Track Chair's comments: Rachel began by demolishing Gordon Brown's notion that English is 'a gift' to be given-language is not a commodity to give (let alone sell). Her study used recorded data collected by third-year UK students on an undergraduate 'TESOL and Language Studies' module and international students on a pre-undergraduate International Foundation Programme. The research design required the students to interview each other (in international-UK pairs) and then use their interview data in an assessed task. The study was quite revealing and showed that native speakers of English are not necessarily the best (i.e. accommodating and sympathetic) people at using English in an international context. Perhaps we should focus more on using EIL to develop the capabilities of UK students as well as helping international students.
