The issue opens with a paper by Yuko Goto Butler of the University of Pennsylvania on assessments that have been used for the evaluation of elementary school EFL programs in three Asian countries: South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, concluding that there is still very limited information available and an urgent need to develop good assessment procedures. Assessment will be the topic of the featured presentations at the Bangkok conference.
In the second paper, Faizah A Majid from Universiti Teknologi Mara, Malaysia argues for better strategies for teaching reading to adults through distance learning and describes current theories and some research studies. In the next, Barbara Spilchuk of the National Institute of Education, Singapore tells the story of a newly appointed English department head in a Singapore school and his ¡°journey¡± to understanding the new culture in which he is about to live and the problems he faces.
   In the fourth paper, Yuko Iwai currently at The University of Southern Mississippi, USA discusses a problem common to many Asian nations, how to move from a traditional grammar-translation to teaching of communicative proficiency. This is followed by a paper in which Alex Henry of University Brunei Darussalam, Negara Brunei Darussalam and Robert L. Roseberry of Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada introduce the notion of move registers, developed from Swales¡¯ work on genres, and show four ways in which the concept can be applied to the teaching of English.
   The next paper by Kiyomi Chujo of Nihon University, Japan and Kathryn Oghigian of Waseda University, Japan tackles a basic issue in test preparation (sometimes called cramming) by estimating the size of the vocabulary required to know 95% of the words in three standard English tests used in Japan, TOEIC, TOEFL and EIKEN. The number established by analyzing old retired tests ranges from 4000 for TOEIC and 4500 for TOEFL to 5500 for EIKEN. More recent tests have been shown to have lower vocabulary levels.
   Joseph Ernest Mambu of Satya Wacana Christian University, Indonesia explores the variety of English used by eight Indonesian English teachers, and argues that these are not errors but typical of Indonesian English. In the next paper, Yu Zhonggen of Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications, China and Chan Swee Heng of University Putra Malaysia report improvement in scores on short conversation passages and no change on longer passages in the performance of several hundred Chinese students after a two month break; they are surprised by the lack of evidence of attrition. Finally, Guo Yan and Qin Xiaoqing of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, P. R. China collect evidence on attitudes of several hundred Chinese tertiary students to computer assisted learning; generally the attitudes were favorable, but the students did not seem willing or able to take full advantage of the opportunity especially because of perceived difficulties.
Again, then, we have a good selection of papers from a wide range of countries with good evidence of collaborative work. The topics represent the main concerns of current teachers of EFL in Asia and elsewhere, and make clear the significance of the research work of our members. My thanks to the contributors and to Professor Jeon and her hard-working editorial team. We hope in the not too distant future their work will be eased by a computerized manuscript management system.
   If you catch some evidence of distraction in this editorial, I can only remind you of all the events that we have been following recently: a new pandemic joining Avian flu to make travel risky, demonstrations and political crises in Thailand and Pakistan and Iran; threats of new atomic bombs in North Korea, Pakistan and Iran; suffering of refugees in Sri Lanka and Pakistan; and overall, a new economic crisis producing unemployment and major cuts in educational resources all over. The new internet, plus Twitter and Facebook, makes it difficult to start one¡¯s day without checking for the latest disaster ? an airplane falling out of the sky, more suicide bombers in mosques in Iraq and India, a factory explosion in eastern China, a dozen policeman killed in India, a North Korean ship suspected of carrying prohibited materials to Burma where the opposition leader is in jail, a young Iranian student being shot and killed as she walked in a demonstration with her father, more stories of young people recruited as soldiers.
   So it is not unreasonable to ask what we as English teachers can do to help. There are many suggestions: Barbara Birch has just published a book called The English Teacher in Global Civil Society (Routledge 2009) that calls on us to teach ¡°global citizenship¡± and to use ¡°humanistic education, peace education, cross-cultural understanding, problem-posing, cooperative learning, and critical thinking methodologies¡± to add social and moral content to our English classrooms. Francisco Gomes de Matos, a Brazilian linguist, regularly sends me his poems arguing for teaching peace; he advocates what he calls the ultimate fundamental communicative human rights, namely, ¡°that every person should have the right to learn to communicate peacefully for the good of Humankind.¡± For many years, International TESOL has had an interest section on social responsibility. Is it perhaps time that Asia TEFL considered adding such a group?

