ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA

As far as ELF is concerned, it stands for English as a Lingua Franca and refers to non native speakers communicating in English. Therefore, there are people who argue in favour of teaching English as ELF what implies teaching it just as a tool of communication  with non English speakers. As a result of this,  sociocultural aspects may not be taken into account. On the contrary, teaching English as a foreign language aims at communicating with native speakers, giving prominence to cultural aspects. Sociocultural aspects are a very important issue of the process of communication with native speakers, as they cover a verbal and a non verbal code of what is acceptable and not, in the target culture. If these norms are not taught, there may be miscommunication. Because of this,  it´s very important to help our pupils  build a socio-cultural awareness in order to speak English with native speakers in an successful way.  
As regards misunderstanding problems, they may occur not only because of the lack of socio-cultural awareness but also because of not managing the grammar rules properly. For this reason, getting to know grammar is important, whereas teaching grammar rules is not effective at all. The best way of teaching grammar is noticing it by reading books, for example. Another way of teaching grammar is by using a PPP (Presentation Practice Production) method; production is the most important stage of the process and is left behind. Thus, we should give our pupils the opportunity to produce more.