Teachers’ attitudes: learner’s errors and standard norms.

The aim of this chapter is to focus on the pedagogical implications of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as regards the reconceptualization of learners’ deviations from native-speaker standard norms, traditionally referred to as errors. The author provides a preliminary historical overview of approaches to English language teaching (ELT) to highlight the evolution of psycholinguistic notions in the area of cognitive processes and second language acquisition. The phenomenon of language variation is seen through the lens of Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory, which leads to a different understanding of the learner’s personal voice and of their identity in multicultural global communication. Finally, the author presents some of the results of a teacher’s survey on the attitudes of a group of Italian teachers of English about the emergence of ELF in the English classroom.