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This paper concerns English‐medium instruction (EMI) and begins with an overview of issues relating to EMI initiatives in higher education as documented in the literature. Following this, the case of a Japanese university's attempt to introduce EMI into the curriculum of a newly setup liberal arts faculty is discussed. Conclusions about challenges that can follow policy initiatives to introduce EMI are drawn from this discussion. Outcomes and implications of different ways of understanding and/or conceptualizing the role of English in higher education and EMI are examined critically. The issues surfaced have implications for EMI policy making and implementation, bearing in mind the negotiations that need to take place given the workings of opposing forces: (1) those which reify homogenizing discourses about language, power and education; versus (2) those which accommodate the contextually particularized aspects of teaching and learning and the characteristically heterogeneous and intersectional nature of teacher and learner subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: In the new European higher education space, Universities in Europe are exhorted to cultivate and develop multilingualism. The European Commission's 2004-2006 action plan for promoting language learning and diversity speaks of the need to build an environment which is favourable to languages. Yet reality indicates that it is English which reigns supreme and has become the main foreign language used as means of instruction at European universities. Internationalisation has played a key role in this process, becoming one of the main drivers of the linguistic hegemony exerted by English. In this paper we examine the opinions of teaching staff involved in English-medium instruction, from pedagogical ecology-of-language and personal viewpoints. Data were gathered using group discussion. The study was conducted at a multilingual Spanish university where majority (Spanish), minority (Basque) and foreign (English) languages coexist, resulting in some unavoidable linguistic strains. The implications for English-medium instruction are discussed at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the premise that not much is known about how English modal verbs are used to express politeness in Non-Native English speaking (NNEs) contexts. It explores the use of the past and non-past forms of the request modals will and can in Brunei, a NNEs country located in Southeast Asia. Specifically, it examines the use of these modals in the Request for Corrective Action (RCA) move in personal complaints written to the local English-language newspaper by local Bruneian speakers of English. In addition, reasons for a particular usage are extrapolated from those elicited from a questionnaire carried out among local university students. This paper provides an exploratory study of modal verb use from a pragmatics perspective, with the purpose of investigating the extent to which the request modal verbs will/would and can/could express the attitudes of the complainant when it comes to requesting corrective action in complaints of a personal nature. The findings yielded a number of surprising observations that highlight the different ways in which these English request modal verbs are perceived and used in a NNEs context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to illustrate a pedagogical framework for teaching creative writing in English in the Chinese context. The discussion has been informed by more than three years of teaching to sophomores of the Department of English at Sun Yat-sen University. Creative writing courses in English are few and far between in Chinese universities at present, but the popularity of such courses may grow as teachers come to see their value in not only improving students' written proficiency in English, but also in contributing to critical thinking and creativity conducive to students' education in the widest sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes written discourse generated in response to an open-ended questionnaire administered to 136 students at two different universities in the southwestern United States and to 15 non-American students at a large Danish university. The questionnaire aimed to inspire reflection about the impact of the global rise of English on American mother-tongue speakers of English as well as on those who do not have English as a mother tongue, especially with respect to the question of mono vs. multilingual practice. Most American and non-American respondents represented the learning of a foreign language as something American mother-tongue speakers should do but as something which is not necessary. There was widespread, though not unanimous, agreement that English is necessary for non-mother-tongue speakers. Responses are also grouped, discussed, and analyzed in terms of the instrumental, multicultural, or mix of multicultural and instrumental logic used. The author is especially concerned with the intersections between the global hegemony of English and the learning of foreign languages. The study and analysis conducted here offer insight into these intersections. Given that so much is at stake in terms of the relationship between the global expansion of English and foreign language learning, the author concludes that further research into this relationship is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports research undertaken at a prestigious university in Phnom Penh in late 2007. The views of lecturers who teach the BEd (TEFL) degree and their students were canvassed in relation to the status of English in Cambodia. The students completed a questionnaire probing their views on the notion of a Cambodian English, as well as their preferences for learning different varieties of English. The lecturers discussed similar questions to those of the student questionnaires, but with more probing of actual changes in English usage in Cambodia since the country opened up to the outside world in the early 1990s. The analysis suggests some evolution of the status of English from English as a foreign language (EFL) towards English as an international language (EIL) and, surprisingly, to English as a second language (ESL). Challenges of this evolution for teachers in Cambodia are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we