While English as a Foreign Language at Elementary Schools (EFLES) has gained popularity in many parts of the world including East Asia, we have relatively little understanding about evaluation and assessment practices at the elementary school level. The present study synthesizes the information currently available (typically only at the local level) on assessments that have been used for the evaluation of EFLES programs in three Asian countries: South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. By doing so, the study aims to identify what is known and what needs to be understood in order to advance our collective understanding of how EFLES may be more effectively implemented in East Asia. Previous research on EFLES has largely consisted of the following types of studies: (1) survey and interview studies that ask students, teachers and parents about their experiences with and/or their perceptions of the effectiveness of EFLES programs; (2) studies that use linguistic measures to compare the performance differences between those who have studied in EFLES programs and those who have not; and (3) studies evaluating students¡¯ language attainment based on some form of criteria-based reference measures. The present paper concludes with a series of suggestions for the assessment and evaluation of EFLES programs in those countries that are the focus of this study.

Key words: EFLES: English as a Foreign Language at Elementary Schools

Globalizing ESL classrooms simply means widening the access to the teaching and learning of the English language so that distance learners, who include local and foreign students, could find and share relevant information and resources easily through the web. According to Howell, William, and Lindsay (2003), on-line learning has become one of the new methods to disseminate information and education. In the era of technology advancement and democratization of education, there is a dire need to understand how best English language is taught via on-line. Hence, issues such as facilitation, motivation, and collaboration need serious considerations in developing any on-line materials (Nor Aziah, 2007). In this paper, reading is given prime importance and serves as the focus of the paper since it is a skill that is most basic in following any education (Pandian, 2006). Hence, readers need to know the reading strategies available and how to effectively use them in order to be able to do the various reading skills required in order to be proficient in reading. It is the aim of this paper to explore relevant theoretical background in the quest to develop academic reading strategies on-line instruction. This paper will scrutinize among others the theories of reading (Cohen, 1990) and adult learners (Knowles, 1990) in order to come up with the design principles. Additionally, three major researches conducted on adult learners¡¯ reading strategies (Faizah, 2004), on-line language learning (Faizah et al, 2007), and scaffolding adult on-line learning (Nor Aziah, 2007) will be referred to in order to assist the identification of the design principles. This paper is expected to inform on-line material designers/developers, curriculum developers, adult learners and trainers. The added value of this paper is that the identified design principles could be made as the main reference as they are generalisable to other English subjects offered on-line besides reading.

Key words: Adult learners, reading strategies, on-line instruction

Stories are a fundamental part of our lives. Connelly and Clandinin (1990, p. 4) suggest of stories and people: ¡°People by nature lead storied lives and tell stories of those lives, whereas narrative researchers describe such lives, collect and tell stories of them and write narratives of experience.¡± Through the transaction of learning from each other, the researcher and participant can begin to understand specific experiences within the context of stories told and retold in community. New understandings about the content and context of a situation can begin to open up possible new imaginings for future stories to be lived. ¡°A person is, at once, engaged in living, telling, retelling, and reliving stories¡± (Ibid, p. 4). This living of new stories can become an endless process, as differing perspectives continue to influence understanding.
In this inquiry, Lucian, a recently appointed Department Head of English in a Primary school, recounts for us his journey through the Singapore School System from student to teacher, and into school administration. During his travels, he recalls difficulties he encountered along the road because of what he terms his ¡®differences¡¯. These ¡®differences¡¯ appear to have emerged from his earliest childhood English language learning experiences. They eventually begin to impact the relationships Lucian is attempting to negotiate with his colleagues and supervisors in the Singapore Primary Schools where he is assigned because his philosophical beliefs about the implementation of English pedagogy and practice begin to collide with the beliefs of others, and the policies that exist within his system.
Within this inquiry, I explore the conflicts and tensions that arise out of Lucian¡¯s story that require him to cross ¡®borders of understanding¡¯ with others in the teaching profession. Lucian¡¯s story leaves me with many wonders about teaching and teacher leadership within the context of teaching English at the Primary level in Singapore.

Key words: narrative, teacher education, primary practices, borders

In the twenty-first century, as the world has become more global, the English language has been considered a significant tool for communication. This study examines how to effectively teach English communicative skills to students in the Japanese setting. Based on the selected review of literature, this paper revisits concepts of communicative competence and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). It also examines the objectives of the English curriculum in Japan developed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology [MEXT] and describes current situation of its implementation. Finally, this paper proposes some tips for Japanese English teachers. It is highly recommended for the teachers to understand and teach communicative competence within the frame of grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence. Developing qualifications of the teachers and their inter-cultural awareness also contributes to a more adequate implementation of CLT in the Japanese context.

