Taking ELF off the shelf: Developing HE students’ speaking skills through a focus on English as a lingua franca

•HE group work requires linguistic, cognitive, physical and social & emotional skills.•Speaking demands in HE group work align with ELF principles.•EAP and academic skills support units do not cater satisfactorily for speaking demands.•Oracy support in higher education needs to move into the mainstream. This paper explores how principles derived from English as a lingua franca (ELF) research (e.g. accommodation, strategic competence) can provide insights into the speaking demands of group work in Anglophone EMI settings which includes native speakers as well as non-native speakers. The paper maps data gathered through interviews with first year undergraduate students against Mercer et al.’s (2017) oracy framework. It shows that students draw on a combination of linguistic, cognitive, physical and social & emotional skills, many of which align with ELF principles. However, current frameworks of support for speaking demands in HE (EAP and academic skills) lack focus on dialogic speaking, pay little heed to ELF findings and cater for native speakers and non-native speakers separately despite their needs being similar. The paper argues that a focus on ELF can contribute to the development of speaking support which sits at the centre of students’ academic journey and encourages better interactions between native and non-native speakers.