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This paper reports the results of a November 2008 survey sent to 899 Japanese college graduates of computer science and computer engineering courses regarding their use of English in the workplace since graduating from the university. The results, based on a 17.4 % response rate, indicate that the most frequent English-language tasks for computer specialists in the professional workplace in Japan are the reading of manuals and instructions (for installation, etc.), and the writing of email, faxes, and business letters. Englishlanguage speaking and listening tasks are reported by respondents to be not as common in the workplace as English-language writing and reading tasks. Findings suggest that academic institutions training engineers in non-English-language environments should avoid an institutional bias toward English for research purposes by balancing curricula between future professional and workplace needs of the majority of graduates and the needs of faculty for trained graduate students within the academy.

This volume explores contrastive rhetoric for audiences in both ESL contexts and international EFL contexts, exposing the newest developments in theories of culture and discourse and pushing the boundaries beyond any previously staked ground. The book presents a comprehensive set of empirical investigations involving a number of first languages; 13 of the 17 authors are English-as-a-second-language speakers, many working in non-US contexts. This work develops a coherent agenda for contrastive rhetoric researchers, studying genres such as school writing, grant proposals, business letters, newspaper editorials, book reviews, and newspaper commentaries. Four chapters provide ethnographies and observations about contrastive rhetoric and the teaching of EFL and ESL. The book ends with a look to the future, suggesting it is more accurate to use the term ‘intercultural rhetoric’ to account for the richness of rhetoric variation of written texts and the varying contexts in which they are constructed.

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Since pragmatic competence and grammatical competence are two distinct aspects of communicative competence (Bachman, 1990), a high level of grammatical competence may not lead to a high level of pragmatic competence, rather it can be best developed through immersion in the target language. In this respect, this paper addresses three research questions within the context of an immersive language program in an EFL setting: 1) Does instruction in an immersive language program have a significant effect on language learners’ general language proficiency? 2) Is there any significant relationship between language learners’ general language proficiency and their pragmatic competence? 3) Is there any significant relationship between language learners’ level of language contact and their pragmatic competence?In the experiment, Japanese first-year college students (n=18) were assessed through TOEFL PBT at the start of a one-year language immersion program. The subjects thereupon participated in an intensive language program. At the end of the academic year, all subjects took another TOEFL PBT along with a pragmatic competence test (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009) and a language contact survey. The statistical findings of this study demonstrated a significant positive effect for immersive language program on general language proficiency. However, the findings found no significant association between general language proficiency and pragmatic competence and only a weak correlation between language contact and pragmatic competency. This suggests that developing general linguistic proficiency and immersive language contact with a target language do not automatically ensure the acquisition of pragmatic competence.