This paper examines the discursive construction of Taiwan's envisioned identity as a Mandarin-English bilingual nation, encapsulated in its recent "2030 Bilingual Nation" policy. Through the lens of imagined community, this paper analyzes the blueprint for the policy to parse out the kinds of (international) ties the Taiwanese government…

Analytical writing poses particularly challenging, yet often overlooked, language demands that need attention in educational research and practice. In this article, I discuss the Core Analytical Language Skills (CALS) construct and its relevance for school reading and writing. CALS refer to the set of learners' school-relevant language resources…

This article explores the linguistic tension resulting from the English-medium instruction policy at a state university in the UAE. The article is informed by a critical theoretical approach that views language policy from the vantage point of both Arabic and English. It argues that, contrary to the stated national and institutional goals, the…

The recent developments concerning the use of foreign languages in the academic world have strongly favoured English, which has become the preferred medium for international communication in many contexts. This spread of English as a lingua franca has had relevant implications for teaching and research purposes, due to the need for a common…

World has a new mania of ENGLISH learning. English as a language of learning or scholarly production and advanced studies, as well as the language of business and diplomacy has increased throughout the world but in China, its increasing trend as the language of instruction and learning in the last quarter century has received much more importance.…

In Japan, neoliberal discourses rationalize English language proficiency as a pathway to meritocratic reward and success in the global knowledge economy. With this ideology in mind, this review engages the market orientation of English domestically and the causative implications of class-distinguished capital. Specifically, Bourdieu's theory of…

English Medium Instruction (EMI) in universities continues to grow as an educational phenomenon and increasingly is attracting the attention of researchers, particularly researchers who are applied linguists. Starting with a definition of EMI and with the challenges that any working definition poses in the many contexts in which EMI is said to be…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has long been considered a global policy in language education. It has been borrowed and adopted by different polities across the world. However, it is still not clear why the CEFR, intended for European usage, has become a ubiquitous tool for overhauling the quality of teaching and…

Monolithic views of languages predominate in linguistics, applied linguistics, and everyday discourse. The World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca, and Critical Applied Linguistics frameworks have gone some way to counter the myth, highlighting the iniquities it gives rise to for global users and learners of English. Here, I propose that…

We investigate the extent to which language versions (English, French and Arabic) of the same science test are comparable in terms of item difficulty and demands. We argue that language is an inextricable part of the scientific literacy construct, be it intended or not by the examiner. This argument has considerable implications on methodologies…

As a result of internationalisation, many universities in northern Europe have adopted English as a medium of instruction. At the same time, recent language policies have reinforced the importance of the national language(s) in the academic domain. Parallel language use was introduced and institutionalised in order to ensure students' right to…

This article examines recent proposals in Vanuatu for a new, plurilingual education system. The article discusses these proposals with reference to three principles of plurilingualism upon which the proposals are ostensibly based: the need to value the linguistic repertoires with which children start school, the development of further linguistic…

As part of the "Bridging the Language Gap" project undertaken with 86 State and Catholic schools across Queensland, the language competencies of Indigenous students have been found to be "invisible" in several key and self-reinforcing ways in school system data. A proliferation of inaccurate, illogical and incomplete data…

This article describes and analyzes how rural Nicaraguan teachers and NGO leaders are working with a US university-based team to develop a locally responsive, critical, and inquiry-based approach to the Ministry of Education requirement for English in secondary school. This requirement has placed a new and challenging expectation upon rural…

The status of English as a global language has played a significant role in contemporary language education policies across the world. In East Asia, the hegemony of English has been reflected in a number of central governments' policies of recruiting native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) to participate in English language education. This paper…