shall first try to define the term ‘China English’ (with our own definition of this term deliberated in the ‘ Discussion ’ section) as a performance variety in the larger conceptualization of World Englishes. Following that, we will adduce some linguistic features of ‘China English’ from the relevant literature at four levels (phonology, lexis, syntax, and discourse pragmatics) and discuss the arguments in favor of developing localized pedagogic models in Expanding Circle countries such as China. Then we will report on the findings of our research project: college teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the ideal pedagogic model of college English in mainland China –‘China English’ as opposed to a native-speaker-based standard. Our findings suggest that the preferred teaching model of college English in mainland Chinese classrooms is a standard variety of English (e.g. ‘General American’ or ‘Received Pronunciation’) supplemented with salient, well-codified, and properly implemented features of ‘China English’. The research design and overall findings will be discussed in light of a systematic comparison and contrast with those in a similar survey conducted with mainland Chinese university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a survey that assessed the attitudes toward English among university students in Macao five years after it reunited with the People's Republic of China and ceased to be a Portuguese colony. A group of 144 Macao-born and 197 Mainland-born Chinese students studying in a university in Macao were surveyed using a 22-item questionnaire. The results reveal students' strong motivation to learn English and readiness to use English as a medium of instruction. Mean comparisons using t-tests indicate that the Macao-born students are, compared to their Mainland-born counterparts, less comfortable in speaking English and less certain of whether or not Portuguese is superior to English. These differences might lie partly in the remaining influence of Portuguese as the sole official language of Macao over the past four centuries and partly in the lack of long-term language policy and English learning campaigns in Macao. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a variety of initiatives in place in our College of World Englishes, and demonstrates how they differ from traditional approaches, and the reason we believe they will have a positive impact on the education and lives of our students. Nearing the end of our third year, we still have a long way to go in developing our program, but there is a solid foundation, and the philosophy of world Englishes is acting in an organic way to create a steady flow of new ideas and programs. The implementation of these ideas will further test and strengthen the acceptance of world Englishes, and we hope this will offer an example to other institutions in Japan and other Expanding-Circle nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, recognition of the concept of ‘world Englishes’ has gradually penetrated the thinking of college English teachers, but American Standard English or British Standard English is still the only model that Japanese high school students have to learn. Therefore, students enrolled in the Department of World Englishes of Chukyo University perhaps have heard the term ‘world Englishes,’ but it cannot be said that most of them understand what the concept of ‘world Englishes’ is. All the students of the Department of World Englishes have to take the required lecture class ‘Introduction to Studies of World Englishes’ and the seminar class ‘Singapore Seminar’ for which they actually visit Singapore and take English and culture classes in their first year. A questionnaire was administrated to first-year students before and after taking these classes. This paper will analyze and compare the results of the questionnaire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks an explanation for the current tendency of female students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, to select English rather than their L1, isiZulu, for social interactions with Zulu peers. I draw onfindings on the prominent role of women in language change, recent work on language shift and changing conceptualizations of gender. I take as given macro factors and instead explore gendered self-perceptions which might predispose speakers to select one language over the other. I draw on qualitative perception and attitudinal data collected by myself and Zulu research assistants, by means of interviews and focus groups. After discussing labels commonly used, in several languages, for men and women on campus, I consider interactional goals which may be underlying the choice of English: the desire to express politeness and respect, to embody‘campus style’, to negotiate changing relations with parents, and finally, to negotiate equitable relationships with male students on campus. I conclude that this instance of growing use of English is linked to continued gender inequity in South Africa, and does not necessarily imply impending language shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the University of Pretoria as a point of reference and explicates that the use of a second language as language of learning and teaching (LoL/T) could be detrimental to the academic development of students as well as to the assessment of their progress, if the students concerned do not have the expected proficiency in the LoL/T, which, in the case of the University of Pretoria, is English. The argument is motivated on the basis of the role of language in academic training and on the proficiency of the students concerned in English. The article then lists the language and language-related problems at the University of Pretoria, evaluates the measures taken by the University to resolve these problems, and closes with a description of the language planning steps which are necessary if the language issue at the University is to be handled in a satisfactory way. Although directed at circumstances at one particular South African university it is hoped that the discussion may be applicable to similar institutions in the country, in particular institutions which formerly wholly or mainly used Afrikaans as LoL/T, and have had to adopt a dual-medium approach to training since the country's democratisation in 1994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]