The rapid transformation of English linguistic landscapes has introduced the world to newly emerging English varieties or World Englishes, which are not typically employed in the Inner Circle. To ...address the defying phenomenon, this qualitative study explored the perceptions of Thai university lecturers on World Englishes, Thai English and the feasibility of implementing World Englishes and Thai English in the classrooms. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 15 English lecturers in 5 universities across the Thai regions. Analyzed by content analysis, findings revealed that the participants demonstrated mixed perceptions. While most of the participants viewed British and American Englishes as representations of standard English varieties and questioned the legitimacy of World Englishes and Thai English, others reportedly recognized and accepted the existence of World Englishes and considered Thai English as a tool to convey Thai identities and cultures. The findings also indicated that most participants outright disapproved of World Englishes and Thai English in teaching practices, and these varieties were substantially marginalized and devalued. However, to prepare learners for realistic use of English and increase their awareness of World Englishes and Thai English, the remaining participants suggested that English language teaching should embrace flexible linguistic conventions that allow spaces for Inner Circle, Outer Circle and Expanding Circle Englishes.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Although the development of intercultural citizenship among university students has now been included as a key policy in international universities, pedagogical practices for promoting the awareness, ...understanding, and development of intercultural citizenship while studying abroad have reportedly been inadequate. To address this gap, this qualitative interview study 1) explores the perceptions of Thai and Chinese students enrolled in English-medium education programs on the development of intercultural citizenship and 2) identifies links between intercultural citizenship and English for students studying in international universities. The findings reveal that the participants generally had positive attitudes toward the concept of intercultural citizenship and agreed that living in a foreign country surrounded by individuals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds made it more effective to learn about and promote awareness of intercultural citizenship compared to staying in their homelands. They further demonstrate that English proficiency levels, exposure to teaching methods before studying abroad, and regular on-campus and off-campus activities with international friends from different linguistic-cultural backgrounds are significant in enhancing intercultural citizenship competencies. Further, some implications in terms of the promotion of intercultural citizenship education through English are also proposed and discussed.
Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2021.1996595 .
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
English is widely used as a global language. The traditional monolithic model of English has been challenged as the development of World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) paradigms ...challenge the ownership of English. With this newly emerging status quo, English language teaching (ELT) should also recognize the diversity and dynamism of English. This article discusses students’ attitudes towards their own and native English accents, and describes the influence of English accents in ELT. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with nine international students from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka who were studying at a university in Southern Thailand. The derived data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings revealed that most students still perceived their accents as being deficient, and they believed that native speakers’ English accents were the norm of English use and the ultimate learning goal. Thus, entrenched native ideology was still persistent among these students. The article also provides some implications for pronunciation teaching from a WE and ELF framework with the Teaching of Pronunciation for Intercultural Communication (ToPIC). It is hoped that an awareness of English as a global language could be recognized, and ToPIC could be applied to ELT in more contexts to reflect the global status of English.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study aims to identify students' attitudes towards teaching English in a lingua franca context. The data were collected using a semi-structured interview with 25 undergraduate students studying ...English across five universities in Southern Thailand. Based on the qualitative content analysis approach, the findings revealed that most of the participants congruently agreed that the prime target of ELT is to prepare language learners for communication that involve interlocutors of multicultural backgrounds, and not to force them to adopt native-like English competence. Hence, the call for ELT curriculums to be revised. New targets should not be monocentric with excessive Inner Circle contents and cultures. More local content should be used as they help learners associate inputs with familiar cultures. Furthermore, teachers should raise learners' awareness of existing English varieties and accents, and promote a flexible mindset to accommodate differences in communication.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
With the rapid spread of English nowadays as an international language, this study seeks to investigate the perception of Thai English major university students in Southern Thailand towards the ...ownership of English and itsa relationship to effective English teaching. Twenty students across different universities in Southern Thailand participated in this study. A semi-structured interview was employed for data collection, after a semi-structured questionnaire analysis. Qualitative content analysis was utilized for data analysis. The findings show that English is no longer the sole property of any particular country, nationality or external appearance but is a global lingua franca. The participants illustrate that every English user has the right to claim ownership of English and to utilize it in their preferred way without emphasizing the native speaker norms. Additionally, the findings indicate that there is no relationship between the native backgrounds of the teachers and their teaching (in)effectiveness.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Administering English language teaching (ELT) in rural settings of the three southern border provinces has been challenging for both teachers and learners due to two decades of political unrest, ...eruptions of violence, fears, and insecurity. To enhance ELT, this study aimed to investigate factors affecting the ineffectiveness of ELT in these three educational environments and introduce a new lens of contextualized English instructions for learners in schools located in Southernmost Thailand, where learners live amid linguistic and cultural diversity. In this qualitative study, data were collected from teachers operating in two schools of each province (totaling six institutions) by semi-structured interviews and analyzed by content analysis. Findings revealed that five primary factors deteriorating English language learning efficiency in the three southern border provinces were Implementation of Broad-Spectrum ELT Policies; Insufficient Teaching Integrations with Islamization; Inadequate Awareness of the Significance of English; Inconsistencies between ELT Textbooks and the Sociolinguistic Reality of English; and Impractical Classroom Arrangement. The findings could be beneficial if they are further utilized by the Ministry of Education in establishing policies for ELT in specific contexts as well as school administrators and teachers in formulating instructional approaches, managing learning resources, and arranging classrooms based on local needs and identities. Although this study has a specific spatial scope, which is the three southern border provinces of Thailand, its findings can be adapted for a broader application as a part of the global perspective and a clue to solve language learning problems across ELT communities encountering a similar challenge.
