Contextualising a pedagogical model for English-language education in Hong Kong

A major controversy in the fields of World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) has been the application of exonormative Inner Circle norms to ELT classrooms in diverse multilingual societies. This article seeks to examine the suitability of adopting a WE and/or an ELF-oriented pedagogical model, as well as the corresponding research findings, in Hong Kong's ELT classroom. More specifically, the study investigated the use of English by the local professionals and, furthermore, evaluated the comparability of Hong Kong's sociolinguistic reality to typical WE and ELF contexts via a structured questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews.