Impact of International Education on Students Attitude toward English as Lingua Franca

Abstract

Abstract-English has long been widely used as a lingua franca (ELF) for intercultural communication and inevitably evolved into various varieties due to its nativisation and localization in different contexts. Its recognition and acceptance, accordingly, are crucial for successful intercultural communication, a goal of international education in higher educational settings. Much research on ELF or world Englishes has been conducted and has findings related to attitudes toward the sociolinguistic reality due to the use of ELF. However, sporadic studies have been conducted on attitudes towards ELF of the students in settings where international education of different forms are provided, and none has been done to compare impacts of these forms on students' ELF attitudes. Therefore, the study introduced in this paper aimed to investigate ELF attitudes of students studying in two types of programs in the same university, one type (the first type) with English as instructional means for all courses and to local students and their international classmates and the other (the second type) with English used only in the 4-year English classes. Questionnaire data were collected and analyzed statistically. Results of the study show significant differences in attitudes of the two groups and have implications for the international education to students in higher educational settings.

The Impact of ELF Concepts on Pre-service English Teachers: Instructor and Student Perspectives

“…There has also been an increasing number of empirical studies conducted in Taiwan on the topic of English as a lingua franca (Wang & Ho, 2013; Chien, 2014; Ke & Cahyani, 2014; Tsou & Chen, 2014). Most of these studies examined students' attitudes toward different varieties of English (Chien, 2014), with some focus on comparing the perceptions of ELF concepts among groups of students with varying levels of exposure to English (Wang & Ho, 2013; Ke & Cahyani, 2014; Tsou & Chen, 2014). However, as little attention has been given to the effect of coursework on the development of ELF concepts, the present study, in an effort to expand upon the work already done in Taiwan, aimed to explore how an instructor's goals and expectations in a graduate course on World Englishes matched students' perceptions.…”