The chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities raised by the growing awareness of the role that English as a lingua franca (ELF) can play in Expanding Circle contexts, namely, contexts where English does not have a historical or statutory role of any kind. The context under review is Greece, where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL). I present an account of the English language teaching, learning and use situation in Greece and reflect on the impact ELF can have for domains like language instruction, materials design, selection and evaluation and teacher education. I argue that ELF research can inform EFL contexts in a number of ways: It can be used to empower non-native speakers of English by broadening their perspective of communicating on a global scale in the 21st century. It can also be used as a means of teacher development. The essential element that underpins this perspective is that, for Expanding Circle contexts like the Greek one, English is not a foreign language (in the way that other major languages like French and German are), but a language with which learners have some degree of familiarity.

In this chapter, we will provide a review of the major aspects related to teacherawareness, with special reference to non- native teachers’ awareness of English as an International Lingua Franca (ELF), and will then provide an account of a hands on practical approach aimed at introducing teachers in Expanding Circle countries (Kachru, 1985 ) to the challenges and implications of teaching a global language, thus transforming them into ELF- aware teachers who will be ready to convey such awareness among their students. We will focus on non- native English- speaking teachers’ (NNESTs’) awareness of the global properties of ELF. In order to support our suggestions in the light of a new model of transformative teacher education (Sifakis, 2007, 2014), we provide evidence from an on- going project on ELF- aware language teaching, and we report NNESTs’ perspectives on what they consider to be an ELF- aware lesson, as well as teachers’ observations of how successful they were in raising their students’ awareness towards ELF (Bayyurt and Sifakis, 2015a , 2015b; Sifakis, 2014 ; Sifakis and Bayyurt, 2015).

This volume examines the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in education in Europe. Following the implementation of the Bologna process, English has assumed a central role in European education offering institutions the opportunity to cater to the needs of an internationalized student body and increase their competitiveness. On the other hand, the increased use of ELF has become an issue of concern, often perceived as a threat to other languages, tilting the scale towards linguistic inequality and stressing the urgent need for the development of new language policies. Both aspects of ELF are at the center of discussion in the proposed volume, which consists of a variety of papers examining ELF in different parts of Europe (Eastern, Central and Western) and different levels of education. The volume makes a substantial contribution to the lively and controversial debate about what is recognized as a central topical concern of language education policy in Europe and beyond.