Key words: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Japanese English teachers, communicative competence, MEXT

Genres are now generally considered to consist of a series of obligatory and optional moves, with each move contributing to the overall communicative purpose of the genre. One concept which has been found to be useful from a language teaching perspective is the notion of the ¡®move register¡¯- the list of lexico-grammatical features found in each move of a particular genre. This paper aims to review four ways in which move registers can be used in language teaching. Firstly, the paper looks at some early work in move register analysis which recommends teachers teach the language of the moves and not the language of the genre. Secondly, the paper explores the concept of language learners as ethnographers. By using the move as the main unit of analysis, learners can be made aware of the dynamic nature of genres by using move registers to track historical change in generic structure and in important linguistic features. Thirdly, the role move registers can play in identifying problems in cross-cultural communication is highlighted using examples of scientists in Asia applying for research positions in Britain. Finally, the paper looks at how the large amounts of data mined from move register analyses can be presented to learners meaningfully.

Key words: genre, move registers, ethnography, variation

In order to understand the meaning of a written text, it is generally accepted that a reader should understand an average of nineteen out of twenty words, and this is referred to as ¡°95% coverage.¡± Given the popularity and importance of proficiency tests in second language acquisition, this study explores how much vocabulary a learner needs to know in order to be able to read and understand TOEIC, TOEFL and EIKEN proficiency tests. The vocabulary from several retired tests was compared to the vocabulary on three criterion lists: a high-frequency word list from the British National Corpus, the Standard Vocabulary List, and Nation¡¯s 14K word-family list. We were able to determine that in order to gain 95 percent coverage on TOEIC, a reader would need a minimum vocabulary size of 4,000 words, or 3,000 word families. TOEFL requires a 4,500-word vocabulary, or 3,500 word families, and a 5,500-word vocabulary, or 4,500 word families, is needed for EIKEN Pre-1st Grade. We also found that recent (2005/2006) versions of these tests require a smaller vocabulary compared to earlier versions. In addition, the SVL appears to provide a more accurate range of vocabulary for the lower level EIKEN tests but that a high correlation among results for the three criterion lists indicates these are stable and effective tools for determining text coverage vocabulary size.

Key words: text coverage, vocabulary size, proficiency tests, criterion vocabulary lists

This paper is aimed at capturing some fingerprints of possible Englishes at lexical and syntactical levels by Indonesian speakers. 16 written narratives of four male and four female pre-service teachers were selected in this study. Three American colleagues and the researcher intersubjectively identified and triangulated possible Englishes in the narratives of personal experiences of these pre-service teachers during their teaching practicum. The analyses show that the Standard English was deviated when Indonesian expressions were re-phrased (or are implied to have been stated) in English words/phrases/sentences which may inevitably still sound nonnative or erroneous for the American speakers. Despite the Americans¡¯ conformity to their Standard English, the researcher contends that deviations from the American English are not to always be viewed negatively as being linguistically inferior. Rather, EFL educators are to explore how English nonnative speakers, especially those from Indonesia, use various possible Englishes and how these educators address the Englishes.

Key words: possible Englishes, errors, intersubjectivity, lexical, and syntactical levels

The purpose of this study is to examine whether language attrition in both short conversation and passage listening comprehension occurs among tertiary students. The number of the participants is 359, who are all from Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications. A test paper, adapted from China¡¯s College English Test Band Six, was used as the instrument to measure participants¡¯ short conversation and passage listening comprehension before and after the two-month holiday. The result indicates that participants¡¯ short conversation listening comprehension improved significantly and obviously over the holiday. However, no statistical significance was found in passage listening comprehension. The reasons for the results were also analyzed and discussed.

This paper reports a study that examined Chinese college English language learners¡¯ out-of-class computer-assisted autonomous language learning (ALL) by means of questionnaires and interviews. Data were collected from 345 students enrolled in college English courses at three levels: basic, intermediate, and advanced. Their computer-assisted ALL behaviors and the value they attached to computers and networks for ALL were identified. Descriptive statistics showed that they held favorable attitudes towards ALL assisted by computers and networks, but they did not show a high frequency of ALL behaviors. The correlation analysis yielded significant positive relationships between attitudes and behaviors. Repeated one-way ANOVAs revealed significant differences in both attitudes and behaviors among the students of the three levels. The advanced students showed the most favorable attitudes and the highest frequency of computer-assisted ALL behaviors while the basic-level students demonstrated a medium degree of support for computer-assisted ALL and the least frequency of ALL behaviors. Interview results indicated that the students¡¯ attitudes towards computer-assisted ALL and the teachers¡¯ positive intervention in the language classes might be two important factors contributing to the differences in ALL behaviors.