:: English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)::

Ummm...'ELF'....? What is it? I've heard only 'EFL' or 'ESL' or 'ESP' or 'ELT'. I looked at the full words of these 3 letters. I got even much confused - English as a Lingua Franca. Then I googled on this term and skimmed through some books. Surprisingly, I didn't know that I am living in it. 

The ways people in my country and I are using English are exactly what Barbara Seidlhofer from the University of Vienna (as quoted in Harmer, J. 'The Practice of English Language Teaching'. Pearson Longman. 4th Edition, page 20) has studied on the 'ELF'. 

Barbara mentioned some characteristics for people who use English as a lingua franca. I'd like to pick up few of them.

" Non-use of third person present simple tense-s (She look very sad)"

--> Well well (:-P) yeahhhh we always omit the 's' at the verb when its subject is singular and a third person in a present simple sentence. For example; 'He like this shirt', 'Somsak want to go with us.'

Another characteristic which straightly hits right into my mind is...

"Increasing of redundancy by adding prepositions (We have to study about.... and Can we discuss about...? )or by increasing explicitness (black colour versus black and How long time versus How long?)"

--> This definitely happens among the EFL learners in my country. This hasn't counted the missed use of collocations which grammatical rules can't help figure out what the right two words we should use together. 

Definitely, I still need to learn this language through my whole life in order to use it correctly.

How to teach SS to think??

One of my colleagues says, "Damn!! our students don't use their brains." It's tough to teach SS how to think critically or creatively. Since it seems that the teachers do nothing in the class if let them think & do by themselves!! On top of that, the SS have been passive learners throughout their primary and secondary life. It takes time to change their learning styles.  What should I start in order to unlock their mind???