teaching.

From: Freeman et al., 2015.

in a particular classroom setting. These social and pedagogical interactions situate its use.
The framework identifies three functional areas that structure the barn as it were: Teachers
use language knowledge to manage the classroom [A], to understand and communicate
lesson content to students [B], and to assess students and give them feedback [C].
Teachers carry out tasks in each of these functional areas. For example, to manage
the classroom, a teacher takes attendance, makes announcements, organize students by
telling who to work with whom, and so on (see Freeman, 2015). These tasks are all
implemented in and through language.
The English language a teacher could use in enacting classroom tasks is inherently
flexible and context dependent. It is also essentially unbounded. To organize a pair-work
activity for example, a teacher could tell students to ‘work with a partner’, or ‘talk with a
friend’, or ‘turn to the person next to you’, or ‘find someone who has the same birthday’,
etc. Each of these language exemplars – and there are many others – accomplishes both
the task criterion (organizing pair-work) and the language criterion of being ‘recognizable
and understandable to other speakers of the [English] language’. Identifying one or two
ways to give the directions for pair work – for example, ‘Work with your partner/ talk to
your neighbour’ – creates a defined set of language resources that teachers can use in their
particular circumstances according to their particular purposes in the classroom. By
anchoring these resources to a purpose – what the teacher wants or needs to do at that
point in the lesson – the language supports teachers in enacting what they already know
how to do. In other words, the individual can perform as an ELT teacher according to
global norms and expectations by using what they already know pedagogically to do what
they do in English. Having these language resources at their disposal in the classroom can
address – and perhaps even help to overcome – the teachers’ feelings of professional defi-
cit that they are not ‘fluent enough’ to teach in English and thus that they are not meeting
the public perception of ‘being a good ELT teacher’.
Freeman 41

Critiques of the LSP View of Classroom Language

Several critiques could be leveled at this apporach to defining an English for Specific
Purposes for the classroom teacher. Some might argue that students would benefit from
a richer variety of language input and that limiting classroom language impoverishes that
input. Others might say that specifying particular language exemplars is arbitrary and
artificial, and that controlling a wide variety of language options to carry out a classroom
task is part of the job of English language teaching. In this view, defining the language
the teacher uses somehow limits how the job is done. The former argument, while it has
some support in research on classroom language acquisition, falls down in two areas.
There is the assumption that students generally respond positively to a wide variety of
language input. In actuality however, many teachers who have fluent control of English
often use the shared first language to teach in the classroom precisely because they
believe or find their students will not respond to instruction in English. Beyond this prac-
tical concern, the impoverishment argument essentially makes ‘the great the enemy of
the good’. The argument that teachers need to use great variety of language can eclipse
the instructional good that is accomplished in ELT classrooms when the teacher can use
a defined set of language resources appropriately.
The latter argument – that limiting the language somehow limits how the teacher does
the job – amounts to reasserting the values of native-speakerism discussed above, but
under a new guise that links language fluency to professional competence. The position
further confuses English fluency, which supports an individual’s capacity to participate
in English language teaching as a global professional enterprise, with the English used in
classroom teaching. The formulation ties professional identity as an ELT teacher to gen-
eral English fluency, which is then supposed to translate directly into improved class-
room practice. This view is pernicious in at least two ways. It confuses teacher identity
with pedagogical ability, an assumption which casts as deficient a vast majority of ELT
teachers globally because they either cannot or do not choose to participate in the global
ELT community. It is a view of teacher competence as based on general English fluency
that, in essence, leads to disenfranchising the vast majority of ELT teachers globally.
Further, the view that language fluency equates to teaching competence simply replaces
the outmoded notions of native-speakerism by privileging those who are more fluent in
general English. Because improving one’s fluency as a language user is broadly seen as
within one’s own control, teachers who lack this general control of English can be por-
trayed as less committed to the work they do in the classroom. This not-so-subtle argu-
ment conflates improving fluency with improving ELT teaching. Teacher language use is
certainly part of the improvement challenge, but using general language fluency as the
sole metric tends to privilege the positions of institutions in what Kachru (1982) called
‘first circle’ or Holliday (1994) referred to as BANA countries, and thus to reinforce their
predominant roles in training, curriculum, and assessment.

