ABSTRACT Implementing mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) in the Philippines opens opportunities for learner inclusion and access, which is also in harmony with UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goal 4 aimed at achieving quality and inclusive education for all. However, recent attempts to revert to Filipino–English bilingual education foreground the ideological tug-of-war that continues to impact policymakers, researchers, educators, and, most importantly, Filipino learners. As the bilingual model is believed to be valuable to economic and technological growth, the role and relevance of MTB-MLE in a globalized world are challenged. We argue that language views espousing covert dominance continue to permeate language policy discourses in the Philippines, which can impact classroom learning and instruction. Hence, this article analyzes the historical milestones of languages in education and looks at how linguistic imperialism is entrenched in language policies. It also situates language use in the Philippines within a broader sociolinguistic context in which it operates. The article concludes with an inclusive framework on language policy implementation, the Naverin (national, vernacular, and international) model, proposing a balanced view of using various linguistic resources, which might be relevant to other multilingual societies in Southeast Asia.

ABSTRACT Cantonese English learners in Hong Kong appear to confront substantial difficulty in their development of English relative clauses, yet knowledge on learners’ development of such a language structure is limited. The present corpus-based study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses with data from written Hong Kong English and identifying quantitative and qualitative attributes of relative clauses in Hong Kong English in comparison with their counterparts in British English in a bid to inform second language grammar instruction. Language data for the study were collected from the Hong Kong and Great Britain components of the International Corpus of English. 'wh' relatives and 'that' relatives in the data were identified from untimed student essays in the corpus through concordance search. The Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis appears to be supported by data from written Hong Kong English whilst the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy and the Subject–Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are only partially supported. Relative clauses appear much more frequently in written British English than in written Hong Kong English, and some attributes of non-standard relative clauses are identified.

ABSTRACT Kanazawa University, a national university in Japan, offers an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program to its first-year students as a required subject of general education. It is an English-medium instruction (EMI) program with an English-only policy. In this article, I utilize autoethnography as a method to examine this EMI EAP program based on my experiences as a teacher while contextualizing my personal accounts in the extant studies of EAP, EMI, and English language teaching. The article reveals that West-centric coloniality and the native-speakerist myth are operating behind the program as the guiding language ideologies in ways to curtail non-native English-speaking teachers’ and students’ multilingual capacity. The article ends by suggesting potential changes the program may be able to incorporate to decolonize its current problematic pedagogical practices and to transform the program into a space where equitable linguistic sensibility is pursued and nurtured.

ABSTRACT Manglish is often associated with negative prestige, such as broken English that arises out of inappropriate direct translations from the Malay language into English. In recent years, however, Manglish has evolved into a range of different functions, particularly in computer-mediated interactions among users of Manglish, and this innovative usage is referred to as ‘modern’ Manglish. The use of modern Manglish expressions shows certain degrees of ‘playfulness’ as a common feature. In this article, we adopt a World Englishes perspective and unpack modern Manglish, comparing it with a number of other named colloquial varieties, particularly Chinglish, Singlish, and Taglish, and we argue that certain usages of Manglish may serve a positive function, so they are worth researching and analysing.

ABSTRACT This article reports an empirical study that investigates academic language challenges faced by university students in an Outer Circle context with almost four decades of English-medium instruction (EMI) education . The study also examines the relationship between students’ reported language challenges and their perceived academic success in EMI courses, as well as their self-rated proficiency in English. Quantitative analyses on questionnaire data collected from 198 undergraduate students indicate that Bruneian students did not generally experience major language-related challenges in their EMI courses, although academic writing and speaking were at times problematic. Furthermore, language challenges were found to be significant predictors of students’ perceived academic success in EMI but their self-rated English proficiency was not, suggesting that students’ beliefs about their language abilities and competence were not applied to the academic context. Finally, some implications in relation to early exposure to EMI education, and enhancing the provision of language support through English for academic purposes courses, are discussed.

ABSTRACT In today’s globalized world where English is increasingly used as a lingua franca , an increasing number of new English varieties are emerging in different parts of the world. China English (CE), as one of the fastest-growing varieties of English with the largest number of speakers, has been attracting a great deal of attention in recent years. This study aims to explore the vowel inventory of CE using an exploratory approach. Data were collected from 20 CE speakers who were recorded reading a standard elicitation list of words containing the 11 English monophthongs. Phonetic properties, phonemic contrasts, and allophonic variations of CE vowels were examined acoustically. Results provide some empirical evidence for the existence of a CE vowel system in which the vowel length contrasts are maintained, whereas the vowel quality contrasts tend to be neutralized to different extents, as compared to Inner Circle English varieties.

ABSTRACT Globalization invalidates Kachru's geography-based Three Circles model in that people communicate across all three circles. Millions of nonnative speakers use English influenced by their mother tongues and home cultures. Thus English as a Lingua Franca has become an assemblage of English of various linguacultural backgrounds. However, the Japanese are still under the deeply-rooted native speakerism and pursue 'native-like' or 'near native' proficiency. The Japanese should not be ashamed of using English with the Japanese linguacultural flavor although we should aim at English which is understandable and acceptable to all English users rather than purposefully insist 'Japaneseness' in English. Fortunately we have a large stock of English lexis as loanwords in Japanese, most of which can be used in English as they are. We have great potentialities to be good English speakers.

ABSTRACT This case study investigates the identity formation of two Japanese female English majors in Japan. In documenting and understanding how their identity formation as English users unfolds, we turned to theories on ideologies and English imperialism. In particular, we concentrated on how particular chronotopes give rise to particular constructure to identify classroom and interactive aspects conducive to English learning. It was discovered how community formation shaped by in-class discourse is crucial, impacting the formation of positive self-image as an English user. There is also an undercurrent of public discourse that can conflict and impede the realization of a competent English user identity. Given the ubiquitous and inconspicuous nature of public discourse, eradicating negative perception is challenging, but teachers’ high expectation toward the students in the form of numerous, challenging tasks along with positive feedback allowed students to reimagine their English user identity.

ABSTRACT This article discusses Japan’s idealization and adoration of English language while at the same time being an insular monolingual nation. English has been an imperative foreign language in Japan from the mid-1800s; today, English is regarded as one of the most important school subjects . However, most Japanese people hold anxiety about their English learning experiences. The average person lives with a dilemma of not being able to use English despite having learned it for many years. One noticeable by-product of the dilemma is rampant use of English loanwords in everyday Japanese language. Paradoxically, such loanwords tend to undergo lexical shifts in Japanese contexts beyond original meanings until native English speaers are unable to comprehend their meanings. This paper discusses the hypothetical reasons why English education stays unsuccessful, and (2) Japanese people love to rely on use of English loanwords (Japanese Anglicism) instead of speaking English.