ELF in Model United Nations Simulations. When East meets West

MUN simulations can be considered a community of practice since they possess Wenger's (1998) three criteria – mutual engagement, a negotiated joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire. House (2003) argues that ELF too can be considered a community of practice since "its diffuse alliances and communities of imagination and alignment fits ELF interactions well because ELF participants have heterogeneous backgrounds and diverse social and linguistic expectations" (p. 573). Speaking English as an L1 offers no guarantee of an ability to interact successfully with a wide variety of interlocutors; there are many varieties of English, many of which are mutually incomprehensible (Ur 2010) and similarly, native speakers of these many varieties of English are not guaranteed to be successful interlocutors with users of ELF (Litzenberg 2013). Indeed, English native speakers are in especially acute need of training to adjust to a lingua franca world (Carey 2013). This short paper will report on observations of ELF-speaking MUN delegates from Japan and Germany to get a sense of some of the shortcomings that native speakers display when communicating with ELF speakers in the context of MUN simulations and will make recommendations for their training.

模拟联合国（Model United Nations，MUN）活动可被视为实践共同体，因其符合温格（Wenger, 1998）提出的三项核心标准：相互参与、经协商确立的共同事业，以及共享的实践储备。豪斯（House, 2003）指出，通用英语（English as a Lingua Franca，ELF）亦可被归类为实践共同体，其原文表述为："其松散的联盟、想象契合的共同体十分适配通用英语的互动场景，因通用英语使用者的背景千差万别，社会与语言期望亦呈现多元化特征"（第573页）。以母语（First Language, L1）使用英语，无法确保能与各类对话者顺利开展互动；英语存在诸多变体，其中多数变体之间彼此难以互通（Ur, 2010）；同理，这些多样英语变体的母语使用者，也未必能与通用英语使用者实现顺畅互动（Litzenberg, 2013）。事实上，英语母语者尤为需要接受针对性训练，以适配通用语交际语境（Carey, 2013）。本短篇论文将汇报针对来自日本与德国的通用英语使用者模拟联合国代表的观察结果，梳理英语母语者在模拟联合国场景中与通用英语使用者交流时暴露出的若干短板，并为其相关培训提出针对性建议。