English-for-Teaching and Knowledge-for-Teaching Languages

The foregoing points argue for English-for-Teaching as a construct, developed using the
approach and within the conventions of Languages for Specific Purposes. The construct
42 RELC Journal 48(1)

identifies the English language that teachers can use in the classroom to do their work. In
so doing, the construct bounds this set of language resources within the broader sweep of
general English proficiency. The bounding is grounded by the situations and circumstances
in which the teacher uses (may use; needs to use) English in the activity of teaching. These
boundaries circumscribe the language resources, but it is the teacher’s particular purpose
that animates their use. Like the maritime personnel using SeaSpeak for their work as ships’
captains or pilots, English-for-Teaching furnishes a set of language exemplars that can
function as tools in teaching. This use of English as a public tool in the activity of teaching
connects the construct to the broader conceptualization of knowledge-for-teaching. The
connections, which have been elaborated elsewhere (see Freeman, 2016; also Young et al.,
2014: 4–5), point to how teachers use what they know in the activity of teaching.
Research on how teachers use knowledge in teaching in various fields (e.g. in math-
ematics, see Ball et al., 2008) has documented that they do not simply apply disciplinary
knowledge when they teach lesson content. Rather, there is a particular form of content
knowledge that arises out of – and is used in – the process of teaching. This form is
referred to as knowledge-for-teaching. The hyphenation underscores the fact that the
purpose, for teaching, shapes the knowledge itself.
The concept of knowledge-for-teaching challenges the idea that teaching simply
involves applying general knowledge in specific situations. As Ball and her colleagues
have shown in mathematics (Hill et al., 2008), elementary teachers use a form of mathe-
matical knowledge that blends disciplinary knowledge of mathematics with specific
understandings of how students make sense of that content.6 The circumstances and pur-
poses not only drive the use of the knowledge, but they shape how that knowledge is
expressed in language through instructions, tasks, and interactions with students. In
English language teaching, we have held onto a different model up until now, one that
promotes the notion that teaching English entails applying general knowledge of the lan-
guage to the specific situation of the classroom. This can lead to the premise, as I have
said earlier, that the more general English a teacher knows, the better they can apply it in
their teaching. English-for-Teaching as a construct changes the parameters of that argu-
ment to assert that not only is there a specific form of English that teachers use in teaching,
but using that language is not simply derived from general proficiency. Rather as a form
of knowledge-for-teaching, English-for-Teaching integrates linguistic resources with
methodology so that in using the language, the teacher is enacting forms of instruction.
The next section illustrates how this new model of classroom English proficiency has
been introduced in two national contexts: in Japan in an implementation trial with pre-
and in-service teachers, and in Vietnam as part of the national reform.

Implementing English-for-Teaching in Two National

Contexts7
Japan
Taking the ELTeach program felt like I was getting the “missing piece” of what I needed to
work in the classroom
–Elementary school teacher, Hachioji City, Tokyo
Freeman 43

