Description:
This book compares English as a Foreign Language teaching in Taiwan with Chinese as a Foreign Language education in England and highlights how classroom activities are embedded within ethnic or social group cultures, family resources and school visions or goals, and it highlights the potential for a perpetuation of social inequality as a result.
Brief description:
Wen-Chuan Lin is Associate Professor, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Taiwan. His research interests include intercultural studies, computer-mediated language learning and foreign language learning issues from the perspectives of Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory. He is co-editor of Internationalizing English Language Education in Globalized Taiwan (with I.J. Weng and R. Godwin-Jones, 2018, Tung Hua).
Review Quotes:
This book provides a closely argued and detailed ethnographic account of why young people in high schools succeed in learning a foreign language, English in Taiwan and Chinese in the UK. Through extensive classroom observations and interviews it provides fascinating insights into culture and contributes to scholarship that charts the ever-increasing divide between the highly paid global players and those who remain tied to local jobs and relative poverty.
-- "Gabrielle Ivinson, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK"