Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2002

In recent years, the setting of standards or benchmarks for teachers as well as for learners has been brought into education as one of the key mechanisms for accountability and quality assurance. Language standards setting is one of the top priorities for policy makers. This paper points out that while standards setting in education raises issues that are largely educational and philosophical, language standards setting is often culturally and politically charged. This is particularly so in English standards setting because of the long-standing association between English and colonialism and cultural and economic domination. The domination of English has not diminished in the post-colonial era. The paper outlines a number of complex issues generated by English standard setting, including whether native or non-native varieties of English will be used as the model for determining standards, whether the same standards should be used for first and second language learners, how one determines whether deviations from the standard English model are errors or variations, and the social and political implications for adopting the standard or the local varieties. A brief summary of how each paper in this Special Issue addresses these issues is provided.

The perception of falling standards in education, and in second language teaching in particular, has been a constant refrain for the past 20 years as changing needs and practices affect economic processes and manpower requirements. Within this context, this article deals with the establishment of language standards (‘benchmarks’) for teachers of English in Hong Kong. The article deals with two separate but linked notions: first, the notion of which model of the English language should be used as the standard model for English language teacher benchmark assessment in Hong Kong; second, the level of language ability that will be decided upon in order to establish the proficiency standards expected of teachers of English. The article first describes the background to the setting of language standards for teachers of English in Hong Kong. It then examines the selection of and justification for the model of English selected as the ‘minimum standard’. The following section considers the level of language ability agreed upon as the standard that teachers of English need to attain. The article concludes with an examination of the extent to which the standards that have been agreed upon match the needs of the major stakeholders in the standard-setting process.

As demand for proficient English speakers increases worldwide, there is growing concern about the standard of English achieved by students during their schooling. With English teachers (rightly or wrongly) receiving much of the blame for a perceived decline in language standards, policy-makers are increasingly interested in the language-related competencies of English teachers: both their language proficiency (or ‘communicative language ability’, CLA) and their ‘knowledge about language’ (or Teacher Language Awareness, TLA). As a result, the assessment of English teachers’ language-related competencies has become more widespread. In any attempt to measure those competencies, however, several important interrelated issues have to be confronted. Some relate to the precise nature of the knowledge/awareness that English teachers have of the language they teach, and the difficulties inherent in setting/measuring standards of Teacher Language Awareness. Others concern the language model(s) of which English teachers are expected to be aware, and about which teachers themselves feel they should be aware. The present paper examines some of these issues. It begins by exploring the nature of TLA, and some of the challenges in TLA measurement. It then considers questions relating to the varieties of English which form models for TLA, with particular reference to Hong Kong.

This paper considers Hong Kong’s benchmark language assessments for English teachers. It asks whose standard of English the government, business community, examinations authority, and the teaching profession itself expect teachers to measure up to. As well as examining documentation from these various sources, the paper analyses discussions on TeleNex, a computer network set up for English teachers in Hong Kong. Although the question was seldom explicitly mooted in documents and teachers’ messages, the implicit standards were found to be largely exonormative. Most documents implied a native speaker norm, and teachers were found to regard British dictionaries and grammars as the main authorities on correctness and acceptability. Only the benchmark developers were found to be seeking an “educated Hong Kong model”, but even their criteria rule out an “average” Hong Kong model for teachers.

Australia is a multilingual multicultural country with an impressive record of educational provision for students from language other than English (LOTE) backgrounds. The recent widespread development of common standards and benchmarks in English language and literacy in schools can be seen as a valuable component of this provision. However, care needs to be taken to avoid projecting a false picture of linguistic homogeneity by ignoring variation between English-speaking background (ESB) and English as a Second Language (ESL) learner groups. This paper demonstrates how the recent introduction of national Literacy Benchmarks, unlike the earlier development of curriculum and standards frameworks, has dis-counted ESL achievement by failing to take sufficient account of learner variation. Problems have also occurred in balancing the conflicting motivations for benchmarking: assessment, accountability and education, which result in different “standards” for standard-setting being assumed by the various stakeholders. The paper concludes that real accountability and progress in ESL learning and teaching can only be shown effectively through the use of a complementary but distinctive set of standards or benchmarks for ESL learners at different stages of schooling.

An assumption of this paper is that non-standard use of language will be accompanied by non-standard features of understanding. An attempt is made to access the meaning perceptions of learners at different levels of proficiency. The paper reports on what English learners in Brunei think English modal verb forms mean. It focuses specifically on would and discusses its use in Standard British English and in Brunei English. Bruneian perceptions of the meaning of this modal are compared with its use. It is claimed that the non-standard use of would for non-assertiveness in Brunei English can partly be explained by users overfocusing on its non-factivity meaning. The issues of what the target variety may be and the appropriacy of non-standard features in this sociocultural and linguistic context are briefly discussed.

It has now been two decades since we were confronted with the concept of World Englishes (Kachru, B. 1982. Ed. The Other Tongue). Since then, numerous publications have shown that World Englishes is a viable concept, and those of us within the TEWOL profession world-wide have had to tackle the following three tasks: 1) raising the public’s awareness of the need for TEWOL, 2) finding and developing suitable materials for TEWOL, and 3) setting the appropriate norms for TEWOL. Although all three tasks are projects in progress in Korea and definite results may not be available for another two decades, this paper attempts to provide an interim report on the first of these three tasks. It examines the changes in the attitudes of the public and the ELT profession toward TEWOL through a series of surveys and interviews conducted in the last five years. In Korea, the first reactions to TEWOL may best be described as total rejection and ignorance. Slowly, however, there has been considerable enhancement of language awareness in learners and teachers alike. Thus one may now conclude that we have successfully taken the first step of sowing the seeds for TEWOL and are now moving into the second step of firmly planting the roots for TEWOL.

This paper focuses on the construction of the linguistic contents of the current junior secondary school syllabus and national textbooks in the People’s Republic of China, from which the official English promoted by the state can be identified. Using quantitative and qualitative data, the paper analyses the nature of this official English in five distinct historical phases. It finds that the English curriculum in the different phases was linked to shifting national economic and political priorities, as evidenced by the attention to structured pedagogical approaches that focus on communication during times of economic modernisation and openness to the outside world, and by the stress on political and moral messages during times of hyper-politicisation and relative international isolation. English is constructed for its economic and political utility, based on an exogenous model, British English. It is not officially constructed to reflect an endogenous variety of Chinese English.