Currently, HE institutions in Anglophone countries cater for the largest number of international students (particularly non-native English speakers) and thus, have benefited the most from ...internationalization policies. In such intercultural educational environments, Anglophone Englishes now play a much less significant role in HE. This paper aims to explore to what extent Thai students who came back from study abroad (SA) in Anglophone countries have developed a sense of intercultural citizenship and their experiences and perceptions in relation to intercultural communication, ELT and SA. A mixed-method approach was adopted at four universities in Thailand. Extracts from semi-structured interviews and questionnaire data have been analyzed. Findings have been divided into three themes: 1) The usefulness of intercultural citizenship courses, 2) The development of intercultural citizenship from lived experience, and 3) ELF mindedness. According to the findings, we argue that intercultural citizenship education (Byram, Michael. 2008.
. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) ought to be part of the pedagogic approach in both EMI and ELT classrooms, and ELT courses in Thailand should put more emphasis on strengthening learners’ intercultural competence and awareness while also moving away from traditional methods associated with standard language ideologies.
ปัจจุบัน สถาบันอุดมศึกษาในประเทศต้นกำเนิดภาษาอังกฤษ รองรับนักศึกษาต่างชาติจำนวนมากที่สุด (โดยเฉพาะกลุ่มผู้เรียนที่ไม่ได้ใช้ภาษาอังกฤษเป็นภาษาแม่) นักศึกษากลุ่มนี้จึงได้รับประโยชน์สูงสุดจากนโยบายความเป็นสากล ในสภาพแวดล้อมทางการศึกษาแบบต่างวัฒนธรรมเช่นนี้ ภาษาอังกฤษตามแบบฉบับของประเทศต้นกำเนิดภาษาอังกฤษ มีบทบาทสำคัญน้อยมากในสถาบันอุดมศึกษาปัจจุบัน บทความนี้มีจุดมุ่งหมายเพื่อสำรวจว่านักเรียนไทยที่กลับมาจากการศึกษาในประเทศต้นกำเนิดภาษาอังกฤษ ได้พัฒนาความรู้สึกของการเป็นพลเมืองข้ามวัฒนธรรม ตลอดจนประสบการณ์และการรับรู้เกี่ยวกับการสื่อสารระหว่างวัฒนธรรม การสอนภาษาอังกฤษและการเรียนในต่างประเทศ ในระดับใด วิธีการเก็บข้อมูลการศึกษาแบบผสมผสาน ได้นำมาใช้เก็บข้อมูล ในมหาวิทยาลัย 4 แห่งในประเทศไทย ข้อมูลการศึกษาที่ได้จากการสัมภาษณ์และแบบสอบถามได้นำมาวิเคราะห์ ผลการวิจัย แบ่งออกเป็นสามหัวข้อ: 1) ประโยชน์ของหลักสูตรความเป็นพลเมืองข้ามวัฒนธรรม 2) การพัฒนาความเป็นพลเมืองข้ามวัฒนธรรมจากประสบการณ์ และ 3) การตระหนักถึงการใช้ภาษาอังกฤษระหว่างผู้ใช้ภาษาอังกฤษ จากผลการวิจัย เราโต้แย้งว่าการศึกษาเรื่องความเป็นพลเมืองข้ามวัฒนธรรม (Byram, Michael. 2008.
. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) ควรเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของแนวทางการสอนทั้งในห้องเรียนแบบใช้ภาษาอังกฤษเป็นหลักในการสอน และการสอนภาษาอังกฤษ อีกทั้งหลักสูตรการสอนภาษาอังกฤษในประเทศไทยควรเน้นการเสริมสร้างความสามารถและความตระหนักระหว่างวัฒนธรรมของผู้เรียน โดยหลีกเลี่ยงวิธีการสอนแบบดั้งเดิมที่เกี่ยวข้องกับภาษาอังกฤษตามมาตรฐานของประเทศต้นกำเนิดภาษาอังกฤษ
This study examines cultural contents in a locally-published English language teaching (ELT) textbook for primary 6 students in Thailand. It aims to investigate whether the locally-published textbook ...depicts sources and themes of cultures in a way that perpetuate and reproduce dominant ideologies and how cultural contents in the locally-published textbook were dealt with by an English teacher in the classroom. Grounded on Bakhtin’s notions of authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse, the findings revealed that there were mismatches between the cultural representation in the textbook and students’ lived experiences. Concerning how cultural contents were represented in the classroom, there was no evidence that the teacher assisted learners to forge effective linkages between authoritative discourse and their everyday life. The findings are discussed regarding how cultural contents are ideologically depicted in the textbook and how the cultural contents adversely affect students’ learning experience. Implications and recommendations for textbook authors, language teachers, and future research are presented.
Despite the continued growth of linguistic diversification and widespread utilization of English by multilingual and multicultural speakers, EFL-oriented pedagogies and native speakerism still ...profoundly dominate Thailand. To educationally maneuver away from this conceptualization, a new compulsory course called Global Englishes (GEs) was introduced at a Thai university. Using semi-structured interviews and weekly reflective journals for data collection, this qualitative study investigated the perceptions of 20 EFL university students before and after the course. The qualitative content-based analysis revealed an overwhelmingly positive shift in the students’ attitudes towards GEs. Before the course, the students reported that they regarded American or British as the only internationally acceptable English varieties; meanwhile intolerance, dissatisfaction, and depreciation were associated with non-native English varieties. After the course, the students had increased tolerance for English diversity and understood the ways that other English varieties are realistically hybridized or dehegemonized across countries. The findings also illustrated that the students appreciated the value of ‘Thai English’, as they no longer viewed it as a communicative barrier. Implications point toward the need for enhancing students’ awareness of English pluricentricity to push Thailand’s English language teaching towards a more practical track, consistent with today’s use of English in the real world.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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