Despite the growing stream of literature about English language education in China, there has been relatively little discussion of primary English language education. Past research has focused almost exclusively on secondary and tertiary English education. This research seeks to address this gap by examining primary English education policy. More specifically, this research provides insights into the extent to which each instance of language policy and planning can be seen as a product of its specific context. This thesis is based on an ethnographic study conducted in local education bureaus and three primary schools in Yulin, a Northwestern Chinese city with 3 million people. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA) of political discourse(s), ethnographic field notes, questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation, this study investigates the influence of macro and micro levels of policy actors in disseminating and implementing the language policy. It also evaluates the apparent match and mismatch between macro policy and micro levels of practice within the local language policy and planning context. As such, I offer a lens for studying primary English education policy in China. The combination of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and ethnography represents a methodological contribution of this research and is used as a way of seeing if there are gaps between policy and practice; and, if so, what kind(s)? Thus, the main contribution of this study to the literature on language education policy is a framework for analyzing the interaction between policy and practice. This framework combines CDA and ethnography. CDA is used to try and identify underlying ideology and power relations in politically determined educational discourse, whereas the ethnographic part of the study is used to examine and interpret the implementation of policy among local education officials and teachers. Additionally, this research extends the current literature on English education policy by identifying that a lack of communication between macro and micro policy actors is a significant reason behind poor English language education quality. On the surface, local officials and teachers follow the instructions in the political discourse, due to a somewhat rigid hierarchical structure of Chinese society. In some aspects, though, local officials and teachers might veer away from, abandon or even change policy consciously or unconsciously in their daily routines and classes. Importantly, the findings presented in this thesis try to bridge the research on language education policy and teaching and content and methods.

This is a case study of English language teachers in selected secondary schools in China. The aim of the research was to develop an understanding of the current situation regarding the teaching of the English language in Chinese secondary schools. In addition, this study sought to develop an in-depth understanding of the role played by teachers in the English language teaching and learning process. The study made use of a combination of semi-structured interviews, lesson observations and documentary analysis. The data were analysed qualitatively using the thematic analysis approach. The study showed that the learning and teaching of English language is affected by a number of factors including teachers’ willingness to engage in in-service professional development activities. The study explores some of the factors affecting the teaching and learning of English language in selected public and private secondary schools with a view to identifying ways of improving the teaching of the English language curriculum. The study established, among other things, the need for school authorities to work closely with teachers ensuring that opportunities for professional development are provided and that other logistical support systems are in place for the effective teaching of the English language in schools.

Recently, many institutions in non-Anglophone contexts have switched to using English as a medium of instruction in education mostly as a strategic response to globalisation and internationalisation. This switch has increased the intake of international students and staff, leading to the representation of diverse languages and cultures on campuses. Researchers, fascinated by such transformations, have explored issues around EMI from various perspectives, but less from a language perspective, which is largely concerned with language policy and practice. Given this gap, this research explores Turkish students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of English, by considering their institutions’ English language policies and practices from their viewpoints. In doing so, part of the aim is to discover the language ideologies guiding students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of English. Using a mixed-methods research design, this research project employed three sets of data collection tools: questionnaires, individual interviews and documentary data. The research was conducted with undergraduate students and lecturers from three disciplines of three Turkish EMI institutions located in two provinces of Turkey. To analyse quantitative data, descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, i.e. the Kruskal-Wallis tests and the Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted. To analyse qualitative data, a mixture of qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis was utilised. The results show that overall, participants have monolithic perceptions of English in line with their positive perceptions of their own English being perceived as akin to native English, and of their institutions’ English language policies and practices grounded in native English. The results also demonstrate that many participants were more negative vis-à-vis others’ English, including that of Turkish students and lecturers whose English they perceived to be not native-like. It also emerged that various language ideologies, which were found to be formed by several factors, e.g. previous educational experiences, external factors and personal aspirations, have seemed to guide participants’ normative perceptions towards English. The research has ideological and practical implications for English language policy and practice in EMI universities as well as policy makers and content teachers both in Turkey and in other similar settings. The results propose that university policymakers should revise their institutions’ current academic English language policies to make them more linguistically ‘in-line’ with the current sociolinguistic reality of English — for example, by determining more appropriate entry requirements or by providing more appropriate EAP support for students. The research also has implications for ELT and EAP practitioners regarding the teaching of English and testing. ELT and EAP practitioners are recommended to reflect on their normative practices and expectations of their students’ language use and question the appropriacy of teaching standard (i.e. native) English to students who will, most likely, use English for communication with non-native English speakers and, primarily, for instrumental purposes, such as for the purpose of carrying out their academic tasks. At a more practical level, ELT teachers and EAP instructors can adopt error correction techniques which are mainly focused on meaning and content rather than on accuracy and show tolerance to students’ divergent use of English, with an emphasis on their “Englishing,” i.e. what they can achieve by using English, particularly for assessment.

