Introduction
English for a New World is aimed at addressing interconnected global issues and challenges that are more or less commonly experienced the world population whose awareness may play a key role. Such experiences are even more severely manifest in underdeveloped or developing regions whose infrastructure, cultural practices, policy-making backgrounds and welfare status stand in stark contrast to the ones in the North American and West European context. The thematic content of the units is chiefly based on most of the objectives set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that are meant to raise global awareness, shape a collective mindset, and hopefully give rise to sustainable lifestyles. As a lingua franca, English can serve the goal of negotiating such problems and challenges; therefore, a global medium can be at the disposal of addressing global problems.
In designing the content matter, the author has made the utmost effort to highlight the marginalized, less visible cultures, characters, countries and regions long kept at ‘the darkest edges of English world’ in the marketized ESL/EFL syllabi. To break free from the tight grips of epistemological eurocentrism reducing all ESL/EFL syllabi into ‘western us vs. non-western them’, African, Asian, and Latin American identity figures have been foregrounded as the latter have been victims of the erasure culture in the mainstream syllabus and curriculum over the years.
The themes and the content also touch upon the issues long overlooked, downplayed or silenced, overtly or covertly, by the dominant neoliberal ESL/EFL agenda. In fact, the content is optimally devoid of the concepts, images and representations perpetuating the so-called native-speaker supremacy, market values, US or UK centrality, ‘just-a-hobby’ view, pleasure advertising, luxury worshipping, consumer norms, body-culture and beauty commercialization. These trivialities are de-emphasized in favor of a more humane mission, namely community work, fighting against poverty or inequalities, collective efforts for problem-solving, environment-friendly policies, sustainable energy use, to name a few.
As a pre-intermediate source, the present book can be used as a textbook rich in new ideas for ESL/EFL college or university contexts. All texts are compatible with the EFL learners’ schemata containing words and readings falling within the early adults’ general academic skill domains.
It is hoped that English for a New World can meet the basic needs of the learners especially the ones who pursue English not as a medium of shallow interaction but as a global capacity to think, share ideas, analyze, negotiate and critique the profound issues on a global scale in a problem-posing educational context.