Is english our lingua franca or the native speaker's property? The native speaker orientation among middle school students in Japan

Article

Saito, Akihiro. 2012. "Is english our lingua franca or the native speaker's property? The native speaker orientation among middle school students in Japan." Journal Of Language Teaching And Research. 3 (6), pp. 1071-1081. https://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.3.6.1071-1081
Article Title

Is english our lingua franca or the native speaker's property? The native speaker orientation among middle school students in Japan

ERA Journal ID210919
Article CategoryArticle
Authors
AuthorSaito, Akihiro
Journal TitleJournal Of Language Teaching And Research
Journal Citation3 (6), pp. 1071-1081
Number of Pages11
Year2012
Place of PublicationUnited Kingdom
ISSN1798-4769
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.3.6.1071-1081
Web Address (URL)http://ojs.academypublisher.com/index.php/jltr/article/view/jltr030610711081
Abstract

This paper reports the first empirical study to date that sought to examine the native speaker orientation among middle school EFL students in Japan. To this end, this preliminary study measured their language attitudes in this respect addressing age-stratified and gender variations. The data was elicited from an attitude survey with 318 eighth and ninth graders at a public middle school. The findings suggest that the students gave the highest evaluations to native than to nonnative varieties of English. Second, they opted for learning English for its currency and utility in the English as a native language setting, rather than for its transnational function as a lingua franca. Lastly, the finding indicated a possible developmental trajectory of their native speaker orientation.

Keywordslanguage learning; language attitudes; native speaker; Japan; english as a lingua franca
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020390108. LOTE, ESL and TESOL curriculum and pedagogy
470401. Applied linguistics and educational linguistics
470411. Sociolinguistics
Public Notes

@ 2006-2012 by Academy Publisher. Open Access Journal - users are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of this article.

Byline AffiliationsFaculty of Education
Institution of OriginUniversity of Southern Queensland
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