The world has become seemingly smaller with the advancements of technologies, instead of taking days to receive a written letter, it takes seconds to get an email. While the connection is obvious there still seems to be a barrier between the majority of the world's population: Language. Though it seems irrelevant in people's small communities, the…

We should seek every possible method for educating immigrants and refugees and facilitating ­communication for them--especially during the current difficult times due to the spread of a killer-­ pandemic (i.e., Covid-19). To this end, I discuss the role which "metalanguage" could play in this regard, with reference to Natural Semantic…

The presence of Africans in China has been phenomenal since the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a dramatic uptick in people from Africa coming to the major cities of China such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and Beijing. They are in the process of building linguistic, cultural, and economic bridges between their source…

This study was designed to examine the differences between two world Englishes in an effort to add to the body of knowledge relative to world Englishes and cross-cultural communication. Specifically, select grammatical differences between a group of Filipino English language teachers and a Standard American English were examined. Differences…

English is an important medium for global communication but its use in different communities is inevitably shaped by their local languages and cultures. International education research shows that differences in English language practices could introduce difficulties and stress into intercultural communication between international and host…

This paper is meant to illuminate the possibility of how world Englishes within an international setting could become similar to the confusion encountered in the Bible record of the Tower of Babel. Presented here is the trend of world Englishes as a part of an English as an international language paradigm. The discussion then proceeds to address…

North American universities depend on international teaching assistants (ITAs) as a substantial part of the teaching labor force, which has led to the idea of an 'ITA problem', a deficiency model which is framed as a divergence between ITAs' linguistic competence and undergraduates' and their parents' expectations. This outdated positioning of…

The wide use of English has given rise to the World Englishes (WE) paradigm, within which there has been a growing interest in the pedagogical implications of the varieties of English. A frequently documented rationale for the marriage between second language education and WE is that WE users should be aware of the potential problems in WE…

In this qualitative study eight international scholars and practitioners of English were interviewed in order to understand their viewpoints about how English language teaching is evolving from a role of English as a Foreign Language to one of English as an International Language in this contemporary world in which there are more nonnative…

There are now significant numbers of children who speak a language other than English when they enter the formal school system in Australia. Many of these children come from a language background that is entirely different from the school language. Many Indigenous children, however, come from creole-speaking backgrounds where their home language…

Middle Eastern students face cultural conflicts in adapting to the western value system. While feeling obligated to maintain their native culture they also need to feel comfortable with the culture of their target language. In attempting to identify with a new group, ESL students may sense a loss of membership in their native group. Culture stress…