It has become undeniable that English is the global academic lingua franca to the extent that it is mostly used synonymously with globalisation at the tertiary level. This is partly due to its implementation as a medium of instruction (EMI) in an increasing number of the world’s universities. In view of this, it has become important for both language and content teachers in such contexts not only to know English, but also about English. With such a kind of knowledge, those teachers can respond to the international reality of English in their worksites. A number of studies have investigated the global role(s) of English in different university contexts and disciplines (see Dafouz et al., 2013) and how this entails certain critical issues related to its definition, varieties and ownership in international universities (see Jenkins, 2014). However, there is still value in researching English roles in different content units within the same international university to understand the context as a whole. In light of that, the present study focuses on investigating language and content teachers’ beliefs on Englishisation in their international higher education institution (IHEI). It aims to understand university English language teachers’ beliefs with regard to English varieties in academia, content lecturers’ beliefs in the areas of Engineering, Natural sciences, Social sciences and Humanities, their teaching and assessment practices with regard to the diversified uses of English enacted by these teachers (language and content) and the relationship between teachers’ overtly expressed beliefs and their teaching and assessment practices. For this end, a qualitative research approach has been implemented for this study with the use of semi-structured interviews and classroom observations as research tools. Both Qualitative content analysis (QCA) and discourse analysis (DA) were found methods of choice to approach the data set via the use of NVivo 10 software package. The findings of this study are expected to complement other studies on English in IHEIs where it reveals how irrelevant for teachers in the studied academic setting to demonstrate their native-like proficiency in English. That is, all what is required from the members in such an environment is to master the rules and norms of their own academic disciplines, as cultural models, regardless of their lingua-cultural backgrounds.

The aim of this study is to explore the impacts of social and cultural interactions on the process of foreign language learning during study abroad (SA). The empirical study focuses on female Saudi Arabian SA participants who underwent English as a second language studies in English Language speaking countries. It is known from literature that participants' ability to become proficient in a second language is affected by the extent to which such participants are able to use that language in their socio-cultural settings. At the same time, female Saudi Arabian participants have been identified in the literature as a marginalised group of learners in terms of the extent to which they are able to interact with their social and cultural settings. A major factor making these students? experience different relates to the prohibition for female Saudis to travel without a male relative accompanying them. Hence, most of these SA participants travelled with one or several members of their families, creating more complex networks of established and new connections. As such, this study focused on determining whether or not female Saudi Arabian SA participants who have had more social and/or cultural interactions while they were studying abroad gained more in language proficiency development from the SA programme than participants who did not have as much interaction. This study developed a mixed method research design that employed both quantitative and qualitative data gathering and analysis protocols. For the quantitative part of the study, surveys and tests were used to gather data on English language confidence and proficiency at different points in time, as well as on the extent of their social and cultural interactions while they were in English Language speaking countries. These data were used to determine if participants were able to gain significantly in English language confidence and proficiency from their SA programme and if there were significant correlations and associations between such gains and their levels of social and cultural interactivity. Qualitative data gathering was carried out using semi-structured interviews which sought to examine participants' experiences while they were studying abroad in greater depth and detail in order to explain how social and cultural interactions may have affected their ability to learn the language effectively. Findings suggest complex levels of interplay between social and cultural interactions and language development, which are partly in line with those of other SA students and partly appear to be unique to this cohort of learners due to their specific circumstances. More specifically, it was found that various aspects of English language proficiency, such as general proficiency, complexity, accuracy, and fluency, improved among the respondents following their undertaking of the study abroad program. The differences between individual participants in this improvement were linked mainly to the levels of social interaction they engaged in. Findings suggest that participants who engaged in high levels of social interaction were able to utilize these as a means for improving their proficiency in English. However, no sufficient evidence was found to indicate that social interaction in the SA setting was indispensable to achieving significant gains in L2 proficiency. This was because there were some participants who were observed to have gained considerably in their L2 proficiency but engaged in little social interaction with L1 speakers. On the other hand, it was found that all of the participants engaged in various instances of cultural interaction across the program, which made it difficult to determine the actual impact of cultural interaction on L2 gains. Thus, social interaction in the SA setting was established as having a positive effect on second language learning while results on the impact of cultural interaction on the same were inconclusive.

