An Analysis of the High School English Curriculum in Turkey from an Elf Perspective

Volume 9 Issue 2 April - June 2019

Research Paper

An Analysis of the High School English Curriculum in Turkey from an Elf Perspective

Ali Karakas*

*Department of English Language Teaching, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Burdur, Turkey.

Karakas, A. (2019). An Analysis of the High School English Curriculum in Turkey from an Elf Perspective. i-manager’s Journal on English Language Teaching, 9(2), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.9.2.15512

Abstract

Recently, there has been some redesigning in the English language teaching curriculum in Turkey as a consequence of overall educational reforms. However, there has, so far, been no research that has investigated the current high school English curriculum in light of the recent linguistic developments in the field of English language teaching. Thus, the current study explores the high school English curriculum to determine whether there is any reference to the current status of English as a lingua franca in general and its implications for teaching in particular. The data consisting of curricular documents and observation reports on teachers' practises were analysed through a combination of qualitative content analysis and negative analysis. The curricular data analyses show that there is a limited mention of ELF and in name only, with almost no reference to ELF principles for teaching. Similarly, the analyses of observational data indicate that teachers follow a traditional way of teaching English without paying much attention to the current status of English and how they should prepare students for real-world English use. Overall, the results suggest that there is little space for ELF in the current curriculum at the level of policy and nearly none at the level of practice.