Good Servant, Bad master: The role of Standard in ELT

Dr. Tim Marr

London Metropolitan University, U.K.

It is usually understood in a reasonably unproblematic way that the form of foreign language that is to be taught and learned is the ‘standard’ form. While the author has no intention of develop a critique of this notion here, he does wish to suggest  that the teaching  of standard English  should be accompanied by  sociolinguistic awareness– in order to accustom students  to the possibility – indeed  the inevitability of encountering  a wide diversity of  ‘Englishes’ . Standards are an abstraction and languages do not stands still in time and place. The effective international and intellectual communicator should indeed have firm grasp of the standard– but she or he must not allow adherence to a single variety to develop or take the place of genuinely constructive interaction in a range of native and non- native varieties.