The concept of 'World English' and its implications for ELT

World English (WE) belongs to everybody who speaks it, but it is nobody’s mother tongue. Although today ever more people accept the idea that there is such a thing as WE, very few of them seem to have realized that the full implications of admitting it are much more far reaching than they had hitherto imagined. It may be that some of these implications will nowhere be felt so strongly in the foreseeable future as in the sphere of language teaching. At present, we are at best in a position to make some wild guesses concerning the kind of changes in store for us, and I would suggest that ELT is poised to undergo some dramatic changes as native varieties of English give way to WE as the most coveted passport to world citizenship