April 24, 2021
UNIVERSITI BRUNEI DARUSSALAM, Mar 29 – Dr Ishamina Athirah Muntassir Gardiner gave a presentation as a guest speaker for the APB International Webinar Series 1 hosted by Akademi Pengajian Bahasa (APB) of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Cawangan Johor. The webinar began with a welcome speech by Professor Dr Haji Ismail Ahmad, Rector of UiTM Johor, who expressed his hopes for further collaboration between UiTM Johor’s APB faculty and UBD’s Language Centre. In her seminar entitled “Developing English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) awareness in Pronunciation Teaching in Southeast Asia”, Dr Ishamina explored the current debate about new approaches to English Language Teaching (ELT) with regard to the current linguistic landscape. As a global language, English is increasingly used as a lingua franca worldwide in international communication so the ability to interact efficiently by accommodating to interlocutors’ communication needs and achieving mutual intelligibility are more important than adhering to standard Native speaker norms. Therefore, in such learning contexts, teaching English should reflect this goal. An alternative in pronunciation teaching involves adopting the ELF approach that focuses more on communicative targets. It is argued that raising ELF awareness in ELT is important in such learning contexts and the emphasis is on integrating ELF in ELT/EFL, rather than replacing it.