The Ideology of English-as-the-global-language in Taiwan’s Private English Language Schools

English is regarded as a key to globalization or internationalization and future success for Taiwan and its people. One of the most extraordinary results of English-as-the-global-language of English teaching and learning in Taiwan is private English language schools are ubiquitous. Research into how private English language schools weld together English-as-the-global-language and English teaching and learning has yet received much attention. This study aims to investigate how Taiwan’s private English language schools’ television commercials market English-as-the-global-language and what the underlying ideologies of English-as-the-global-language are. Exploring the ideology of English-as-the-global-language, Critical Discourse Analysis was employed herein to analyze 106 private English language school television commercials produced from 2000 to 2020 in Taiwan. The results indicate that English as the key to internationalization and future success is an ideology. Moreover, the ideological concept of English-as-the-global-language is central to English teaching and learning ideologies in Taiwan, such as an early start in English learning, English-only as the ideal English teaching method, and native-speaker norms in English teaching and learning.

Review of Literature on Teaching English Vocabularies Through Games to Young Language Learners

In the last two decades, learning English has become a popular activity in Iran (Sadeghi & Richards, 2015). There has been a remarkable increase in the number of private language schools in the country. In Iran, interest in English has risen due to the status of the language as a lingua franca and its necessity for technical, scientific, and economic developments. Meanwhile, vocabulary is deemed as one of the most crucial aspects of learning a language. Currently, vocabularies are taught through traditional methods; therefore, young learners lose their interest over time. This paper aims to substantiate that games are profoundly effective in teaching vocabularies and affect young learners’ motivation and engagement with the language. This paper presents a review of literature on teaching English vocabularies through games to young English language learners in Iran. It discusses the practical instructions of games and how games could be taught more effectively. It describes the suitability and implication of games and how they should be selected and implemented by teachers. Three games are introduced for teaching vocabularies and followed by a discussion on the inherent challenges of teaching vocabularies through games.

The Language Use of a Bilingual Korean Teacher and Bilingual Korean Students in a Korean Heritage Classroom

Many Korean parents in the U.S. send their children to heritage Korean language schools so that they maintain and further develop Korean as they acquire English. It is, thus, worthwhile to investigate how a Korean teacher and Korean students (as emergent bilinguals) used Korean and English in a Korean heritage classroom. The chapter addresses two research questions: (1) How did the teacher use Korean and English to make her instruction comprehensible during discussions about multicultural children's literature? (2) To what extent were there differences in the two groups of students' (Korean-American and Korean immigrant) use of translanguaging in their oral responses? The findings show that the teacher uses both Korean and English to make her instruction comprehensible and to facilitate her students' participation in class discussions. The findings further reveal differences in the two groups of students' use of language in their oral responses to multicultural texts.

Asian Immigrant Communities' Civic Participation in Cultivating Bilingualism and Biliteracy in the United States

This chapter discusses how Asian immigrant communities in the United States cultivate Asian immigrant children's literacy learning in their heritage languages. Although the United States has historically been a linguistically diverse country, bilingualism has not always been valued and acknowledged. Strong social and institutional expectations for immigrants to acquire the socially dominant language have resulted in language shifts among immigrants. Concerned about their descendants' heritage language loss, Asian immigrant communities make organized efforts to establish community-based heritage language schools. Heritage language schools play an important role in immigrant children's learning of their heritage language and culturally appropriate ways of behaving and communicating. It has also been noted that heritage language schools encounter several challenges in motivating heritage language learners. Heritage language schools should be considered as complementary education for immigrant students because they take critical responsibilities to support immigrant students' language and literacy development in their heritage languages.

INTERNATIONAL MOBILITY AND EDUCATIONAL TOURISM. CASE STUDY: ERASMUS PROGRAM AT U.S.A.M.V. IAȘI

Regardless of which perspective is analysed, in or out - going, the educational tourism in the city of Iasi is strongly related to its status as a regional center of educational polarization. Our objective is to analyse and inventorize the evolution of Erasmus international mobilities of “Ion Ionescu de la Brad” University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Iasi between 2013 and 2019. These mobilities, along with school trips, travels for seminars, conferences or symposiums, language schools and educational events shape the educational tourism in the city of Iasi. Our study is based on the statistical provided by the International Relations office of the university. The first step in our research was the investigation of the specialised literature, we continued with the analysis of the statistical data related to this subject and the creation of graphic and cartographic materials. The study area is the city of Iasi. The interpretation of the obtained results highlights a series of transformations, as the increase in the number of Erasmus+ international mobilities. This is a sign that educational tourism has a growing interest from students of this university, being an important element of the tourism development strategy of the city.

