EJAL Article template Focus on ELT Journal Vol 2, Issue 2, 2020 ISSN: 2687-5381  Contact: betulbal@gmail.com Copyright for this book review is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to Focus on ELT Journal. Book Review aBetül Bal-Gezegin a Assist. Prof. Dr., Samsun Ondokuz Mayıs University, Turkey APA Citation: Bal-Gezegin, B. (2020). Review of World Englishes in English language teaching. Focus on ELT Journal, 2(2), 41-43. https://doi.org/10.14744/felt.2020.00032 World Englishes in English Language Teaching, Alex Baratta. Palgrave Macmillan. Cham, Switzerland (2019). 326 pp., Paperback: $79.99, ISBN 978-3-030-13286-6. © 2020 FELT and the Authors - Published by FELT In an era of questioning to whom English belongs, whose English we should teach, which English we teach as a foreign language and whether plural English can be incorporated in language classrooms, we, as educators, without doubt, need publications that can enlighten our path to better understand the status of English in today’s world as a global village and to find answers to these questions mentioned. Alex Baratta’s book World Englishes in English Language Teaching is a great contribution to the current discussions on the plurality of mailto:betulbal@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9818-9347 https://doi.org/10.14744/felt.2020.00032 Bal-Gezegin, B. / Focus on ELT Journal, 2020 2(2) 42 Focus on ELT www.focusonelt.com English. Alex Baratta is a lecturer at the University of Manchester who specialized in the field of Language, Linguistics and Communication. As a researcher who has been awarded prizes for his scholar works, he published several books on academic writing, critical reading, writing, and accents. Published in 2019, the book under review frames itself around the claim that “The English language is pluralistic and this needs to be reflected in the classroom, using a top-down approach” (Baratta, 2019 p.309). With his clear and straightforward writing style, the author makes it easy for both practitioners as well as students to follow. By providing an in-depth exploration of World Englishes, the book not only includes theoretical background and critical discussion of the phenomenon, but it also presents the results of an empirical study which reports the attitudes of language teachers and learners on varieties of English. With this inclusion of a research carried out by the author himself, the book aims to be of particular interest to a wider audience such as teachers, teacher trainers, students, educators and researchers in the field of language studies. Each target audience group can utilize from the book in various ways such as teachers to inform their own teaching and learning, learners to acquire elaborate discussion on concepts as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Global English(es), international English, localized varieties of English, new varieties of English, non-native varieties of English, second-language varieties of English, English World-Wide (EWW) and New Englishes, and researchers to see the niches in the related field. As a book of 315 pages length, it has ten chapters in total, respectively titled as; 1) Introduction, 2) Variety within inner circle Englishes, 3) The reality of World Englishes, 4) Non-inner circle Englishes versus language errors, 5) Three varieties of non-inner circle English, 6) Non-inner circle Englishes in the classroom, 7) Methodology, 8) Results and discussion, 9) How World Englishes can be used in the EFL classroom, and 10) Conclusion. The book starts with an introduction chapter with its three subsections as overview of varieties of English, key issues regarding World Englishes, and approach of the book. As can be understood from the titles, this first chapter provides the readers with fundamental and initial information on the historical development of World Englishes, presenting key concepts such as pluralism, ‘native’ speaker, errors vs. innovations, glocal, and intelligibility. In this chapter, the author successfully positions the concept of World Englishes within the broader field and underscores its significance and role in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. In addition, in this chapter, the author explicitly situates himself in the overall discussion on World Englishes and openly states that “I believe that just as there are many varieties of English around the world, we need to recognise them not merely in textbooks, or as a point of discussion in conferences; we need to recognise them within the classroom” (Baratta, 2019 p.6). Chapter 2, titled as Variety within inner circle Englishes, unpacks varieties of British English, which is in the inner circle. The author exemplifies dialects (i.e Yorkshire dialect) and sociolects (i.e multicultural London English). The discussions on varieties of English with real exchanges as language samples and comparisons of certain linguistics features in different dialects of English, make this section appealing to the readers and help readers better understand the richness of English. Bal-Gezegin, B. / Focus on ELT Journal, 2020 2(2) 43 Focus on ELT www.focusonelt.com Chapter 3, The Reality of World Englishes, begins