Usage of definite and indefinite articles is known to vary across different varieties of English, especially in the outer circle. As a semantic/pragmatic category, definiteness is notoriously slippery to define -- is it uniqueness, familiarity, inclusiveness or identifiability? Literature has shown that the lack of an agreed definition can…

The ownership of English has been hotly debated for a long time by researchers in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). World Englishes expand the ownership of English from Inner Circle countries to Outer and Expanding Circle countries based on Kachru's (1985) Three Circle Model. In light of this, it can be claimed that World Englishes…

It is pertinent to observe that the vagaries of the English language grammar constitute a major problem in the teaching and learning of English in a second language situation like Nigeria. The inherent structural irregularities within the English language have made it difficult for users and learners of English to grapple with the unconventional…

Despite the accumulated body of debates surrounding English as an international language (EIL), and stronger orientations towards mutual intelligibility, little research has been done on teachers' attitudes towards English pronunciation pedagogy in ELT classes. To address this gap, this study explores the perceptions of 352 English teachers from…

As the third largest nation of English speakers, the Philippines has become a popular destination for English language learning, especially for people in South East Asia. Yet, however you dress up popularity, we have to look beyond the headlines and see what kind of narrative is being constructed. A closer examination of detailed empirical…

Although world Englishes and various teaching practices in English as an international language (EIL) have been recommended for English language curricula, the effectiveness of including a variety of Englishes in such curricula has not been fully examined. This small-scale study investigated the effectiveness of exposure to world Englishes among…

Recent studies claim that second language learning influences learner identities. In the light of globalisation, learners of English invest in this powerful language of career and social enhancement, which is simultaneously an investment in their new identities. Learners of English, particularly in EFL countries such as Japan, strive to acquire…

Compliments are expressions of positive evaluation that commonly occur in everyday conversational encounters. This paper aims at raising second language cross-cultural pragmatic awareness through investigating the use of complimenting expressions in Palestinian Arabic which are related to certain social variables, namely, gender, age, education…

This study investigates the relative impact of verbal expression and tone of voice when native speakers of English form an impression of non-native speech. Four expressions of inquiry uttered in two tones by non-native speakers were judged by native listeners and analyzed using an ordinal Probit model. Plain expressions received lower scores than…

English has become an international language which people use to communicate with others to achieve a variety of purposes. Traditional English language teaching (ELT) pedagogy tends to promote native-like competence as the ultimate goal of English language learning. However, many scholars have criticized such a traditional teaching orientation and…

This paper, through the use of Joycean narrative inquiry, offers a qualitative narrative analysis of two types of language input the South Korean community was exposed to when the doors opened to a large number of western teachers in 1993 (i.e., General American and Received Pronunciation). Specifically, this paper provides examples of lexical…

In the past decades, interests in L2 (English as a second language) students' language socialization in academic communities have increasingly grown since more and more L2 students have enrolled in universities in the Western world. Previous studies centered on L2 students' attempts to obtain academic discourses as well as linguistic and cultural…

This study explores wh-in-situ in CamE within Chomsky's (1998) Theory of Attraction. The data, both written and spoken, come from different sources. Given that we are a speaker of the language, part of the data come from our intuitive knowledge and everyday conversations with friends, students and colleagues. The other part is from a scrutiny of…

This paper presents a descriptive investigation on verbal and written use of past-time inflectional marker -"ed" by Indonesian English majors. Given that English has a foreign language status in Indonesia, acquiring grammatical forms and specific to this study, the -"ed" inflection, is challenging to learners. Difficulties in…

Native-speakerism is an ideology in English language teaching (ELT) in which so-called "native speaker" teachers, and the culture they are believed to represent, are perceived to be norm-providing both for the English language and for the ways in which English is taught around the world. While native-speakerism has been written on…