NATTAPAT SUEJAM (MAE FAH LUANG UNIVERSITY)
ANGGI SUHARJA (Mae Fah Luang University)

GELT SOUNDS GOOD BUT I’LL STICK TO TRADITIONAL ELT: MATERIALS' DESIGNERS' ATTITUDES : WORLD ENGLISHES/ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA

Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT) is an alternative approach in English Language Teaching (ELT) that reconceptualises and prioritises the diversity and variety of English and its users outside the Anglosphere. Although it has become a prominent paradigm in ELT, studies related to GELT remain scarce. We therefore present a case study of a private English language school (henceforth The School) in Thailand – an underexplored context of research. The study aimed to answer two main research questions: 1) What are the beliefs and attitudes of material designers at The School towards the concept of GELT? and 2) To what extent were their beliefs translated into their actual practice of developing teaching materials? In answering these questions, seven materials designers were surveyed and twenty sets of teaching materials they had created were examined to find out the alignment of their beliefs and practices. The results revealed that while the participants reported positive and accepting attitudes towards GELT, their material development practices showed otherwise. Although they believed it is beneficial for students to be exposed to other varieties of English and cultures in language classrooms, their materials emphasised Inner Circle language norms, pronunciation models, and cultural representations, with minimal reference to GELT. We conclude by presenting possible underlying causes of this mismatch between the participants’ reported beliefs and their actual practices.

Nattapat Suejam is currently a lecturer in the School of Liberal Arts, Mae Fah Luang University. He holds an M.TESOL from Griffith University, Australia, and has experience teaching general English and exam preparation courses in ELICOS programs in Australia. His areas of research include Global Englishes, multilingualism, and language landscapes.

A Master in English Education with years of experience in teaching languages, both English as Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia and Thailand and Indonesian for foreign speaker in Australia and the US, actively involved in teaching, language and culture, national & local language preservation, and literacy projects.