This paper reports research undertaken at a prestigious university in Phnom Penh in late 2007. The views of lecturers who teach the BEd (TEFL) degree and their students were canvassed in relation to the status of English in Cambodia. The students completed a questionnaire probing their views on the notion of a Cambodian English, as well as their…

Research into Singapore English (SgE) has undergone many paradigm shifts from the 1970s to the present. This paper first begins with a consideration of how variation in the English language used in Singapore has been studied. It then identifies the two main varieties of English commonly described in Singapore, namely, Standard SgE (SSE) and…

This paper is based on the premise that not much is known about how English modal verbs are used to express politeness in Non-Native English speaking (NNEs) contexts. It explores the use of the past and non-past forms of the request modals "will" and "can" in Brunei, a NNEs country located in Southeast Asia. Specifically, it…

This paper examines the problem of a curriculum which promotes a standard linguistic variety in a context where non-standardisms are common in the learners' milieu. There have been curricula which try to incorporate the non-standard and have its function discussed; some have considered the non-standard a stepping-stone towards the standard; and…

This paper focuses on German teenagers and their contact with English in two different contexts: in free-time activities typically involving the mass media, and in institutionalised language learning settings at school. It draws on an empirical study carried out in German secondary schools. Its mixed methods approach combines a questionnaire study…