English is currently used as a global lingua franca (ELF), involving people from diverse socio-linguacultural backgrounds (e.g., Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey 2011). However, as a former English teacher, I have observed that many Japanese students see no tangible connection between themselves and ELF. Indeed, they appeared overtly pejorative about their English. To investigate this issue, my research explores two questions: 1) How do Japanese university students orient to Japanese people’s English including their own? and 2) What factors are associated with the students’ orientations, and how do these factors work to form their orientations? People’s orientations to language are theorised as language attitudes; that is, the evaluative concepts directed to a linguistic phenomenon (e.g., Niedzielski and Preston 1999/2003; Preston 2010). To answer the research questions, 95 open-ended email questionnaires from Japanese university students were collected, and analysed through qualitative content analysis (e.g., Miles, Huberman and Saldaña 2014; Schreier 2012, 2014). Also, face-to-face conversational interview data with eighteen Japanese undergraduates was elicited and analysed through the combination of qualitative content analysis and Eggins and Slade’s (1997/2004) speech functions analysis framework. Two sets of negative attitudes became apparent in my participants. The first was the perceived prioritisation of, or a perceived obsession with, ‘correctness’ in ‘standard’ North American and possibly other English as a Native Language (ENL) at the expense of effective communication. The second was a deficit perspective on Japanese-influenced English use, generally without due regard to intelligibility. In addition, it was identified that the coupling of concentration on ENL norms and adherence to North American ENL may be the only way to experience English in Japanese society. Furthermore, based on the interview data, raising ELF awareness has a high potential to alleviate such negative attitudes as expressed by my participants. Implications, mainly in Japanese English education, are offered towards the end.

Over the last four decades, the research interest on foreign language anxiety (FLA) as a distinct complex of situational anxiety has been arising in EFL setting. Especially in Chinese EFL classrooms, such an anxiety is observed frequently among Chinese learners in their English speaking apprehension. Many scholars have investigated the anxiety-provoking factors to FLA or English-Speaking Anxiety in their empirical studies within different Asian contexts and findings have shown varying associations to cultural and contextual variables. However, these cultural and contextual-subjective influences on Chinese students English speaking anxiety (ESA) have not been explored extensively or specified and most importantly, little research exists for experimenting ways to a solution through systematic teaching practice. With Stern’s (1980) proposal and the researcher’s personal experience in the subject, drama approach has inspired the researcher to take the study further. Therefore this thesis focuses on formulating theories of the nature of the English-speaking anxiety experienced by Chinese learners of English, establishing the relation between the anxiety and drama approach, and exploring the influence of a specifically-designed drama class intervention in a higher education setting. The research questions aim to answer how the level of the participants’ anxiety is influenced by the diverse factors situating in this drama English class, e.g. classroom social factors, cultural variables, teacher and learner variables. In addition, this study aims to identify the crucial factors to the ESA experienced in the Chinese context as for explicating the cultural-situational dimension and how this relates to the application of drama approach. This study reflects the nature of action research and adopts mainly qualitative and partially quantitative data collection procedures. The field work took place in a Chinese university over a period of three months. The researcher designed the course and worked as the teacher of a random group of thirteen students who reported the anxiety. The survey was included as part of the questionnaire to assess the participants’ general ESA levels, selected and reformed on existing scales. Qualitative data was obtained from the teacher’s journals, observing the class and interviewing every participant. Both group results and three individual cases were presented and analysed. The findings of this research suggest that this drama course has a positive effect on reducing participants’ anxiety to various degrees. Three types of change in the anxiety level were revealed as drastic, fluctuated and mild decrease. The decrease in anxiety was explained by the increase in self-confidence through repeated conversation rehearsals of drama plays as oral practice in a learner-friendly language environment. The potentials of creating learning interest, effective collaboration and interaction contributed to a supportive language environment, which helped the reversal of vicious cycle of ESA. The teacher’s role is also essential in facilitating such a friendly learning environment. The predictors of the anxiety are shown to link to socio-psychological factors interacting with classroom social variables. Self-confidence was found to greatly influence the anxiety level and the willingness to communicate, which was directly or indirectly connected to fears of negative evaluation, public attention, face-protection and face loss. The lack of experience in learning and using oral English was highlighted as the main source of the anxiety to affect the self-confidence. This study furthers the understanding of ESA construct in the Chinese context, and contributes to increase the methodological and socio-geographical diversity in both FLA research and action research for language programme development in drama approaches.

