1. Introduction

One eternal ideal of humankind is the establishment of an international. global, or world language – a shared language which could be used by people of every nation to communicate with one another without economically or culturally privileging one country over others. In reality though, a language becomes an international language precisely because of its accompanying political, military, economic, and cultural power. English has become an international language not because of an utopian ideal, but by virtue of political and economic progress made by English-speaking nations in the past 200 years. Since English has spread around the world, research exploring ‘New Englishes’ – Singapore English, Indian English, and various African Englishes – has increased. Opposing research suggesting that English should be limited, standardized for global use, and simplified for international teaching purposes has also emerged. Additionally, there have been quite a few proposals to search for an alternative name that would more accurately reflect the global state of English language usage, as critics claim that the label ‘English’ fails to express the diverse usages of the language that are in effect today. Suggestions for a new label for English include:

English as an International Language (Smith), International English (Brieger), General English (Ahulu). Global English (Raley), Global (Toolan), World English (McArthur), and World Standard Spoken English (Crystal).

Ironically, due to the extensive amount of discourse surrounding the study of English and its international spread, there is no single label appropriate to describe the entity that I am attempting to discuss today. Moreover, it seems that choosing one is a political decision, as each label carries with it ideological associations. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, I am going to use the term international English for this paper. Although there is a rather broad range of depictions of the English that is used throughout the world today, nowhere in these discussions is international English clearly and concisely defined; there is no explicit indication of what it is or where it can be found: There is no conceptual agreement as to what international English represents.

This paper is an attempt to survey the rather vast range of labels, definitions, and ideologies that have been put forward over the past 25 years to characterize the global use of English. It is also an endeavour to uncover why this English-naming-mania has occurred. In short, it is a first step in establishing some sort of conceptual agreement about the international usage of English.

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source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English#Dual_standard

Let’s face it

English is a stupid language.

There is no egg in the eggplant

No ham in the hamburger

And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.

English muffins were not invented in England

French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted

But if we examine its paradoxes we find that

Quicksand takes you down slowly

Boxing rings are square

And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don’t fing.

If the plural of tooth is teeth

Shouldn’t the plural of phone booth be phone beeth

If the teacher taught,

Why didn’t the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables

What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?

Why do people recite at a play

Yet play at a recital?

Park on driveways and

Drive on parkways

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy

Of a language where a house can burn up as

It burns down

And in which you fill in a form

By filling it out

And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers

And it reflects the creativity of the human race

(Which of course isn’t a race at all)

That is why

When the stars are out they are visible

But when the lights are out they are invisible

And why it is that when I wind up my watch

It starts

But when I wind up this observation,

It ends.

source: http://www.ahajokes.com/eng002.html

International Education Week, November 15-19, 2010

International Education Week (IEW) is an opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide.

This joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S.
Department of Education is part of our efforts to promote programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences in the United States.

We encourage the participation of all individuals and institutions interested in international education and exchange activities, including schools, colleges and universities, embassies, international organizations, businesses, associations, and community organizations.

The dates for IEW 2010 are November 15th – 19th.

Please visit:
New EducationUSA website for Indonesia:  http://www.educationusa.or.id/home
http://www.educationusa.state.gov/
http://connect.state.gov/
http://iew.state.gov/

Facebook Indonesia:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jakarta-Indonesia/EducationUSA-Indonesia/161413017108
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/internationaleducationweek

For further research on studying in the USA:
http://www.petersons.com/educationusa/

In Indonesia, the EducationUSA offices are:

JAKARTA OFFICE
Gedung Balai Pustaka 6th Fl.
Jl. Gunung Sahari Raya No. 4
Jakarta 10720
Tel.: 021 345 2016
Office hours:
Mondays – Fridays: 9:00 – 16:30
Saturdays: 9:00 – 13:00
Email: infoeas@aminef.or.id
http://www.educationusa.or.id/home

SURABAYA OFFICE
International Village Bldg 2nd Fl. Universitas Surabaya Jl Raya Kalirungkut Surabaya 60293
Tel.: 031 847 1809/298 1320
Office hours:
Mondays – Fridays: 9:00 – 15:00
Saturdays: 9:00 – 13:00
Email : eas_sby@rad.net.id

MEDAN OFFICE
Yayasan Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika
Jl. Mansur III No. 1A
Medan 20121
Tel.: 061 821 1074
Office hours:
Mondays – Fridays:    8:00 – 12:00; 1:30 – 16:00 Email : donna_pasaribu@yahoo.com