In its 2014 English Education Reform Plan, released in anticipation of hosting the 2020
Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sports, Science
and Technology (MEXT) announced a number of initiatives to strengthen English lan-
guage education. Among them, starting in 2016, English language instruction was to be
introduced in 3rd grade and would become compulsory in 5th and 6th grades. As with
many ambitious policy goals, MEXT, and local education authorities (prefectural and
municipal boards of education), have faced the challenging task of training and empow-
ering public-sector ELT teachers so that classroom instruction at the junior and senior
high school levels will be in English. In response to this professional development
demand, two groups of teachers were recruited to trial the English-for-Teaching course:
an in-service cohort of 102 teachers from Hachioji City in Tokyo and a pre-service
cohort of 51 students from two universities (Aichi Prefectural University and Hokkaido
University of Education).
In the English-for-Teaching course, participants progress through the activities at
their own pace, knowing they will be tested at the end on the entire content. The course
starts with a self-assessment in which participants are asked to rate their confidence in
doing various classroom tasks in English. The course then presents functional English to
carry out these tasks. The language is introduced in short classroom-based scenarios, and
supported with various forms of practice including speech-recognition activities in which
participants can rehearse oral language and receive automated feedback on their accu-
racy. The pronunciation models underlying these activities are based on an international
speech sample collected from 2000 classroom teachers, so that the language and pronun-
ciation in the course reflects the actual ELT professional world. The Learning Management
System (LMS) documents how participants use their time as they work through the
course units and activities.
The English-for-Teaching course is designed as a self-access professional develop-
ment opportunity, which means individuals manage their own time as they study. As
could be expected, individuals in the Japanese implementation trial spent differing
amounts of time on the course. In-service teachers (17 hours on average) tended to spend
slightly more time than pre-service teachers (15.5 hours on average). We also analysed
the amount of time spent on the speaking activities since these activities seem to contrib-
ute to teachers’ confidence in using classroom English. In-service teachers spent 121
minutes on average on the speech-recognition activities, while pre-service teachers spent
113 minutes. In a post-course survey, a majority of respondents in both groups reported
they were less inclined to use Japanese in their classrooms, and correspondingly they
were more willing to teach in English. Indeed 89% of teachers from both cohorts stated
that the programme would be useful to their English teaching in the future.
Completion rates on the course were extremely high. Ninety-six percent of the in-
service teachers and 85% of the pre-service teachers completed the course and took the
Test of English-for-Teaching (TEFT), which is offered on-line at independent test cent-
ers. TEFT scores place teachers’ performances in one of three bands (see Freeman et al.,
2016 for a description of the bands). Each individual receives a score report detailing
what they know how to do in English. For the 96 in-service TEFT test-takers, the results
were relatively equally distributed across the three bands: 39% scored in Band 3, 39% in
Band 2, and 32% in Band 1. Results for the pre-service test takers clustered in the highest
44 RELC Journal 48(1)

band, with 86% scoring in Band 3, 12% in Band 2, and 2% in Band 1. These results for
the pre-service teachers may reflect their more recent study of general English.
As part of this implementation trial, an independent researcher tracked changes in
participants’ general English proficiency. The English-for-Teaching course focuses on
classroom language use. Although it was thought that participants would also improve
their general English proficiency through the course, the premise had not been studied.
The separate research project (Otani 2015) gathered data on the in-service participants’
general English proficiency before and after participating in the course. The researcher
identified improvements in general English proficiency using a commercially available
general English proficiency test which showed improvement from a mean of 39.6 (out of
100) prior to the course to 49.9 at the end of the course8.
Like many ELT reforms globally, MEXT policies emphasize teachers using English
fluently and comfortably in classroom teaching in order to make the language real and
engaging for students. The analysis of this implementation trial offers a window into the
challenges of meeting this policy goal. Using data on what participants did in the course,
which was available through the course’s Learning Management System (LMS) and on
how they performed on the TEFT, from the on-line test platform, we are able to probe
how the development of this command of classroom language might differ for pre-ser-
vice versus in-service teachers. Two aspects of this analysis stand out in particular: 1)
how the participants used the course to practise and gain control over the classroom
language, and 2) how their self-rated confidence in using that language seemed to predict
their performance on the TEFT assessment. The former question was examined using the
LMS and test data described above; the latter using the confidence ratings that partici-
pants gave at the beginning of the course and relating them to the TEFT scores.
In terms of the first point – gaining control over classroom language – we found that
teachers’ oral command improved throughout the course. Since the English-for-Teaching
participants studied independently using on-line materials, this finding might seem to
run counter to conventional thinking about language training, which emphasizes face-to-
face classes. The course activities that used speech recognition seem to play a central role
in this improvement. As represented graphically in Figure 2, the more each group of
participants engaged with the course activities using speech recognition, the better their
results on the TEFT measures of spoken classroom English.
There were differences between the two groups, however. Although time spent on
speech-recognition activities predicted TEFT performance for both groups, the two
curves differ (see Figure 2), making it a stronger predictor for the in-service teachers than
for their pre-service counterparts. For every 10 additional uses9 of speech-recognition
activities, pre-service teachers (on the left) scored 16 points higher on the TEFT, while
in-service teachers (on the right) scored 24 points higher. There could be several expla-
nations for this pattern:

