Introduction
The internationalization of English, the growing significance of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), the increasing complexity of intercultural and multilingual communication, and the rapid development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence have collectively challenged conventional paradigms of English language teaching and learning. English is no longer used only as a foreign language for communication with native speakers, but increasingly functions as a shared communicative resource among speakers from diverse linguistic, cultural, educational, professional, and national backgrounds. This changing reality calls for new ways of theorizing and practicing English language education across global contexts.
This edited collection, Rethinking English Language Education with ELF-Informed Pedagogies and Intercultural Communication, brings together theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented contributions that examine how English language education can be reimagined through ELF-informed, intercultural, multilingual, and digitally responsive perspectives. Rather than positioning English proficiency primarily in relation to native-speaker norms or standardized linguistic accuracy, the volume foregrounds communicative effectiveness, intelligibility, meaning negotiation, intercultural awareness, pragmatic flexibility, learner agency, multilingual resources, and locally responsive pedagogical innovation.
The volume aims to explore how ELF-informed pedagogies and intercultural communication can contribute to English language education in a wide range of settings, including EFL, ESL, EMI, CLIL, multilingual, online, blended, hybrid, and technology-enhanced learning environments. It welcomes contributions from diverse educational contexts and regions, including but not limited to Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and other local and transnational contexts where English plays an important role in education, mobility, professional communication, internationalization, and global citizenship.
A key concern of the book is how English language education can better prepare learners for real-world communication in multilingual, intercultural, and digitally mediated environments. In many educational systems, teachers, learners, institutions, curriculum designers, materials developers, assessment specialists, and policymakers continue to negotiate tensions between established native-speaker-oriented models and the actual communicative needs of English users in contemporary global society. These tensions are visible in curriculum design, classroom pedagogy, textbook content, assessment practices, teacher education, language policy, digital learning, and the use of artificial intelligence in education.
The book is particularly interested in studies located at the intersections of ELF-informed pedagogy, intercultural communication, intercultural pragmatics, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, multimodality, teacher education, curriculum innovation, materials development, assessment, and educational equity. It seeks to show how English language education can become more flexible, inclusive, interculturally responsive, critically aware, and pedagogically relevant to the realities of English use in the twenty-first century.
By bringing together international perspectives, the collection aims to contribute to wider discussions on rethinking communicative competence, challenging native-speakerism, promoting intercultural and multilingual competence, integrating digital and AI-related literacies, and developing more ethical, equitable, and contextually responsive approaches to English language education.