Many people involved in international education, including students and parents, engage in a stepping-stone discourse that identifies English-medium learning in non-Western countries as a preparatory stage for postsecondary education in Western destinations, with the ultimate goal to secure competitive employment. The present study examines how…

As China is increasingly occupying the world's attention, its explosively expanding economical and political clout has also been felt in the applied linguistics domain, with the discussion on China's/Chinese language issues growing by leaps and bounds (e.g. China's English education policies, Chinese language classes in the West). Amid the world's…

Drawing upon Kachru's concentric circles of English, the present study explores whether middle-class Japanese students who chose to study English solo at private language schools in Singapore diverge from many others who (wish to) study inner-circle English. The study is stimulated by the repeated interdisciplinary findings that, in spite of the…

Drawing from social identity theory and its categorization process, the present study crossexamines Japanese students' contrastively different attitudes toward Asians and European (-looking) people in two different contexts: (1) Japanese students in the overseas English language school context who perceive a sense of solidarity with other Asian,…

The present study, which stems from a critical approach to common perceptions about ESL learners in the TESOL community, examines the perspectives of Japanese-speaking staff in Canadian ESL institutions on their students' school performance. From September 2003 to April 2004, qualitative data were gathered from 11 staff members through mail…

This study is part of a larger investigation into Japanese students' use of English and friendship buildup inside and outside Canadian English as a second language (ESL) institutes. Both qualitative and quantitative data were garnered primarily from formal in-depth interviews with nine Japanese students and questionnaire surveys with 216 students.…