•• In-service teachers may be ‘rustier’ with the particulars of classroom language

and need more practice.
•• Or they may be more accustomed to using Japanese when they teach and using the
speech-recognition activities helps in-service teachers to transition to using
English.
Freeman 45

Figure 2. Attempts on speaking activities as related to TEFT Assessment scores – pre-service

teachers (left) and in-service teachers (right).

•• Or because they have immediate experience with the complexities of day-to-day

classroom teaching, in-service teachers may either need (or use) the time to build
their confidence with the language.

Confidence proves to be a much more elusive concept to track, and it is beyond the scope
of this article to examine it fully. In reviewing the data however, we did find some initial
evidence that teachers’ level of confidence in their abilities to do the specific classroom
tasks in English (e.g. take attendance; make class announcements; put students into
groups; etc.) predicted their overall performance on the TEFT. The first course activity,
called the Pre-course planner, asks participants to rate their confidence in doing the
classroom tasks in the course in English. We examined these self-assessed confidence
ratings for both groups, and they turned out to be more strongly associated with TEFT
performance for in-service teachers than for pre-service teachers. The analysis showed
that for each unit increase in rated professional confidence (on a three-point scale), in-
service teachers scored 20 points higher on the assessment, while pre-service teachers
showed an 8-point improvement. One possible interpretation is that in-service teachers’
classroom experience may be helping them, more than the pre-service teachers, to visu-
alize and evaluate their confidence in what they can do in English in the classroom, and
this was reflected in the assessment results.
These distinctions in pre- and in-service teachers’ performance suggest different
approaches to supporting the development of classroom English proficiency. Pre-service
teachers seem to approach the English-for-Teaching course on the basis of their recent or
46 RELC Journal 48(1)

concurrent academic training. For them, the course seems to connect what they know
through their general English proficiency to the specific requirements of using that lan-
guage in the classroom. However, probably because they don’t yet have much classroom
teaching experience to draw on, they are likely unaccustomed to the actual complexities
of using English in teaching. We could argue that in-service teachers recognize from
their on-going experiences in the classroom what they needed to improve linguistically
and the self-access design allows them to focus their practice. The opportunities for indi-
vidualized practice, which are readily supported in an on-line course environment, are
less feasible in conventional face-to-face training, which is designed around group needs.
In fact, this opportunity for teachers to focus on what they feel they need to learn has
emerged as a central feature in the course (see Freeman et al., 2016). It may seem a tru-
ism that how in-service teachers rated their professional confidence in classroom English
would accurately predict what they could do with the language as measured by the TEFT.
However, this fundamental premise is often ignored in the design and implementation
of professional development language programmes. Starting with this self-evaluation,
knowing their teaching contexts and recognizing that they would be tested at the end of
the course, in-service teachers seem to focus on getting better at using oral language in
the classroom and they show significant gains when tested. A comment from a teacher in
the in-service cohort captured this trajectory: ‘I often found myself in the classroom
remembering language I had learned in English-for-Teaching and finding opportunities
to use it with the students’.

Vietnam
Starting in 2008, Vietnam launched a new national language policy, with the goal that:

[B]y 2020, most young Vietnamese graduates of professional secondary schools, colleges and
universities will have a good command of a foreign language which enables them to independently
and confidently communicate, study and work in a multilingual and multicultural environment
of integration; to turn foreign languages into a strength of Vietnamese to serve national
industrialization and modernization. [Decree 1400, 2008: 1] (Cited in Manh et al., 2017: 20)

The National Foreign Language Project, known variously as ‘NFL 2020’ or ‘Project
2020’, has been the national initiative that is geared to achieving this goal of improving
both student and teacher English proficiency. As Manh, Hoa, and Burns describe it:

The advent of NFL 2020 has radically impacted language education in Vietnam … Two of the
most significant changes brought about in English language teaching are access and pedagogy
(i.e. who should learn English, at what age and level in the educational system, and what
methodology should be adopted) (2017: 20).

