Collaboratori linguistici in Italian universities: what light do they shed on the development of English lingua franca?

The study reported here sets out to explore the main findings from a nationwide survey administered online to native english-speaking teachers (neSTs) working in Italian universities (known as collaboratori esperti linguistici or CEL). The research objectives at the basis of the survey design are: a. to investigate nS teachers’ awareness of the role of english as the world’s lingua franca; b. to explore current attitudes in english Language Teaching (ELT) pedagogy and methodology with the aim of developing english as a Lingua franca (eLf)-aware language teacher education programs, course-books, materials and syllabus design.