Earticle

Many Asian countries are multilingual and multi-ethnic and have gained political and economic independence only in the last half of a century or so ago. They have the common goals of nation building, full integration with the global economy and full participation in international politics. Therefore, when formulating language policies, these countries have been confronted with similar issues though they have responded to their specific sociopolitical contexts in different ways. This paper outlines some of the major issues. One is the continued domination of English after gaining political and economic independence resulting from a complex interplay of endogenous as well as exogenous factors. The endogenous factors pertain to the need to balance the interests of social and political groups within the country whereas the exogenous factors pertain to globalization and the use of English as the lingua franca. Another major issue is the asymmetrical power relationship between those who have access to English and those who have not, both intranationally and internationally. The third major issue is the tension between cultural assimilation brought about by the domination of English and the preservation of national and ethnocultural identity.

Applied Linguistics has, since its beginning, attempted to employ principles and methods of research used more effectively and successfully by the physical sciences. Collection and analysis of language learning data has thus taken a Newtonian, cause-and-effect perspective, relying on isolation of factors, purity of experimental conditions and rigorous, quantitative interpretation. During the twentieth century, however, the “hard” sciences which had given birth to this view of the universe found it to be incomplete, and turned to more holistic ways of investigating time/space, weather, plant cell growth, and other phenomena which cannot be described or predicted in any but probabilistic terms. Complexity theory and systems theory are two examples of this new way of viewing data. Both are universally accepted in physical and social sciences, but have yet to be generally accepted in the field of language learning, largely because of difficulties associated with the identification and analysis of data. This paper examines some of these problems, and identifies some implications of systems and complexity theories for ELT teachers and-researchers.

This small-scale interview-based case study conducted in Thailand has pursued a dual thesis. The primary objective is that of an examination into the perceptions among Thai college students in Thailand towards selected English language learning strategies, their own learning experiences prior to entry to their English-medium college, and finally their beliefs concerning native- and non-native teachers of English. Its findings show a surprisingly diversified set of experiences and influences towards English language learning and their teachers existed among students upon entry to the college. A second focus of the study, that of an enquiry into a suitable methodology for this sample size and cultural setting, reveals that a semi-structured interview format was practical for the various levels of linguistic ability and conceptual awareness among students interviewed in English. Also, of some significance is the adapted methodology employed for ‘reducing’ the large amount of interview data collected. This dual focus to the study has served the purpose of not simply revealing the attitudes towards English language learning of a small group of Thai college entrants, but also informs teacher-researchers in similar settings as to appropriate interview technique and data reduction.

Research on building linguistic and inter-cultural competence simultaneously is gaining more and more attention from EFL teachers and curriculum developers. In this paper it is argued that intercultural competence entails a broader spectrum that includes cultural knowledge and ways to undertake linguistic or intercultural tasks. The case study made in a tertiary institution in southwest China indicates that intercultural language teaching tasks can facilitate tertiary students to build both linguistic and intercultural competence through participation and interaction in EFL classroom.

This study proposes integrating poetry within EFL (English as a Foreign Language) curricula. This is done by connecting the diverse activities associated with studying poems to dialogue journal writing. First, this study presents the benefits of using poetry as a resource to develop spoken and written English. Then methods are demonstrated which can be used to integrate poetry and dialogue journal writing into existing current EFL curricula. Finally, the study introduces examples of poems which have worked well with EFL students of various abilities, and presents how to integrate poetry into an EFL classroom in meaningful ways that consider the linguistic development of language learners and provide an opportunity to extend their literary experience. Samples of writing between EFL teachers and students are also included to illustrate how integrating poetry to the classroom can create diverse activities and successful outcomes. The study concludes that EFL teachers can enrich their students’ English education by employing diverse poems and activities that are enjoyable and offer many exciting possibilities.

This paper describes the analysis of the Q&A sessions of public speeches and presentations from the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English. These Q&A sessions are typically in marked contrast to the highly planned monologues that precede them and so require very different strategies from the speakers. This paper examines seven Q&A sessions from four perspectives, namely question types, pragmatics, rhetorical structures and intonation. Quantitative analyses of the data focus on the pragmatic functions and the question type of all the questions, the rhetorical structure of all the answers, and the tone choices of all the questions. Qualitative analysis of excerpts of the Q&A sessions focuses on the pragmatics, structure and intonation in order to illustrate the ways in which discourse participants manage face and negotiate meaning. Finally, the implications of the findings for learning and teaching will be discussed.

This is an on-going study to investigate bilingual proficiency of Japanese children living abroad. The research centers on bilingual proficiency in relation to age of arrival, length of stay, and language use at home in order to find out factors leading to balanced bilinguals. The project was conducted in Vancouver, Canada in 2001. This paper reports the results of the Oral Proficiency Assessment for Bilingual Children (OBC) developed by Canadian Association for Japanese Language Education. The OBC interview tests aim to examine Japanese and English proficiencies in three dimensions: basic, communicative, and cognitive. The objectives of the paper are: 1) to present the results of L1/L2 proficiencies of Vancouver survey on balanced bilinguals as case studies; 2) to find out factors leading to cognitive/academic language proficiency; and 3) to verify Cummins’ L1/L2 interdependent hypothesis and threshold hypothesis. Subjects are 17 Japanese children with the age range of 6-12 years old who study English as L2 at Canadian schools during weekdays and study L1 at the Japanese School on Saturday as heritage program. Following factors are proposed for CALP acquisition: L1 use at home, amount of reading in L1/L2, motivation for language learning, positive attitude, and socio-cultural interests.