From learners to users—errors, innovations, and universals

This paper looks into the dilemma of what counts as a grammatical ‘learner error’ in ELT on the basis of recent results from English variationist research and English as a lingua franca research. Examples from these studies show that features often perceived as ‘errors’ for EFL speakers also occur in ESL production—where they are called ‘innovations’—and even in English as a native language (ENL) production—where the term ‘spoken language universal’ would seem more appropriate. It is proposed that the traditional categorization of English speakers into EFL, ESL, and ENL actually hinders us from seeing the linguistic realities of the English-speaking world, disfavouring EFL speakers in particular. The paper calls for ELT to see EFL speakers as users of the language rather than learners in order to acknowledge their grammatical creativity as similar to that of other speakers of English.