Frühe Mehrsprachigkeit in Slowenien

In many documents, the European Union has set the promotion and development of multilingualism as a goal and commitment. Although many foreign and domestic studies demonstrate the benefits of early foreign language learning/second language acquisition, and thus the development of early multilingualism, the decision to involve pre-school children in various forms of language learning is solely in the hands of parents. Parents who enrol their children in foreign language activities can choose between different private providers – language schools – as there is no foreign language kindergarten in the compulsory programme. Some kindergartens offer language classes, mostly English, given by external providers, but there is a fee for this offer. Since there is no systematically regulated foreign language teaching in preschool in Slovenia, we were interested in the attitudes of parents whose children go to kindergarten towards early foreign language learning and early multilingualism. The results of the research, which included parents of kindergarten children from all statistical regions of Slovenia, show that multilingualism has positive connotations and that parents perceive multilingualism as an added value that should be developed from childhood, as it allows children to learn about other cultures and other languages during a period that is extremely favourable for learning a foreign language, and does not represent any additional effort. At the same time, the results also clearly show that a large proportion of parents understand multilingualism to mean learning English and not necessarily other languages. However, this tells us that it will be necessary to invest quite a bit of effort in informing parents and the public about the real benefits of speaking more languages.

Russian in the multilingual environment of three Asian countries

This article provides a comparative analysis of the sociolinguistic situation in three Asian countries, India, Japan, and South Korea, which are relatively less known as countries where the Russian language is used. The aim of the study is to assess the significance of the Russian language in these countries Russian-speaking diasporas, business sphere, and education, as well as to define the characteristics of its teaching in the cultural contexts under discussion. In all these domains processes of language commodification are intensifying. The countries chosen for analysis differ in the history of language contacts, political relations with Russia, language policy, language attitudes, and as a result, residents motivation for maintaining and learning the Russian language. We discuss similarities and differences in the development of Russian speech communities. We also reflect upon linguistic and cultural hybridity, and in particular, its effect on the evolution of multilingual identities on the basis of interviews, fieldnotes, internet resources, and published data. The results show that in Japan and South Korea, the number of immigrants, students, businesspeople and mixed families using Russian is growing, and Russian language schools are popular; in India, the established relationship of peace, friendship and cooperation through various treaties continues to have its effect on the popularity of the Russian language in various spheres of life. In all the three countries Russian serves as a lingua franca for immigrants from different post-Soviet countries, which increases its value for the diasporans. The study argues that realities of diasporic life contribute to the pluricentric trends in the development of Russian.

The Ideology of English-as-the-global-language in Taiwan’s Private English Language Schools

English is regarded as a key to globalization or internationalization and future success for Taiwan and its people. One of the most extraordinary results of English-as-the-global-language of English teaching and learning in Taiwan is private English language schools are ubiquitous. Research into how private English language schools weld together English-as-the-global-language and English teaching and learning has yet received much attention. This study aims to investigate how Taiwan’s private English language schools’ television commercials market English-as-the-global-language and what the underlying ideologies of English-as-the-global-language are. Exploring the ideology of English-as-the-global-language, Critical Discourse Analysis was employed herein to analyze 106 private English language school television commercials produced from 2000 to 2020 in Taiwan. The results indicate that English as the key to internationalization and future success is an ideology. Moreover, the ideological concept of English-as-the-global-language is central to English teaching and learning ideologies in Taiwan, such as an early start in English learning, English-only as the ideal English teaching method, and native-speaker norms in English teaching and learning.

Automatic identification of synthetically generated interlanguage transfer phenomena between brazilian portuguese (L1) and english (L2)

Transfer phenomena between Portuguese (L1) and English (L2) produced by Brazilian learners are well documented in the literature. However, the identification and classification of these processes are made mainly through transcriptions, a slow and laborious process done by specialized linguists. The rapid identification of these phenomena would be of great value for software doing proficiency placement tests and could be used in language schools, distance education, computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) or by autodidacts and researchers. The present work analyzed possible techniques and tools that can be used in the automatic identification of some transfer processes. The data for the grapho-phonic-phonological transfer were synthetically generated in the Google Translate™ TTS system. Then we tested three classification algorithms to perform the identification: k-Nearest Neighbor, Centroid Minimum Distance, and Artificial Neural Networks. The results indicate that these techniques are of great value for Linguistics and for new software applications in language learning.

Investigation of Instructors' Views on the Accreditation Process of Schools of Foreign Languages

The main purpose of this study is to determine the views of instructors who work at accredited schools of foreign languages about the accreditation process that they have been through. This study follows the qualitative case study research design. The participants were 31 English instructors working at 12 different foreign language schools in Turkey. A set of semi-structured interview questions created by the researchers were used as the data collection tool. The collected data were then subjected to content analysis. It was found that documentation was the most problematic area for the institutions during the accreditation process, so it was the most labor-intensive area for the instructors. Also, it was found that there were significant improvements in the learning and teaching process at these institutions, which resulted in a higher quality of instruction. In addition, it was observed that the accreditation process triggers creation of a culture of quality and continuous development among the instructors. It can be recommended that all teaching staff should be well informed about the accreditation purpose and process, ensuring staff readiness. Furthermore, the burden of work involved in accreditation should be shared by all the staff, with a well-planned and balanced division of labor among them.