Teaching for Communicative Risk: An Educational Framework for English as a Lingua Franca in High-Stakes International Contexts
Keywords:
English as a Lingua Franca, Communicative Risk, High-Stakes Communication, Intercultural Communication, Intelligibility, Language Education, Systematic ReviewAbstract
Purpose: This study aimed to develop an integrated educational framework for teaching communicative risk in English as a Lingua Franca in high-stakes international contexts.
Methods and Materials: This study was conducted as a systematic review using qualitative thematic synthesis. Relevant literature was identified from major academic databases in applied linguistics, education, communication studies, and social sciences. The review focused on studies addressing English as a Lingua Franca, communicative risk, multilingual interaction, intercultural communication, pragmatic negotiation, intelligibility, professional discourse, and high-stakes international communication. After screening titles, abstracts, and full texts according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, eligible sources were analyzed through structured data extraction and thematic coding. The synthesis process emphasized conceptual integration rather than statistical aggregation, with the purpose of identifying recurring risk domains, pedagogical strategies, and framework dimensions.
Findings: The thematic synthesis indicated that communicative risk in English as a Lingua Franca contexts is not primarily caused by linguistic error alone, but by the interaction of intelligibility problems, pragmatic ambiguity, intercultural misinterpretation, unequal institutional power, domain-specific terminology, emotional pressure, digital mediation, and assessment norms. The inferential pattern of the findings showed that successful communication in high-stakes international settings depends on learners’ ability to anticipate misunderstanding, manage clarity, negotiate meaning, repair breakdowns, interpret cultural variation, adapt terminology to audience needs, and maintain participation under pressure. The final synthesis generated a nine-dimensional educational framework consisting of risk awareness, intelligibility management, interactional repair, intercultural interpretation, domain and terminology control, ethical and power-sensitive communication, emotional resilience, digital communicative competence, and assessment for communicative effectiveness.
Conclusion: The study concludes that English language education for high-stakes international contexts should move beyond native-speaker-centered models and toward risk-sensitive ELF pedagogy. Teaching communicative risk can help learners use English more responsibly, strategically, and equitably in multilingual settings where misunderstanding may affect academic, professional, institutional, or safety-related outcomes.
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