Roughly 90,000 taxi drivers in Beijing learned English in preparation for the Summer Olympic Games (Beijing 2008) of some 600,000 total residents of the city that have jumped on the English bandwagon in the past few years (People's Daily, 2001). China is a country of nearly a billion and a half people, most of whom now begin learning English at the age of ten (Dong, 2005: 11). A simple Google search for ‘English in China’ yields more than 36,000,000 results! It cannot be argued that English is unpopular in the Middle Kingdom. With so many learners there, it stands to reason that a variety of English peculiar to China would eventually develop, and there is much evidence to suggest that it has already begun.

English is used as an important means of international and intercultural communication around the world more than ever. Because of its widespread use in the global context, non-native speakers of English around the world outnumber native speakers by far (Crystal, 1997). According to Kachru and Nelson (1996: 79), ‘accepting even cautious estimates, there must be at least three nonnative users of English for every old-country native user’. A similar phenomenon is also observable in the English Language Teaching (ELT) profession, with the vast majority of teachers of English as a second and foreign language in the world being non-native speakers.

In an article published in English Today in 2005, Niu and Woolf contend that:

THIS STUDY investigates the extent to which English is used in shop signs and windows as part of the names of businesses and other premises, and of notes, advertisements, and slogans in the city of Veles, in Macedonia: a country in south-eastern Europe established in 1991, after the disintegration of Communist Yugoslavia. It is situated in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula, and borders on Serbia, Albania, Greece, and Bulgaria. Macedonian, a Slavonic language, is its official tongue: the native language of around 66.5% of the population, while Albanian is native to approximately 22.9%. Other languages used in Macedonia are Turkish, Serbian, Romani, and Rumanian.

Over the past few decades, studies of dialect levelling have concluded that phonological convergence amongst varieties of British English is rife. This review attempts to demonstrate the opposite, in the variety of English spoken in Liverpool. Despite various media reports predicting the death of Liverpool English, evidence is provided here that the variety appears to be resisting the innovation of ‘T-glottalling’, a feature which is frequent elsewhere, and instead shows signs of divergence from any kind of supra-local regional norm.

An outline of the three social dialects and hybrid style of a vigorous ‘New English’

An inquiry into undergraduates' preferences, with repercussions regarding the nature and use of a distinctive ‘China English’. For many years, the standard varieties of British and American English have been accepted and promoted as the only internationally acceptable forms of Standard English, a view that has however, in recent years, been challenged in studies associated with ‘World Englishes’ and ‘English as an International Language’ (EIL). Within such frameworks, some linguists in China have proposed that ‘China English’ as an actual or potential standard variety should stand alongside the standard varieties of British, American, and other Englishes. If so, it follows that Chinese teachers would be better able to teach this variety than imported native English speakers. In order to investigate Chinese students' views on such matters, a research project was undertaken with subjects from eight universities in the People's Republic of China. The data gathered from questionnaires, group discussion and interviews indicate that Chinese students are positive towards both EIL and China English and that this in turn influences their preference for a Chinese rather than a native-speaker teacher of English.

Hamid & Baldauf's (2008) labelling of the term ‘bogged down’ within the Bangladeshi ELT context and their prediction about the outcome of the English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP) appear to be true. While Hamid & Baldauf (2008) endeavour to present the poor ELT reality of rural Bangladesh, the current paper aims to explore the problems that make ELT ‘bogged down’ in Bangladesh.

For a distinctive variety of English to subsist and be acknowledged in Hong Kong, localization is not enough. Indigenization through general acceptance is also necessary, but will not easily be forthcoming, regardless of the claims and assertions of linguists in Hong Kong or elsewhere regarding the existence of a distinctive ‘Hong Kong English’. In addition, Hong Kong teachers of English will not accept or adopt distinctive local usages in their classrooms, regardless of the everyday use of such usages. The sociolinguistic situation is increasingly triglossic, in terms of the three languages Cantonese, Putonghua, and English, each of which has distinct functions in terms of Hong Kong, mainland China, and the world at large. A dominant ideology of linguistic purism impels people to seek outside standards with regard to both English and Putonghua, and to deny that there is a viable local variety of English, despite the length of time that the language has been used in Hong Kong.

An analysis of the use of English in Polish magazine advertisements

This survey considers the emergence of English as a language shared across the European Union in particular and the European continent at large, and together with its distinctive ‘lingua franca’ dimension among the mainland European nations. It considers in particular the situation of ‘non-native speakers’ who regularly use the language as well as the concept of a ‘Euro-English’ in general and the Swedish, ‘Swenglish’ and English relationship on the other. It concludes by considering the liberation of non-native users from ‘the beginning of native-speaker norms’.

