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Educated Japanese English: expanding oral/aural core vocabulary
Author(s) -
D’Angelo James F.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.0083-2919.2005.00415.x
Subject(s) - world englishes , curriculum , premise , variety (cybernetics) , vocabulary , lexicon , sociology , linguistics , varieties of english , class (philosophy) , pedagogy , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy
Having established the world's first undergraduate college of world Englishes, and in an ‘Expanding‐Circle’ setting, we have created the pilot environment for a new type of ELT curriculum. We must address the creation of a curriculum that is pervasively informed by the philosophy of world Englishes at both a macro and micro level. Certain program‐wide decisions have been implemented from the outset, such as having all freshmen take a required class in World Englishes Studies and attend a three‐week overseas seminar in Singapore, and hiring teachers from ‘Outer‐Circle’ countries. Nevertheless, the philosophy of world Englishes must also be incorporated into all aspects of our ‘foundation’ communication‐skills classes. Acting on the premise that developing a broader spoken lexicon will be more desirable and useful than learning colloquial American English, this paper presents a pre‐experiment in expanding Japanese students’ core aural/oral vocabulary as a means to contributing to the development of an ‘educated variety of Japanese English.’ It is hoped that the results of this study will help serve as a guide to further research, and eventually, to the type of components that should be included in a ‘world Englishes compatible’ oral communication curriculum.