The ‘Attractive’ Progressive – Why use the -ing Form in English as a Lingua Franca?

Abstract

In SLA literature, the ‘extended’ use of the progressive in L2 English production has often been considered a ‘problem’. The studies have been based on elicited data and explanations for such use have ranged from first language interference to target language input. In this paper, my aim is to look into the use of the progressive in authentic spoken L2 English from a fresh, more communicative perspective, namely that of English as a lingua franca. The main focus is on finding out whether the use of the progressive is really ‘extended’, and if so, does this cause problems in communication. At the end, an explanation for the characteristic use of the progressive in ELF is attempted. The data for the study comes from an academic ELF speech corpus, ELFA.