Transcultural Flows of English and Education in Asian Contexts examines issues concerning the potential of English learning and teaching to go beyond the classroom and affect the multicultural realities of Asian societies. Asian societies often carry long histories and traditions that influence beliefs about identities,which are changing in our globalizing world. The authors in this volume explore the synthesis that occurs when culture is shared and re-constructed in different contexts. Specifically, the authors show how English is appropriated and refashioned through language and culture exchanges both inside and outside of traditional classrooms in East Asia (i.e., Japan, South Korea, China) and Southeast Asia (e.g.., Indonesia, Thailand). Inside the classroom, transcultural flows have the potential to result in take-up, exchange, appropriation, and refashioning of language and cultural practices that can generate transcultural realities outside the classroom. Understanding transcultural flows may also require understanding circumstances outside of the classroom—for instance, transcultural exchanges that lead to friendships and professional relationships; as companies embrace English and attempt to reach a global audience; as English facilitates access to global interaction in cyberspace; and as membership to nation states, recognition, and identity often confront the politics of English as a global language. For both teachers and students of English, the impact of transcultural connections reaches far beyond the teaching and learning experience. English connects people around the globe—even after students and teachers have finished their lessons or teachers have left the country. To examine the transcultural flows that result from English learning and teaching in Asia, this book addresses the following questions: What becomes of English when it is unmoored from local, national, and regional spaces and imaginatively reconceptualized? What are new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency? How is English rediscovered and reinvented in Asian countries where there are long traditions of cultural beliefs and language practices? How are teachers and students taking up and appropriating English inside and outside classrooms? How has English learning and teaching affected social, political, and business relationships? This book will be of interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, anthropology, and education.

This book investigates the "collision" or "synthesis" that occurs between people when cultures are shared and reconstructed in different contexts and result in hybridity. By focusing on transcultural flows the authors acknowledge the hybridity in educational concepts and practices that emerge as a result of relationships and processes that occur inside and outside of the classroom as people and their cultures come together.

This book provides a first systematic and comprehensive account of English in East and South Asia (EESA) based on current research by scholars in the field. It has several unique features. Firstly, it provides a rigorous theoretical overview that is necessary for the understanding of EESA in relation to the burgeoning works on World Englishes as a discipline. Secondly, in the section on linguistic features, a systematic template was made available to the contributors so that linguistic coverage of the variety/varieties is similar. Thirdly, the vibrancy of the sociolinguistic and pragmatic realities that govern actual English in use in a wide variety of domains such as social media, the Internet and popular culture/music are discussed. Finally, this volume includes an extensive bibliography of works on EESA, thus providing a useful and valuable resource for language researchers, linguists, classroom educators, policymakers and anyone interested in the topic of EESA or World Englishes. This volume hopes to advance understanding of the spread and development of the different sub-varieties reflecting both the political developments and cultural norms in the region.

Preferential Education Policies in Multi-ethnic China: National Rhetoric, Local Realities explores the cultural logic of China’s preferential policy measures. Similar in premise but different in practice and philosophy to American affirmative action, the preferential policies evoke controversy on all sides: from those who see the measures as insufficient to address problems of educational disparities between ethnic groups, and from those who see the measures as "reverse discrimination." Yamada shows how the policy measures attempt to manage ethnic-based contradictions and appease both majority and minority populations.

This book investigates, from a sociocultural, linguistic, and pedagogical perspective, the conceptual and pragmatic frameworks that characterize secondary language learning in a Northeast Asian context. Hadzantonis contextualizes these salient domains through an engagement with social and cultural themes such as the familial, political, as well as cultural commodities and socioeducational structures. In this way, the text employs tools such as transnational theory and performativity and develops a model that contributes to the resolution of one of the greatest economic issues of the time, that of ineffective secondary language learning.

ELF researchers have been describing the dynamic and fluid ways in which multilingual speakers shape English in transcultural communication for more than two decades now. While this work seriously challenges traditional, static, and prejudiced views of English, the diverse and variable nature of its uses and users continues to be undermined in many EFL programs around the world. This is also the case in many Latin American contexts, which have been described as fertile ground for native-speaker ideology, but where the body of ELF literature is still scarce when compared to Asian and European settings. This book is the first to bring together a series of empirical studies on the implications of ELF perspectives for communicative, educational, and policy-making practices across different Latin American countries. It not only explores how ELF perspectives can inform students and educators in these settings, but also how locally emerging voices, experiences, and research traditions can help expand ELF theorising as well. The volume generates new opportunities for dialogue and global collaboration between researchers and practitioners interested in ELF studies as a critical approach to English language use and education.

Even as Anglophone power wanes in Asia, and China and India rise, the role of the English language in the region continues to develop. How are students in Asian nations such as Vietnam, Malaysia and China itself being taught English? This much-needed overview analyzes the differing language education policies of selected countries that also include Indonesia, Japan and Sri Lanka. Noting ASEAN’s adoption of English as its sole working language, it traces the influence of globalization on English language education in Asia: in many systems, it pushes local languages off the curriculum and is taught as a second language after the national one. Informed by a comprehensive review of current research and practice in English teaching in Asia, this volume considers the many different roles English is playing across the region, as well as offering an informed assessment of the prospects of English—and Chinese—being a universal language of communication.

It has been said there are more Chinese learning English than there are Americans. We all have a sense that the first decades of the third millennium, including the effects of the global financial recession, signal dramatic changes to the shape of the world to come. China’s emergence as a superpower is one of the few certainties in this rapidly changing world. What is less well realised is the critical role which China’s decisions about English will play in the world’s communication profile. This unique volume explores this question looking at the debates on identity, cultural values and communication practices. Taking a wide-ranging view and uniquely blending both Chinese and Western perspectives the volume explores the critically important cultural consequences of mass English learning in today’s world.

This edited collection responds to a gap in the literature by presenting a much-needed examination of both the theoretical and practical aspects of teacher education for English as a lingua franca in Indonesia. Through a series of extended research-based and conceptual chapters written by experts in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in and about Indonesia, this book offers an insight into Indonesia’s unique cultural, social and institutional contexts. The content focuses on four interrelated themes: the transition of perspective from English as a foreign language (EFL) to English as a lingua franca (ELF); the knowledge base of ELF pedagogy; teacher agency and identity in ELF; and innovations in teacher education for ELF. This book is highly relevant to English teachers, teacher educators and scholars worldwide aspiring to broaden their horizon and professionalism in the teaching of ELF.

This volume provides a first systematic, comprehensive account of English in Southeast Asia (SEA) based on current research by leading scholars in the field. The volume first provides a systematic account of the linguistic features across all sub-varieties found within each country. It also has a section dedicated to the historical context and language planning policies to provide a background to understanding the development of the linguistic features covered in Part I and, finally, the vibrancy of the sociolinguistic and pragmatic realities that govern actual language in use in a wide variety of domains such as the law, education, popular culture, electronic media and actual pragmatic encounters are also given due coverage. This volume also includes an extensive bibliography of works on English in SEA, thus providing a useful and valuable resource for language researchers, linguists, classroom educators, policy makers and anyone interested in the topic of English in SEA or World Englishes as a whole.