English in the Wild: Navigating Global English and Professionalism in Iceland

Elisa Fia, Independent Language Teacher and Author, Garðabær, Iceland

For many English language teachers, professional identity has traditionally been grounded in relatively stable assumptions: English is a bounded system, correctness can be defined with reference to native-speaker norms, with teachers considered as custodians of that standard. But for teachers working today, particularly in highly globalized and digitally connected contexts, these assumptions increasingly feel misaligned with classroom realities.

Learners encounter English long before and far beyond formal instruction. They use it to play online games, follow influencers, collaborate internationally or consume entertainment across platforms. As a result, English is no longer experienced primarily as a school subject but as a living communicative resource shaped by mobility, media and social interaction. This shift has profound implications not only for pedagogy but also for how teachers understand their own professional roles and sources of legitimacy.

This article explores how English language teachers navigate these tensions, drawing on insights from the Icelandic educational context. While Iceland presents a specific sociolinguistic environment, the questions raised here resonate across many ELF-influenced teaching contexts worldwide.

In Iceland, English is officially positioned as a foreign language within the school system. At the same time, it is omnipresent in daily life. Learners regularly arrive in classrooms with high levels of receptive competence and confidence developed through informal exposure: gaming communities, social media, streaming services and both online and offline interaction.

This creates a pedagogical paradox. On the one hand, students demonstrate communicative ability that exceeds traditional expectations for their age or instructional level. On the other, their language practices often diverge from standardized norms emphasized in textbooks. Therefore, teachers must navigate a tension between recognizing learners’ existing competencies and responding to institutional expectations of accuracy. On a deeper level, this tension raises questions about what English is, whose English matters, as well as what teachers are ultimately responsible for teaching.

One of the less visible but emotionally significant consequences of this paradox is its impact on teachers’ sense of legitimacy. When students question why their English, which is proven to be perfectly effective online, needs correction in the classroom, teachers may experience uncertainty and self-doubt. This is especially true for teachers working outside traditional inner-circle English-speaking contexts, where legitimacy has historically been externally validated rather than locally constructed.

In Iceland, this dynamic is intensified by the high proficiency levels many learners display. Teachers feel pressure to justify instructional choices, particularly when institutional assessment systems continue to privilege standardized forms. The result is a sense of professional uncertainty: teachers are expected to prepare learners for exams rooted in traditional norms while simultaneously acknowledging the communicative realities of global English use.

Teacher practice in ELF-influenced classrooms is concretized through everyday pedagogical moments. These include:

• deciding whether to correct a nonstandard form that does not impede understanding

• explaining why certain varieties of English are privileged in exams or academic writing

• validating learners’ multilingual and translingual practices while maintaining curricular alignment

Such decisions are rarely neutral. They reflect teachers’ beliefs about language, power and fairness, as well as their own positioning within global English hierarchies. Over time, these micro-decisions accumulate into a professional identity that is adaptive and context-sensitive.

The emotional labor involved in this identity work should not be underestimated. Teachers may experience frustration when institutional frameworks lag behind linguistic realities, anxiety when expectations are unclear, as well as empowerment when learners respond positively to more flexible approaches.

In Icelandic classrooms, teachers often describe a need to balance affirmation and challenge: affirming learners’ real-world English use while challenging them to develop greater precision, awareness and control. This balancing act requires confidence, pedagogical clarity and institutional support, resources that are not always evenly distributed.

If English teaching is increasingly shaped by ELF realities, then teacher education must move beyond technical skill development to include identity-oriented reflection. Teachers need structured opportunities to examine their beliefs about language, correctness and authority, and to articulate how these beliefs align, or conflict, with their teaching realities.

Professional development initiatives can support this by:

• introducing ELF-aware pedagogies without framing them as prescriptive alternatives

• creating spaces for teachers to share dilemmas and uncertainties without fear of judgment

• emphasizing pedagogical decision-making as a legitimate form of professional expertise

Rather than asking teachers to choose between “standard” and “global” English, such approaches recognize that effective teaching often involves navigating both simultaneously.

While this discussion draws on the Icelandic context, the broader implications extend far beyond it. Many teachers worldwide work in environments where English is highly visible, informally acquired and socially meaningful outside school. What differs are the institutional responses to these realities. Iceland illustrates how global English can be deeply embedded in daily life while remaining structurally positioned as a foreign language.

Teaching English today increasingly involves navigating uncertainty rather than enforcing stability. Teachers are asked to reconcile institutional norms with lived language practices, global ideologies with local realities, and pedagogical ideals with practical constraints.

In this landscape, professional identity is not something teachers simply possess, it is something they continually negotiate. Recognizing this negotiation as central to English language teaching allows us to better support teachers as reflective professionals working in complex sociolinguistic environments.

Rather than viewing ELF-influenced classrooms as problematic or deficient, we might instead see them as sites where English teaching is most clearly revealed as a socially situated and deeply human practice.

Elisa Fia is a freelance English teacher and author based in Iceland, who has worked with a variety of age groups, from young learners to adults. Her current mission focuses on teaching both Icelandic students and displaced adult learners, while supporting a welcoming environment for a smooth integration within the Icelandic society.

References

Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a Lingua Franca. Englishes in Practice, 2(3), 49–85.

Seidlhofer, B. (2011). Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford University Press.

Sifakis, N. C., & Bayyurt, Y. (2018). ELF-aware teaching, learning and teacher development. Multilingual Matters.

Widdowson, H. G. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(2), 359–372.