Asian Englishes: Implications for English Language Teaching

Most Ministries of Education in East and Southeast Asia still see the acquisition of native-like proficiency as the goal for English language teaching. They thus promote the native speaker model as the classroom target and many have some form of 'native English teacher' scheme, whereby native speakers are brought in from overseas to teach in Asian English language classrooms. In this paper I shall question the need for a native speaker model in a multilingual world in which a number of new varieties of English have become established and in which the majority of English users are LI speakers of other languages who use English as a medium of communication or lingua franca with each other. I shall propose a number of possible alternative models, ranging from a localised variety to a lingua franca 'approach'. The paper concludes with a suggestion for the curricula for TESOL courses in light of the arguments presented in the paper.