As English has been rapidly expanding its function and scope beyond geographical, social and racial boundaries, it is thus perceived as a bridge that connects multilingual and multicultural groups of people and serves their needs on both national and international levels. Consequently, the number of people (especially from the Outer and the Expanding Circle countries) who prefer to learn and teach English is steadily increasing every year. In English language teaching (ELT), however, non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) are frequently challenged, questioned, discriminated against, and endure prejudice from some educational stakeholders, even if they are qualified to teach English. The concept of the ideal English as a second or foreign language teacher and whether they should be a native or non-native English-speaker has been discussed intensively in ELT environments, including Thailand where this study was conducted. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this issue, the main aims of this study are to investigate the perceptions of Thai University students, native English speaking teachers (NESTs), non-NESTs, and English program administrators (EPAs) towards the construction of nativeness and its relationship to the teaching effectiveness of English teachers. To provide a clearer picture, characteristics of effective English teachers and perceptions of educational stakeholders towards differences between NESTs and NNESTs are also examined. Within this study, 301 students answered the questionnaire,while 35 participants participated in the semi-structured individual interviews (16 students, 7 NESTs, 8 NNESTs, and 4 EPAs). Mixed-research methods (quantitative and qualitative) were used to elicit the data from the participants. To achieve the aims of the study, the students’ questionnaires and semi-structured individual interviews were employed as research instruments. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the data collected from the questionnaire, whereas content analysis was employed to analyze the data collected from the interviews. The findings from the study illustrate a challenge to the cultural stereotype towards the Inner Circle country groups of people who employ English as their mother tongue and who are perceived by the majority of the outsiders (the Outer and Expanding Circle people) as an ideal or model of English teaching. In this study, the majority of the participants perceive that English no longer belongs to any particular country, nationality or external appearance. They illustrate that every English user has the right to claim ownership of English and to utilize it in the way they prefer without looking back or considering the native speaker norms. Additionally, the findings indicate that there is no relationship between the native backgrounds of the teachers and their teaching effectiveness or ineffectiveness. In other words, factors, such as, NESTs and NNESTs' birthplaces, their nationalities, the first languages they speak or their external appearance are no indication of whether they are qualified or unqualified English teachers. From the perspectives of the participants, whether a person is an effective or ineffective English teacher should be evaluated individually by looking at their Personal characteristics, Pedagogical characteristics, Cultural sensitivity, Linguistic characteristics and Professional characteristics, as the main evaluation criteria. However, the findings also reveal that NESTs and NNESTs are constructed differently by the participants according to five aspects; Cultural sensitivity, Linguistic characteristics, Pedagogical characteristics, Personal characteristics and Hiring practices, although there is no implication that one is superior to the other. Furthermore, discriminatory hiring practices, which favour NESTs, are still reported due to external pressures.