MALANG OFFICE
Gedung Perpustakaan Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang Jl. Tlogomas 246 Malang 65144
Tel.: 0341 463 345
Office hours:
Mondays – Fridays: 7:30 – 15:00
Saturdays: 7:30  – 12:00
Email : infoeas@aminef.or.id

New website for Indonesia:  http://www.educationusa.or.id/home

====================
The RELO Resource Center
Gedung Balai Pustaka 6th Fl (AMINEF)
Gunung Sahari Raya No. 4
JAKARTA 10720  Indonesia
Phone: +62-21-352-0622 – Fax: +62-21-351-6919
Email: english.indonesia@gmail.com
=====================

]]> http://www.liaconferences.com/resources/new-educationusa-website-for-indonesia-2009-11.html/feed 0 http://www.liaconferences.com/resources/website-list-for-learning-english-in-the-united-states-2009-11.html http://www.liaconferences.com/resources/website-list-for-learning-english-in-the-united-states-2009-11.html#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:53:30 +0000 Ismail Ali Harahap http://www.liaconferences.com/?p=2815 The United States is a great destination for international students seeking to learn English or improve their English skills.  There are over 400 educational institutions that offer English language programs, spread across the many geographic and cultural regions of the United States.

The following websites can help narrow your search:

American Association of Intensive English Programs

http://aaiep.org

Commission on English Language Program Accreditation

http://www.cea-accredit.org

Consortium of University & College Intensive English Programs in the USA

http://www.uciep.org

Intensive English USA -Institute of International Education

http://www.intensiveenglishusa.com

Petersons – English Language Programs

http://www.petersons.com/elp/

Warm Regards,

The RELO Resource Center
Gedung Balai Pustaka 6th Fl (AMINEF)
Gunung Sahari Raya No. 4
JAKARTA 10720  Indonesia
Phone: +62-21-352-0622 – Fax: +62-21-351-6919
Email: english.indonesia@gmail.com
=====================

US English is of course particularly influential, on account of America’s dominance of cinema, television, popular music, trade, and technology, including the Internet. Many terms that enter an Oxford dictionary from the US quickly become established in British English: some examples from the last ten years or so are geek, nerd, school student, and 24/7. Many US equivalents for British terms are familiar: sidewalk for pavement, checkers for draughts, cookie for biscuit, and vest for waistcoat. Other differences are more subtle. Some words have a slightly different form, e.g. dollhouse (US)/doll’s house (Brit.), math (US)/maths (Brit.), tidbit (US)/titbit (Brit.), while American constructions that are strange to British ears include I just ate, teach school, and a quarter of ten (rather than a quarter to ten).

Canadian English

Canadian English is subject to the conflicting influences of British and American English. In vocabulary there is a lot of US influence: Canadians use billboard, gas, truck, and wrench rather than hoarding, lorry, petrol, and spanner; but on the other hand they agree with the British in saying blinds, braces, porridge, and tap rather than shades, suspenders, oatmeal, and faucet.

Australian and New Zealand English

The vocabularies of Australian and New Zealand English are very similar. Both have been enriched by words and concepts from the hundreds of indigenous languages that pre-dated European settlers, only about fifty of which continue as first languages. The line between formal and informal usage is perhaps less sharply drawn in Australasian English than it is elsewhere: suffixes such as -o and -ie, giving us expressions such as arvo (afternoon), reffo (refugee), and barbie (barbecue), are freely attached to words even in more formal contexts.

South African English

Since 1994 South Africa has had eleven official languages: English, Afrikaans (descended from Dutch), Zulu, Xhosa, and other largely regional African languages. English is the first language of only about 10 per cent of the population, but the second language of many others. The English of native Afrikaners has inevitably influenced the ‘standard’ English of white South Africans, examples being such informal usages as the affirmative no, as in ‘How are you? – No, I’m fine’ and the all-purpose response is it?, as in ‘She had a baby last week – is it?’

