Hi, teacher.

We are correcting English for a world that no longer exists.

In most of the English I observe, research, and work with, success has very little to do with native-like accuracy.
It has everything to do with intelligibility, alignment, and getting things done.

There’s a brilliant sketch of 2 Scottish men in an elevator trying to reach the 11th floor using voice recognition (if you haven’t seen this classic, it’s here). The machine keeps misunderstanding them. Not because their grammar is wrong, but because their English accent doesn’t match the system’s expectations.

It’s funny and painfully familiar.
Many classrooms work like that machine.

We still treat native-speaker grammar as the default yardstick.
But research into global English shows that English today is mainly used between multilingual speakers, not inside native-speaker communities. Native English norms were never designed for this kind of interaction.

So when a learner says: “She go every day”

What usually happens is instant correction…am I right?

But from an English as a Lingua Franca perspective, nothing communicatively important has failed.

Time is clear.
Subject is clear.
Meaning is unambiguous.

What has failed is our attachment to a form that carries symbolic value, not communicative weight. The moment the purpose shifts, the standard has to shift with it. If the goal is international communication, then effectiveness beats elegance every time.

So what does this mean for you as a teacher?

Here are a few small shifts you can try in your classroom:

• Start correcting for meaning before correcting for form. Ask, “did communication break down?” before “was it grammatically accurate?”

• Build activities around clarification and repair. Teach students how to say “can you repeat that?”, “do you mean…?”, “let me rephrase.”

• Praise successful communication strategies, not just correct sentences.

• Let some “non-critical” grammar go during fluency work and focus feedback on intelligibility.

• Use listening materials with diverse accents, not only British or American ones.

When we do this, we aren't abandoning grammar.
We are teaching grammar to serve communication, not as a badge of belonging to a native-speaker club.

And here’s the question I keep coming back to: When we correct grammar, are we responding to a breakdown in meaning,or are we defending a model of English that no longer reflects how it is used worldwide?

There’s a really insightful article by Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey that explores this way of thinking about English in depth. If you’d like a copy, reply to this email and I’ll send it your way.

That’s it for me today. See you next week!

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P.S. 1  5 teachers have already said yes to my group programme Lessons That Flow, and I know this group is going to change how they walk into their lessons every week. If you want to be part of that transformation, come join us. Register here.

P.S 2 Next month, I officially become a part-time Cambridge resident. I’m starting my academic internship at Cambridge University Press and will be spending 3 days a week there for the next two months, working with the teacher development team. Very excited about the conversations ahead. More to come.