The spread of English as a global language has sparked debate over how language should be taught and learned and the optimal connection between traditional and Global Englishes (GE) approaches to teaching English as a second/foreign language. According to the GE approach, teaching and learning English might focus more on different contexts than…

Over the past few decades, many Southeast Asian governments have promoted English language education (hereafter ELE) as a linguistic pathway for developing human capital and improving global economic competitiveness of their nations. However, Kirkpatrick (2017. Language education policy among the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).…

Migration has become a vital element of the Bangladeshi economy, which has led to an increasing focus on providing Bangladeshis with the skills needed on the international labour market. English is often cited as one of these skills, and previous research has shown that a primary reason why Bangladeshis wish to learn English is due to its…

In this article, the reviewers, Lee-Tat Chow and Peidong Yang compare and contrast "Desiring TESOL and international education," by Raqib Chowdhury and Phan Le-Ha, London, Multilingual Matters, 2014, 288 pp., £29.95 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-783-09147-8 with "Transnational education crossing 'Asia' and 'the West'," by Phan LeHa,…

The concept of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has recently caused a great deal of controversy, much of it based on a misunderstanding of ELF. In this presentation, I shall first provide a brief history of lingua francas and then compare and contrast two major Asian lingua francas--Bahasa Indonesia and Putonghua--in order to show how different…

Much research on world Englishes (WE) since the 1980s has yet to impact significantly upon recent applied linguistics work in the areas of instruction, curriculum, testing and policy. Much of the received wisdom has been informed by the paradigm established by the earlier study of International English (IE) and its attendant foci in teaching…

The most outstanding characteristic of language in education policy for South Asia (SA) is its multilingualism. All through recorded history the seven countries that constitute SA have been multilingual. For at least the first two decades of their existence as sovereign states the large nation states of SA failed to take into account this…

The 12 issues of the second language teaching and research journal, spanning 1988-1993 contain articles on a variety of language teaching and learning issues. A substantial proportion concern English-as-a-Second-Language instruction, both general and academic, in a number of Southeast Asian cultural contexts. Regional variations of English are…