Indian English

The role of English within the complex multilingual society of India is far from straightforward: together with Hindi it is used across the country, but it can also be a speaker’s first, second, or third language, and its features may depend heavily on their ethnicity and caste. The grammar of Indian English has many distinguishing features, of which perhaps the best-known are the use of the present continuous tense, as in ‘He is having very much of property’, and the use of isn’t it as a ubiquitous question tag: ‘We are meeting tomorrow, isn”t it?’ The first example rejects another characteristic of the language, which is to include intrusive articles such as in or of in idiomatic phrases. Verbs are also used differently, with speakers often dropping a preposition or object altogether: ‘I insisted immediate payment’, while double possessives – ‘our these prices’ (instead of the British English ‘these prices of ours’) – are commonplace.

West Indian English

Standard British English has traditionally been the linguistic model for the Commonwealth Caribbean, although recently the import of US television, radio, and tourism has made American English an equally powerful influence. The many varieties of Creole, influenced by West African languages, are also productive. A characteristic usage is that of the objective pronoun where British English would use the subjective or possessive, as in me can come an go as me please or he clear he throat. Jamaican Creole is the most widely known, and has spread beyond the region, especially to the UK, where it influences the speech of black Britons.

The recent development of English as an international language has left many tasks for the English Language Teaching practitioners. One of those is that what variant should be taught and how the varieties of English across the globe can be incorporated in teaching and learning process in order to accommodate the learners’ need and curricular goal. Those are basics question that language teachers have to answer since this decision will affect the learning outcomes entirely. Matsuda’s paper is mainly presented to address this issue by seeing the fact that the current English teaching, especially in Japan, is too inner circle oriented. According to her, although the curriculum in Japan specifies that the target model for English learning should be intelligible for international communication, the choice of linguistics samples and the representation of English users and uses indicate a strong inner circle orientation (p. 720). Therefore, she offers suggestions to the curriculum developers and school administrators to deal with the challenge of providing the appropriate English to be presented in the classroom. In response to her paper, I would like to focus on the practicality and applicability of her ideas in the real context of English teaching and learning.

What is wrong with teaching only inner circle Englishes? Matsuda argues that the limited exposure to English varieties in classroom may lead to students’ confusion or resistance when they are confronted with other types of English in the real life (p. 721). As the matter of fact, the students should be exposed to multiple varieties of English. She suggests that the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) initiated by Japanese government to assist foreign language teaching at public school not only recruits the native speakers from inner circle, but also begins recruiting fluent speaker from other parts of the world. This idea is perfect and fruitful for the developed country in expanding circle like Japan.

However, this fails to solve the problem of English teaching in other countries which have relatively low education budget. Schools have already struggled hard to fund their daily operation in these countries, not to mention bringing in foreign teachers. Other solutions provided if face to face interactions are not possible like using internet, and movie clips are also problematic because of the limited access to information, and technology.

Matsuda considers interaction with EIL users as one of the important aspects in incorporating EIL in classroom. In the country like Indonesia, the fact shows that English teachers, as one of the vital components, often do not have sufficient experience in using English in real interaction with both inner and outer circle speakers. They come to class with limited English proficiency that they studied only from their college classrooms. Here, the issue of teacher competency becomes essential. Teaching EIL variety requires an ‘extraordinary’ teacher due to its broad repertoires. EIL is far from being coherent, and concise language variety (Llurda, 2004, p. 315), and still in the process of codification (Taylor, 2006, p. 58).

Incorporating EIL in classroom is an immense challenge in English teaching. Matsuda has successfully tried to map the underlying starting point of the importance of teaching English other than inner circle varieties. Another important endeavor that should be done is creating an established consensus among stakeholders in defining EIL. By doing so, EIL will have, borrowing Taylor term, a well-described model of language use (Taylor, 2006, p. 58).

References:
Llurda, Enric. (2004) Non-native-speaker teachers and English as an International Language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics Vol. 14 (3). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 314-323
Matsuda, Aya. Incorporating Englishes in Teaching English as an International Language. TESOL Quarterly. 719-729
Taylor, Linda (2006). The changing landscape of English: implication for language assessment. ELT Journal 60 (1). Oxford University Press. 51-60
Inner circle varieties refers to English spoken by the speakers of English in three major English speaking countries, i.e. the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.

source: http://notbraindamage.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/world-englishes-as-the-controversy-in-elt-teaching-practice/

• ISBN: 978-0-415-37497-2
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 5th December 2006
• Pages: 189

About the Book

The English language is spreading across the world, and so too is hip-hop culture: both are being altered, developed, reinterpreted, reclaimed. This timely book explores the relationship between global Englishes (the spread and use of diverse forms of English within processes of globalization) and transcultural flows (the movements, changes and reuses of cultural forms in disparate contexts).

