English around us : A linguistic landscape activity to raise ELF awareness

Despite the gradual acceptance of English as an international lingua franca and efforts to decolonise the English language teaching field, native-speakerism is still prevalent in many parts of the world, including Japan. Challenging this notion and raising awareness of the actual use of English as a lingua franca requires teachers to be creative. This paper proposes an activity that aims to raise awareness towards ELF among Japanese university students by first making them aware of the use of English in their local linguistic landscape.