with a critical review of attitudes toward World Englishes. The opposing viewpoints on the matter, advocating the inner circle Englishes in education (namely British and American Englishes) and supporting non-native varieties in education, are presented within this chapter. Chapter 4, focusing on the issue of errors, aims to reveal what an error versus an innovation is. This section is quite practical for teachers in particular because it fosters educators to question what an error is and whether it can be regarded as a deviation from standard English and an innovation instead of an incorrect usage. While summing his discussions at the end of the chapter, the author makes an open call to researchers that topic of errors needs further investigations. Following the in-depth examination and argumentations on errors, the following chapter, hapter 5, exemplifies three varieties of Non-inner Circle English (NICE). These are Konglish (spoken in South Korea), Indian English (spoken in India) and Singlish (spoken in Singapore). Although lacking the reason why these particular varieties of Englishes were chosen to be dwelt on, the chapter offers practical insights for educational goals as “A comparison between the standard variety and Singlish can be used to help students approach language in a more objective manner” (Baratta, 2019, p. 131). Chapter 6 focuses on two types of needs: the need for revised pedagogy and the need for cultural understanding. By offering sound advice for EFL teachers, the author underscores concepts like multicultural perspective, balanced approach, raising awareness, promoting international understanding, local culture, cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity, bidialectalism and/or multidialectalism, unified approach, active students, international diversity etc. As a thought-provoking chapter, this section offers a wide range of insightful ideas not only for teachers but also for curriculum developers. Chapter 7 and 8 present Baratta’s empirical study on the perspectives of language teachers and learners concerning several varieties of English. Through close reading of these chapters, readers can gain detailed information on how the study was carried out, who the participants were and what their responses to the survey questions were. The thoroughness of Baratta's research and analysis is impressive, and he presents his evidence in a remarkably accessible fashion; however, it could have been better if these two chapters were united and presented in a more compact way without too many details which hinders the flow of reading. Chapter 9 is a highly valuable section outlining practical ideas for classroom teaching which incorporates variety of Englishes within EFL pedagogy. The chapter includes sample exercises which aim to develop students’ various language skills as academic writing, speaking, and pragmatic competence etc. By delivering these sample lessons, the author provides teachers as potential readers with relevant, practical, pragmatic and useful messages on the subject. The last chapter of the book is a brief summary of all the aforementioned issues with the author’s personal reflections, viewpoints and further suggestions to educators. In conclusion, the reviewed book is successful in its attempt to directly engaging the major issues in the field of World Englishes. Overall, I see the book as a valuable contribution to the literature, filling an important need. The content of the book and the writing is of a high-quality and is written authoritatively by one of the experts in the field. Without having overly ambitious aims, the author successfully presents the reasons why Bal-Gezegin, B. / Focus on ELT Journal, 2020 2(2) 44 Focus on ELT www.focusonelt.com World Englishes need to be taken into consideration in educational programs. While doing so, the author refers to both recent and seminal works in the field and this keeps the book updated and appealing to the readers. The contemporary ideas suggested throughout the book are actually reflecting the current discussion on the target issue. Although there is not much to criticize in the book, my humble suggestions include a better organization of chapters, smooth transitions between chapters so that the coherence and unity are achieved. Also, although personal anecdotes and language samples make it friendly to read, it could have been better to see references to corpus findings and samples. As well-known, corpus studies have helped to shape the overall field of World Englishes by providing real language samples from NICE speakers. It is one of the major weakness of the book that it lacks references to related corpora. Integration of corpus-based data (language samples, excerpts) could have worked as a cement in the book. As a final note, I think the book serves as both a useful resource on current research, a significant contribution to the field and a compelling model for future studies. I hope the book will reach its potential readers who can benefit from it and I eagerly look forward to Baratta’s future work in this area. Copyrights Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the Journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).