This wide-ranging study focuses on the ways English is embedded in other linguistic contexts, including those of East Asia, Australia, West Africa and the Pacific Islands. Drawing on transgressive and performative theory, Pennycook looks at how global Englishes, transcultural flows and pedagogy are interconnected in ways that oblige us to rethink language and culture within the contemporary world.

Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows is a valuable resource to applied linguists, sociolinguists, and students on cultural studies, English language studies, TEFL and TESOL courses.

Table of Contents

1. Hip Hop Be Connectin 2. Other Englishes 3. Transgressive Theories 4. Performance and Performativity 5. Taking the Vernacular Voices of the Popular Seriously 6. English and the Global Spread of Authenticity 7. Language Flows, Language Mixes 8. Hip Hop Pedagogies and Local Knowledge References

When Indonesians start to learn English they will face two canonical forms of English: American English or British English. Although Australian English exists, the trend is more influenced by English on television or other media dominantly of American or British language and culture.

English courses with the platform of American and British English in Indonesia once mushroomed and became a commodity for foreign language education business. Until recently, many English learners have been obsessed with a model of American or British English.

Almost certainly, learners will fail to speak English like British or American English speakers reflecting on how hard it is to speak like other people and due to a hazy definition of what British or American English is today.

Indonesians reportedly have different length of tongue and other organs in oral cavities from other people in the UK or the US who speak English. This might be true, as well as hilarious, but the fact is that people coming to the US, for example, can communicate well without having to pronounce English like Sam in the Transformers movie or Mr. and Mrs. Smith. English is so unlimited that the definition of American English is becoming more ambivalent, but English remains English.

Recently, the meaning of the English language has been disrupted by migration and globalization. Easier access for people to move from one place to another has raised more difficulties in defining what American or British English is like.

The rapid change in information and technology has made print literacy culture more accessible. The age of Facebook-ing, emailing, texting, and other social networking brings us toward a print literacy culture that leaves us an indefinite standard of English, with the communicators having an ambivalent, virtual identity.

When you are making a call to a corporation in the United States, let’s say, a bank, you may encounter an English language speaker as if you were in India or China. Forms of African, Chinese, Korean, Hispanic, and Asian Indian English are now shaping what American English is like. And some speakers of English cannot be identified in terms of their geographical status. People’s English is getting more liquid, dynamic, mixed, and indefinable to a certain standard.

The way in which English has been spoken is mostly influenced by contemporary working life and changing public life, which constitutes people’s everyday life.

First, our working life has changed from a face-to-face and individual direct command and control to more communal relationships like monitoring, training, and collaboration. Therefore, memos, texting, letters of commands tend to establish relationships among colleagues or between employees and employers to achieve effective and efficient communication. Spoken language is not premium in our working life.

Second, public life has been changing due to local diversity and global connectedness. Diversity of English not only reflects that there is no standard but also means that speakers of English always need to negotiate their meaning in conversations with regard to regional, ethnic, or class-based discourses. Such variations are manifested in the choices of registers – lexical, grammatical, stylistic, and dialectic choices. Often, code-switching is found within a communicative event with different languages, dialects, or registers.

How should we learn English now?

The enforcement of American and British English standardization for communication no longer applies to the contemporary global context where migration and globalization have been part of our public life. Learning English that emphasizes British or American English has been recently obsolete and out of context. What seems to be best conducted as a strategy to teach English is providing students with a variety of contexts from which they can recognize different audiences and purposes of communication.

For example, when audiences are Indonesian, why are learners so bothered to speak like American or British people? Even those who are able to speak English do not always have a chance to meet an American or British person. Just let American or British people who visits Indonesia understand our typically good English. Through language, other people will recognize that we exist.

We cannot deny that we are both the inheritors of patterns and conventions from other cultures and at the same time designers of meanings. With the available resources on-and off-line, learning of English from samples of texts in oral and written communication is easier to manage to understand how people make meanings with English. Especially, if English is a second and foreign language, samples of conversations of any kinds of texts are real scaffolding.

However, they are not “God’s” models. Our surroundings such as workplace, public places, community, schools, local culture conventions, economic status, personal experience shape our ways of working with English, while being contextual is what language use is all about.

The writer is a Fulbright fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a lecturer at the Indonesia University of Education Bandung (UPI).