English language teachers’ and learners’ perceptions and needs: emerging professional perspectives and trajectories from a 5-country investigation in multilingual classrooms.

The fragmentation processes due to the recent tidal migration flows, together with the diffusion of technologies and social networks, have created new sociolinguistic environments where languages are undergoing a transformative process widening centres and reaching out peripheries. As a result of increasing global mobility, the sociolinguistic reality of English, and its different realisations, the growing diffusion of World Englishes and of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) have become much more complex and controversial than those of other languages in the world. Issues of identity, standards, proficiency levels, required digital competences, intercultural communication and language awareness of English language learners and teachers, demand for a paradigmatic orientation and a reconsideration of 21^st century English language teacher education and classroom practice. The purpose of this presentation is to report, compare and discuss the preliminary findings of a cross-country investigation of English language teaching practices in multilingual classrooms in five countries as well as to investigate teachers’ and learners’ awareness of and attitudes to current realizations of English. The study is part of an Erasmus+ project #_ftn1, a research project investigating realities of English language teaching and learning in Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Turkey with the aim that the results of this transnational needs analysis would inform and sustain forms of continuous professional development for English language teachers in a time of major social changes. #_ftnref1 Erasmus+ KA2 “English as a Lingua Franca Practices for Inclusive Multilingual Classrooms” (2018-1-EL01-KA201-047894)