To implement the goals of NFL 2020, the general strategy has been to support improve-
ment of teachers’ proficiency through general English courses. The training is usually
conducted face-to-face through group instruction, and is often assessed using general
English proficiency tests. The assumption has been that this type of conventional instruc-
tion will lead to more teachers teaching English in English.
Freeman 47

The results to date have been uneven, and perhaps somewhat questionable, however.
Manh, Hoa, and Burns (2017: 24–25) report in their recent analysis that the percentage
of underqualified teachers dramatically decreased from 87% to 46% in a three-year
period, from 2011 to 2015, as measured by local general proficiency assessments.
However, they note that these tests, known as VSTEP, ‘may not accurately assess teach-
ers’ language proficiency’ (Manh et al., 2017: 26). They cite Dudzik and Nguyen who
have enumerated various problems with the tests, ranging from the tests themselves –
‘some institutions employ longer or more tests than others, while some use one or two
standardized assessment instruments (for example, the listening and speaking sections of
Cambridge, IELTS, or TOEFL tests in place of instruments created by the various testing
institutions)’ (2015: 49) – to how the VSTEP tests were developed and implemented,
noting there was ‘little or no validation of tests developed and used within and across the
institutions’ (2015: 49). Manh, Hoa, and Burns (2017: 26) conclude that ‘even though
teachers may achieve the mandated proficiency level, one may question whether the
measures of these teachers’ language proficiency are reliable, or more importantly,
whether these teachers can effectively use English for teaching purposes’.
Starting in 2013, Vietnamese policy-makers began to adopt a different approach.
Between June of that year and March 2016, 4,353 Vietnamese teachers completed the
English-for-Teaching course, and 94% took the independent assessment, the Test of
English-for-Teaching (TEFT), which is fully aligned with the course content. The
results of this intervention are discussed in more detail elsewhere (see Freeman and
LeDrean, 2017). The discussion in this article focuses on one particular analysis that
examined the issue of increasing equitable access to professional development for
teachers across Vietnam.
Providing professional development through face-to-face training designs, while it is
the norm particularly for English language improvement, cannot escape two persistent
issues: access – how to support widespread participation, particularly for teachers in
rural areas, and therefore equity, how to support improvement for all teachers and stu-
dents across the national education system. In terms of access, often travel to training can
be problematic and costly for teachers; scheduling becomes complex, and ultimately
teachers in far-flung locales either end up with fewer opportunities or perhaps with
opportunities that depend on ‘multiplier’ training. In the latter designs, one person (usu-
ally a fellow teacher) is ‘trained’ and returns to ‘multiply’ that training by ‘cascading’ it
to peers. The results of multiplier-cascade training can be less than effective (see for
example Suzuki, 2008). Inputs are filtered and become diluted so that teachers who have
less physical access end up with less direct contact with the expertise and input that they
want or need. (The phenomenon is similar in the childhood game of ‘Telephone’ in which
one person starts a message that is then whispered ear-to-ear around the group). This dif-
ferential access then leads to problems with equity, in which students and their teachers
in rural or underserved areas receive less training, or training that is delivered less effec-
tively. As with other social services like health, it is often precisely these areas that need
the most support to realize educational improvement.
The experience of English-for-Teaching in Vietnam shows that issues of access and
equity can be addressed through a self-access training design. To examine the experi-
ences of urban and rural teachers, two subsets of participants were created. For the
48 RELC Journal 48(1)

Figure 3. Total TEFT scores by hours spent on the course by teachers from urban/rural
regions.
(The vertical line shows the average time spent on the course).

