Accept or Reject It? Thai L2 Teachers’ Perceptions of the Global Englishes Paradigm and Teaching Possibility

Abstract

As English plays a key role as an international language, the foundations of teaching and learning English may need to change in response to the new, global sociolinguistic landscape of the twenty-first century. Our study aims to investigate Thai L2 teachers’ perceptions of the ownership and varieties of English today, their current teaching practices in General English courses in Thai university settings, and the possibility of implementing the Global Englishes for Language Teaching (GELT) framework into their teaching practices. An exploratory sequential mixed methods design was employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from thirty-five English instructors working in eleven public universities situated in the Bangkok metropolitan and suburban areas. A questionnaire was developed and distributed among the study participants and a number of semi-structured interviews were held based on the GELT framework and previous studies. The main findings show there was general agreement about all users claiming ownership of English and acceptance of its varieties. Implementing the GELT framework in current teaching practices was also considered plausible, even though it would be new and unfamiliar to some L2 teachers, and they believed that their current teaching practices were not problematic. This study sheds light on the growing acceptance of the Global Englishes paradigm in the Thai English Language Teaching (ELT) community, despite the ever-persistent ideology of native-speakerism.