The hiring and management practices of a seven-year extracurricular program to enhance Asian undergraduates’ English as an international language communication skills

ABSTRACT

An investigation of how an administrator developed and managed a local extracurricular program in an internationalized Asian university was conducted. The transcript resulting from an interview with the administrator of the extracurricular program and 56 monthly learning units of extracurricular program lesson outlines were analyzed, finding most of the program was led by international students, thereby exposing local students to English speakers from each of Kachru’s Three Circles of English (Inner, Outer, and Expanding). The presence and availability of international users of English and the ways in which they used English with local students benefited the development and implementation of the extracurricular program. The flexibility in the recruitment policy as well as the ways in which the extracurricular program was implemented supported recommendations found in the EIL/ELF literature. Unlike previous research, this study did not find a preference for hiring Inner Circle English speakers.

KEYWORDS:

• extracurricular English
• English as an international language
• curriculum
• Kachru model

Acknowledgments

In addition to our appreciation of the anonymous reviewers’ and editor’s comments, the authors would like to express their gratitude to the kind, patient, supportive advice that Dr Fan Fang provided to an earlier version of the article, including extensive comments on suggested revisions and literature to be reviewed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. NS will hereby be used for any form of this concept.