This paper argues that violence in society can be reflected in the microcosm of the classroom, primarily taking the form of a range of bullying behaviours, and that TESOL educators can play a role in addressing conflict by connecting individuals and communities through a dialogic approach to TESOL. The article goes on to describe the nature of…

This paper focusses on language and education issues in Malaysia as they have unfolded in the context of nation building, societal multilingualism and globalization from independence to the present day. The paper first examines the origin and nature of language and medium-of-instruction policies in Malaysia and the rationale for them. Secondly, it…

Research in both the anthropology and sociology of education has increasingly come to consider the institutional effects of migration, globalization, and transnationalism on learning environments. Yet, most studies examining transmigration and education have only looked at migrant children in schools rather than at the "transitions" they…

It is widely acknowledged that globalization has made a considerable impact on multidimensional aspects of human life including the language policies of many countries. This article examines the adjustment of Turkey's language policy in response to the global influence of English at different levels of Turkish national education, including its…

By centralizing the issue of test fairness in language proficiency assessments, this study responds to a call by researchers for developing greater social responsibility in the language testing agenda. As inquiries into language attitude and psychology indicate, there is an underlying uncertainty pertaining to the validity of test use and score…

This article reports on year-long critical ethnographic study conducted in a Singapore school and examines how the standard English language educational policy is interpreted by a Secondary 3 (Grade 9) female student from China. She is a member of an exclusive group of academically able students who has been carefully recruited by the local…

Drawing on a study of current language use in a rural community in Japan, we question to what extent English actually does serve today as a lingua franca in multilingual, internationally diverse communities. Specifically, we report on a critical ethnography of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non-English-speaking immigrants,…

This paper describes the cultural semantics of internet courses in American accent. Such courses are offered by corporate providers to specific groups of customers: people in search of success in the globalized business environment. The core of such courses is an order of indexicality which stresses uniformity and homogeneity, producing an…

The move of the University of Southern California to eliminate its German department in order to shift resources to Asian languages has sparked a debate about the relative importance of learning European languages. College administrators seem to assume that global shifts in economic power call for changes in the distribution of their budget for…

In spite of the urgent need for research into the socio-political contexts of the teaching and learning of English as a second/foreign language, the predominant paradigm of inquiry into EFL in the Chinese context still focuses on the functional aspects of second language education. In order to provide a critical understanding of the larger context…

Past decades have seen a growing assumption worldwide that national governments should provide "English for Everyone" (EFE) as a core component of their school curricula. Personal and national benefits expected from such English provision are generally expressed in terms of developing learners' abilities to communicate in English. Despite enormous…

The paper explores how we think of English and "English Studies" in present-day Europe. It questions the apparent neutrality of the term lingua franca by suggesting a more differentiated set of terms. It relates the current consolidation and expansion of English to processes of global Americanisation and Europeanisation. The European…

Last year the author had the pleasure of working with a team of dedicated teachers in an alternative high school setting on the implementation of a grant she had written for their program. The grant was the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act grant, federally distributed to the states. As the grant writer and teacher…

Based on longitudinal data from a three year ethnographic study, this article uses discourse analytic methods to explore the literacy and social practices of three adolescent English language learners writing in an online fan fiction community. Theoretical constructs within globalization and literacy studies are used to describe the influences of…

In our second millennium, oral translation has become very significant due to the speedy globalization phenomenon. However, many elders in Taiwan might not effortlessly integrate into this global village because they did not obtain their opportunity of learning English in their childhood. Therefore, some of the bosses of industries or…