Academic literature on the topic 'English language, Textbooks for foreign speakers - Afrikaans'

The article considers the mechanism ofrepresenting the hidden curriculum in the discourse of EFL textbooks, i.e. the transmission ofsociocultural norms and values of native speakers to foreign students. To do this the authors make a brieftheoretical review of this problem and demonstrate the results of the comparative discourse analysis of two popular textbooks, the one of the pre-globalization age and the present-day one. The authors provide evidence for their idea of the dual role, which English plays today being simultaneously a national language of different English-speaking societies and the global lingua franca. The conducted discourse analysis is based on the analysis of semiotic means, which are used to nominate concepts basic to any society and culture. In the article, the authors demonstrate their own plan of analysis by the example of the "gender" concept. The gender concept shows social and cultural conditionality of distinctions in behavior and the identity of men and women. The comparative analysis of gender markers in the discourse of EFL textbooks reveals a global vector of transformation and distribution ofsociocultural values. Authors state that cultural expansion through English teaching is an instrument of smart power. It is suggested using the mechanism of transmission ofsociocultural norms and values, which is analyzed in the research, to create Russian textbooks for foreign students.

The choice of what materials to use in the language classroom is perhaps one of the most fundamentally important and difficult decisions teachers and those responsible for choosing textbooks are faced with. Authenticity is often seen as a desirable component in the content we select and adapt for our language learners, and it has been shown that authentic materials are more motivating, even for low-level learners (Peacock, 1997). The term authentic is often used to describe materials which were not originally designed for the purpose of language learning, but that were designed to have some purpose within the target language culture, such as a newspaper or novel. An unfortunate consequence of this is that authenticity is still often defined in reference to the target language's ‘native speakers’ or L1 community, particularly in EFL contexts, or what Kachru (1985) would label the Outer Circle communities. In other words, where English is taught as a foreign language, both teachers and students often regard ‘native-speakers’ as being the ideal model and therefore an example of authenticity. For example, Tan (2005) criticises corpora investigations of learner English for holding the view that authentic language use is equivalent to ‘native-speaker’ usages. She goes on to criticise not only corpus research but also textbook publishers for still not taking into account ‘the inextricable link between language and culture’ (2005: 127). In the academic world, culturally embedded notions of authenticity relating to ‘native-speakers’ have been challenged for decades (Smith, 1976). And yet I would argue that in mainstream textbooks and in most EFL language classrooms the native speaker still retains a ‘privileged position’ (Clark & Paran, 2007: 407). As Widdowson (1996: 68) puts it:Authenticity concerns the reality of native-speaker language use: in our case, the communication in English which is realized by an English-speaking community. But the language which is real for native speakers is not likely to be real for learners […] They belong to another community and do not have the necessary knowledge of the contextual conditions which would enable them to authenticate English in native-speaker terms. Their reality is quite different.

It is well known that native speakers of English around the globe are by far outnumbered today by speakers of English as a second or as a foreign language (Crystal, 2008). English is thus regularly used as a lingua franca, i.e. an intermediary language used between speakers of various linguistic backgrounds, for transnational and intercultural communication in many domains of life (such as business, diplomacy, higher education, tourism, etc.). The study of conditions of using ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ (ELF), intrinsically connected to the fields of World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition (Schneider, 2012), has come to be a booming sub-field and topic of research in English linguistics over the past few years, as is indicated by the publication of a few textbooks, the establishment of a conference series, and the launch of a scholarly journal (JELF). The focus of these approaches has been on the functions, usage conditions, and practical applications of ELF (Seidlhofer, 2011), and also, though to a lesser extent, on any characteristic structural properties (Dewey, 2007; Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey, 2011; Cogo & Dewey, 2012). Clearly, ELF can be found in a wide range of possible applications and contexts, as Cogo & Dewey (2012: 31) have stated: ‘As a natural phenomenon of sociolinguistic variation, ELF includes all types of communicative events, from the transactional to the interactional, and various possible settings, such as the institutional and the casual.’ It is considered to be independent of the interactants' native-speaker status: prototypically ELF involves communication between non-native speakers of English, but sometimes native speakers participate in such encounters as well. It centrally involves accommodation, negotiation and adjustment of forms to achieve successful communication.

The article deals with one of the most important aspects of translators’ linguistic competence - their phonetics, since interpreters’ good pronunciation is of great practical value, including enunciation of phonemes, lexemes, intonation, articulation, stress placement, and even voice timbre. The novelty of this research consists in the fact that it is one of the few works analyzing typical pronouncing errors of Russian learners of English - mainly interpreters, but also teachers and other students of English - who use their English for various pragmatic purposes. Linguistic literature is replete with textbooks and teaching aids in theoretical and practical phonetics of the English language highlighting theoretical and practical aspects of forming correct pronunciation habits; however, they do not pay sufficient attention to most common pronouncing errors, i.e. stress misplacement, wrong articulation of vowels, diphthongs, consonants, etc., enforced by the interference of Russian phonetic system. The writer of this article analyses most common errors gleaned in the course of his career of a professional interpreter and university lecturer by drawing on his own experience and that of his colleagues - teachers and interpreters. This research seems topical due to the fact that audiences form their first impression of an English teacher or an interpreter by the proximity of his/her pronunciation to that of native speakers. The writer of this article holds an opinion that an interpreter’s pronunciation is his/her “business card,” allowing for the fact, however, that an interpreter does not have to speak without any foreign accent at all, but if the accent is still there it must not jar on native speakers’ ear; the enunciation has to be clear, distinct, pleasant, without obvious phonetic errors affected by the phonetics of the Russian language. Hopefully this article will help some Russian learners of English correct their pronunciation errors in their mastery of the English language, should those errors be taken notice of