purposes of comparison, teachers from ‘urban’ areas were drawn from Ho Chi Minh
City, while those from ‘rural’ areas came from Yen Bai, Phu Yen, Soc Trang, Hau Giang,
and Long An provinces.10 We then examined TEFT performance as a function of the time
the two groups of participants spent studying the course. Teachers who lived in urban
areas scored 48 points higher on the test overall and did better in all sub-areas of the
TEFT. However, teachers who lived in rural areas tended to spend slightly more time on
the course (30 hours average versus 28 hours average for urban teachers) and their test
performance improved as a function of the time they spent. As shown in Figure 3, these
rural teachers made gains according to the additional time they spent that were similar to
the gains in the scores of teachers from urban areas.
The vertical line in Figure 3 shows the average amount of time all teachers spent on
the course. Up to this line, the urban teachers scored approximately 50 points higher for
every additional 10 hours spent on the course. Beyond 28 hours, the additional time was
not associated with higher scores for urban teachers.
A previous study (National Geographic Learning, 2014), prepared for the NFL Project
2020, which was conducted with a smaller sample of 506 teachers, showed a similar
finding. The teachers in this study were drawn from ten Departments of Education and
Training (DOETs) across the country: the rural teachers came from Bac Can, Ben Tre,
Dong Thap, Nghe, Quang Nam, and Thai Nguyen, while the urban teachers were drawn
from Da Nang, Hai Duong, Hue, and Thai Binh. Again the two areas were designated by
the MOET. In that analysis, rural teachers performed as well as urban teachers on the
TEFT, and there was no significant difference between the groups. These findings came
despite the fact that two factors generally associated with performance – self-confidence
and self-rating in English – were significantly different for the two groups. Rural teach-
ers rated their confidence as 0.5 points lower (on a 3 point scale) than urban teachers, and
were 15% less likely to rate their English as ‘upper-intermediate/advanced’.
The self-access format of the English-for-Teaching course is designed to permit
access wherever and whenever teachers can get on-line. While connectivity is admittedly
Freeman 49

more challenging in rural areas, these technological circumstances are changing rapidly,
particularly in Vietnam. However, on-line, self-access courses alone are not the solution
to creating more equitable access to professional development opportunities. In view of
the documented high levels of attrition in massive open on-line courses (MOOCs) (Onah
et al., 2014), and other forms of on-line training (Lee and Choi, 2011), simply ‘putting
training on line’, while it does create access to learning opportunities, is not in itself an
equitable approach. In contrast to MOOCs for example, the completion rates of the
English-for-Teaching course have been high, ranging between 80% and 95% in different
contexts (Freeman et al., 2016). The fact that the course includes an independent, sched-
uled assessment – the TEFT – seems to be an important factor contributing to these
completion rates. The TEFT seems to create a sort of finish line that may serve either to
motivate or to pressure participants. More basically however, the direct connection
between the course content and teachers’ classroom responsibilities appears to stimulate
teachers’ involvement. Nhung (2017) studied 19 Vietnamese teachers from provinces in
the Vietnamese Central Highlands, 11 of whom had taken the course. Having observed
their teaching and gathered and analysed data on how they used classroom language, she
concluded that ‘teachers with slightly lower general English proficiency, when trained
with English-for-Teaching, can use English to fulfil all pedagogical functions in their
classrooms. They also use a wider range of expressions in their classrooms [than the
teachers who did not do the course.]’ (Nhung, 2017: 81).
These analyses are encouraging in that they show that equitable access to professional
development opportunities across geographical regions is possible. Teachers, regardless
of where they live and work, know what they need to learn and will make the effort and
spend the time to learn it, provided that the opportunities to learn are readily available.
The finding is particularly important in view of the Vietnamese government’s stated
commitment to training teachers in all areas of the country (see Manh et al., 2017).