A discussion of the sociolinguistic risks faced by the People's Republic of China in rapidly opening up to Western influences in both economic and linguistic terms. The writers argue against what they consider a currently over-enthusiastic adoption of English in which ‘a Westernised China … might more aptly, if ruefully, be referred to as “Chingland”.’

In Vietnam, the history of the English language and English education has a direct bearing on politics, economy and social affairs (Wright, 2002), and is particularly tied up with the reform policy known as Doi Moi, which was adopted by the sixth National Congress of the Communist Party in 1986. Doi Moi has brought about huge achievements in terms of gross domestic product growth and foreign direct investment attraction (Thanh & Duong, 2009). These achievements have had a profound impact on the development of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Vietnam.

Kachru's (1992) Eccentric Circles framework has been very influential in understanding and explaining trends in the unprecedented spread of English around the world. However, so far the research within the World Englishes paradigm has focused mostly on Inner and Outer Circle countries and their English varieties (Seidlhofer, 2009), rather than Expanding Circle countries. While Expanding Circle countries in Asia (e.g. Chang, 2006) or parts of the European Union (e.g. Coleman, 2006) have been gaining increasing attention in recent years, Expanding Circle countries like Turkey have not been examined to the same degree. Notable exceptions include Doğançay-Aktuna (1998), Büyükkantarcı (2004), and Selvi (2011), which we summarize below. As in many Expanding Circle countries, the spread of English has not been equally distributed in all domains of life in Turkey. For example, little is known in the field regarding English in the higher education context compared with other domains, such as language policy, business, or media, both in Turkey and in other Expanding Circle countries. We address this issue through this study.

In this paper I wish to respond to the article published in ET94 by Saraceni while at the same time providing some clarifications concerning the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF). In his article Saraceni raises three main questions (and a number of related debatable comments which I will quickly deal with in my final remarks) regarding: 1) the nature of ELF and its speakers, 2) the relationship between ELF and the World Englishes (henceforth WE) paradigm, and 3) the distinction between form and function. I will address each of these questions, and in so doing consider a number of notions concerning the ELF research field.

An interim report on the influence of the Maori language on English

In the case of the status of English in Hong Kong, most ‘new Englishes’ classification schemes have been either controversial or inconclusive. Dynamic models seem to be more promising, and these predict two things. First, a trend of ‘linguistic schizophrenia’, where people are exonormative in ideal – holding to the ideals of native speaker English – but endonormative in practice – in actual fact, speaking their own local variety. Second, the future ongoing development and eventual acceptance of the new variety. This article aims to shed more light on some of the complexities surrounding the issue of the status of English in Hong Kong. It undertakes an analysis of the attitudes of local English speakers towards the existence and nature of their own variety, perceptions of their own linguistic behaviour, and attitudes towards norms. The significance of the findings is evaluated in the light of dynamic models postulated by Kachru (1983) and Schneider (2003, 2007). The Hong Kong data present a classic case of Kachru's ‘linguistic schizophrenia’, and confirm the placement of Hong Kong English at the beginning of Schneider's Phase 3 of nativization. The future possibilities for the variety are also discussed.

In the past 30 years, China's open-door policy and rapid economic growth have been accelerating English as a foreign language (hereafter EFL) teaching in an unprecedented way. To facilitate the learning process for students, English teachers in China have switched from using traditional ways of teaching English to adopting a variety of modern English teaching methods from the West (Rao, 2002). Of all these imported methods, Communicative Language Teaching (hereafter CLT) is the most popular and widespread one in Chinese schools. However, conflicts have appeared in the process of this transformation. On the one hand, the Chinese government and education administrators are aware of the importance of English communicative competence as contact with foreigners speaking English increases. On the other hand, some problems in the current English teaching prevent teachers from getting their students involved in the communicative activities in their teaching process. They still cling to the traditional teaching methods and techniques. In this paper, I trace the development of EFL teaching in China, analyze some difficulties and challenges that EFL teachers and learners must face, and look at the prospects for EFL teaching in China in the future.

THE ARTICLE ‘Singlish’, in which Duncan Forbes describes the background and nature of the English spoken by Singapore Chinese students, interested me greatly, not only because I always read with great pleasure the reports and discussions on world Englishes, but also because I myself am a Chinese English teacher and teach English in China.

An analysis of African American English in South Korean hip hop. English is rarely used in face-to-face terms in South Korea, but the use of English in commerce and entertainment is not such a rarity. The presence of English expressions in advertising and pop lyrics is no longer considered extraordinary. Lee (2006) reports that 83.75% of 720 South Korean TV commercials use some type of English, and only 16.25% of advertisements rely exclusively on Korean. Pop music is another discourse space in which English is fairly frequently used, occurring in more than 50% of pop song titles. A detailed analysis of the frequency of English in South Korean pop music (SK-pop) is reproduced.