The hobby course: Towards a languaging curriculum

The English as a lingua franca (ELF) and languaging research areas have challenged the norm that the goal of ELT is to teach a standardized language. This article reports on a course following the principles of ELF and languaging where the goal is to support students to use and grow their existing repertoire of resources to do things in English. The course was taught at a Thai university and was organized around each student learning a hobby of their choice. Focusing on strategies for using language, the course provided support for students to learn about their hobby, to interact with others through social media, and to create videos. Students’ reflections on their learning show substantial developments in their ability to do things in English and preliminary changes in attitude. The shift from teaching linguistic features to exploring strategies for exploiting existing learning resources provides a new paradigm in ELT.