Closing Comments
This article has argued that the challenges of expanding instruction in ELT globally,
coupled with new understandings of English as a lingua franca, require a different
approach to classroom language. I have argued for an approach that is grounded in mod-
els of using the language in classroom contexts which we refer to as ‘for-teaching’. The
phrase anchors the purpose of the language thereby repositioning the teacher-user. In
general fluency language training, teachers are not learning English specifically in order
to use it in teaching. The challenge is that teachers who are teaching need specific lan-
guage support to do so. The English-for-Teaching construct defines an asset-, rather than
deficit-, based view of the place of English in ELT teaching knowledge. The design of
the eponymous course and the aligned test has allowed implementation of the construct
as a ‘proof of concept’. On this basis, we can say that the design creates an approach to
professional development that serves the needs of teachers, particularly in the expanding
public sector of English language teaching, more effectively than most conventional,
general proficiency language training that is usually offered face-to-face.
The implementations of the English-for-Teaching course have demonstrated this
‘proof of concept’: that providing equitable professional development opportunities to
50 RELC Journal 48(1)

improve teachers’ classroom English proficiency is possible across diverse contexts (see
Freeman and LeDrean, 2017; Freeman et al., 2016). The challenge, therefore, is no
longer what to do; rather, it lies in changing the norms of how to provide language
improvement in ELT professional development. Delivering face-to-face training, based
on conventional models of general language proficiency, embeds, albeit unintentionally,
the very assumptions of native-speakerism that need to be debunked. In building this
new barn of teacher classroom language, outmoded ideas of fluency in general language
use, which ultimately refer back to native-speakerism, need to be replaced with the
notion that ELT teachers are ‘native’ to their classrooms. This professional definition of
nativeness means that teachers know what they want to do in their teaching; they under-
stand the purposes and uses that English needs to accomplish in their classrooms. What
they are seeking is the specific language ‘for-teaching’ to do so.

Acknowledgements
My thanks to Anne Katz for her close readings and contributions to this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: The research analyses reported in this article were variously
supported by National Geographic Learning and the University of Michigan. The views expressed
are the author’s own.

Notes
1. Rayburn served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1940 to 1961,
with the exception of two one-year hiatuses, making him the longest-serving speaker in US
history.
2. The phrase ‘English language teaching’ (and its acronym ‘ELT’) is used to refer to English
taught as a school subject in national contexts in which it is not an official or national lan-
guage. In the past, these contexts have been referred to as ‘English as a foreign language’ (or
‘EFL’), contexts. However this label inaccurately portrays a world in which English speakers
are either ‘native’ or non-native. This distinction, as argued here, is linguistically indefinable
and geo-politically out-of-date.
3. ‘Public-sector education’ refers here to schools that are funded by national governments and
usually overseen by ministries of education.
4. Portions of this argument are drawn from previous writings (see Freeman, 2016: 79–81)
5. See, https://prezi.com/ptuefpoyz4i3/seaspeak/. Last accessed 28 October 2016.
6. Knowledge-for-teaching has been developed from, and elaborates, Shulman’s (1987) propos-
als for pedagogical content knowledge. Where the latter outlined a form of knowledge that
blended and integrated content and methodology, the former situates this knowledge particu-
larly in the circumstances of its use (see Freeman, 2016).
7. Portions of these two accounts are drawn from implementation reports prepared by the author
and colleagues for the respective national ministries of education.
8. ‘It may be argued that a main reason for this [improvement in scores] was that the teachers
had become used to the test format by the time of the post-test, but it is thought that in a
country like Japan where English is a foreign language, constant exposure to English should
be linked to the increase’ (Otani, 2015: 2).
Freeman 51

9. We looked at two forms of data on how participants used speech recognition in the course
– A) the total time spent on these activities and B) the number of uses or attempts. Each meas-
ure has potential downsides: (A) shows simply that the participant was ‘on’ the activity but
not what they actually did; (B) shows what the participant tried to do, but it may also include
problems with the on-line connection. In the end, we decided that (B) was a more useful
measure for our purposes since it does reflect a participant’s effort.
10. The clustering of geographical areas was proposed by Vietnamese colleagues (see Freeman
and LeDrean, 2017).

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