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Presenter
Ke   I-Chung 
Assistant Professor (Ph.D.) 
Department of Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics,
Yuan-Ze University, 135 Fareast Rd. Jhongli, Taoyuan county, Taiwan 

Title
Global English and World Culture: A study of Taiwanese university students’ worldviews and concepts of English 

Abstract
The global spread of Enlightenment ideas and Capitalism has been followed by the phenomenon ‘English as an international/global language’. World culture ideas were translated and disseminated through mass schooling, media, and modern corporations and organizations. Increasingly, international and intercultural communications occur without translation. Although globalization gradually shifts the role of English from a foreign language to an international or even a global one –a language that every student learns it in compulsory education as part of the national literacy in addition to their national language--, it remains unclear to what extent younger generations growing up in such a dynamic environment conceive the English language and how ‘world culture’ influences their worldviews. This study aims to understand twenty Taiwanese university students’ worldviews and conceptions of English through in-depth interviews on their past experience of learning and using English as well as their personal reflections on the experience. Initial findings suggest that most students see English accents as resource: the more the better. Only one student perceives English as a foreign language rarely used in local settings; others point to its communicative function and the role as a medium of learning knowledge, though most of them seem to assume native speakers as the persons they communicate with and the producers of the new knowledge they learn through English. More than half regard English as a surviving tool, while one student, after spending several months in Sweden and Turkey, changed her view to assert English as part of fundamental literacy. 

Keywords: EIL, World Culture, Globalization, Global English