There has been considerable research on the global spread of English and its impact on English language use. In particular, there is extensive interest in how the fluid nature of the lingua franca use of English is impacting on real world communication and the consequent pedagogical implications for English language teaching (ELT) and acquisition. However, to date there has been limited research on the ways in which ELT teachers can adapt their teaching strategies to ensure that learners are equipped to use English in the real world. This study involves conducting a critical education inquiry using a Critical Pedagogy informed approach to observe Taiwanese teachers and undergraduate students of English, with the aims being to, firstly, identify the principles being employed by teachers and, secondly, to discover students’ understanding regarding learning English as a lingua franca (ELF) for real-world communication. To these ends, I posit the following research questions: 1. What learning/teaching theories and concepts inform Taiwanese teachers of English who teach for real-world communication? 2. What are students’ perceptions of learning English for the purposes of the real-world communication within the framework of Taiwanese English language education? I collected data from respondents in three universities and subsequent analysis revealed that the majority of classroom practice was geared towards teaching English as a foreign language rather than as a lingua franca that could be used in real life settings to communicate with a range of English speakers. Specifically, observation of classroom practice and interviews revealed that imitation and repetition strategies are commonly used to reproduce native English-speaking (NES) related linguacultural inputs, whereas critical, interactive, alternative and integrating approaches that are associated with lingua communication, although evident in some cases, were less engaged with. Albeit all of these strategies can serve a purpose in classroom teaching and learning, my evidence suggests that a rebalancing is needed, whereby teachers are more critical and flexible about the resources and approaches they use so as to ensure that these are suitable and context appropriate. In need of theoretical and practical support, teachers still endeavoured to explore ideas and activities for teaching and learning that were feasible in their instructional contexts in order to transcend the NES linguacultural dominance and provide lingua franca insights into classroom practices. Nevertheless, in most cases, students passively accepted the status quo. This highlighted the importance of students taking active roles in developing their own powers to be able to critically evaluate linguacultural resources and achieve balanced views on their own language acquisition and proficiency. This calls for opportunities to be created for students to legitimate their use of resources and skills to learn and use English on their own terms.

Nowadays there is a longstanding recognition in the field of English language education that teachers must continually reshape their knowledge of teaching and learning and therefore engage in continuing Teacher Development (TD). Current TD literature considers Reflective Practice (RP) to be a fundamental component of its process (Dewey 1934; Schön 1983; Wallace 1991) hence, it was the focus of this research study. However, a prevailing theory on RP assumes that development is largely deliberative and linear enabling an automatic and permanent change in teachers to better their practices (Larrive 2008; Louw, Watson and Jimarkon 2014; Vieira and Marques 2012; Vo and Nguyen 2010). More recent empirical studies have opposed this view and advanced that only given the appropriate circumstances can RP be successful in promoting ongoing teacher development (Eröz-Tuga 2013; Farrell 2001, 2008, 2012; Gün 2011; Slimani-Rolls and Kiely 2014). Accordingly, the idea under which this Reflective Practice study was carried out was oriented towards learning from experience by means of evidence-based critical thinking eased through collaboration with others (Richards and Lockhart 1994; Wallace 1991). It was precisely through evidence-based cooperative discussions that participants were able to uncover themselves as teachers bringing to the foreground how they think about what they do and why and how they have grown from their experiences. These co-constructed rationalizations enabled teachers to transform their teaching cognitions leading to new actions and practices in their classrooms. Hence, this collaborative action research was conducted with 5 in-service English language teachers from an ELT undergraduate program of a university in the central part of Mexico over a period of 9 weeks by means of 2 video recorded classroom observations and different spaces for professional dialogue such as a focus group, one on one feedback discussions and final personal interviews. Overall, this collaborative reflective practice study showed that teachers’ abilities to be critically reflective about their teaching are enhanced given the appropriate conditions which RP necessitates such as opportunity, time and assistance from others, often lacking in everyday teaching scenarios, evaluative classroom observations and traditional teacher education programs. By challenging the ‘status quo’ of classroom observations and TD in this context, this RP process helped teachers understand and reconstruct their teaching knowledge especially in terms of students’ responses to their instructional decisions and the impact this had on how their classes unfolded. It promoted an alternative way to fulfill the goal of teacher development, not through a ‘transmission’ model of education in which knowledge is simply deposited into the brains of teachers, but through a process in which teachers learn and continue to develop their skill in dialogue within a professional community (Johnson 2006; Mann 2005).