Business English and Motivation in Asia : Language policy and planning in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Korea <平成15年度(2004年3月)修士論文要旨, 広島大学大学院社会学研究科マネジメント専攻>

English as a lingua franca has prosperous history especially from 19th century and there are the possibility of growing the number of speakers, which includes ENL (English as a national language) speakers, ESL (English as a second language) speakers and EFL (English as a foreign language) speakers. Among them the number of ESL and EFL speakers is even greater than ENL speakers, and presently, Asia is known to have the largest population of English speakers and the trend is likely to continue and perhaps even increase in the future. The aim of this paper is to analyze the significant differences in terms of usage-based English communication skills in Singapore and Malaysia, as opposed to those in Korea and Japan, where those in Singapore and Malaysia noticeably exceeded the skills of those in Korea and Japan. While recognizing that there are many independent variables that affect language learning, and that cultural, ethnic, aptitude and other diverse influences all conspire to produce different outcomes in education, I have sought to focus on one basic factor that clearly plays a role in the learning of a second and foreign language, namely, motivation. Motivation can be sub-divided into at least two specific types, the instrumental motivation and the integrative motivation (Gardner and Lambert, 1959). I have tried to show the roles these kinds of motivations play in education, and have looked at these from the perspective of language policy and implementation, as well as from the learner's perspectives of individual needs, desires, values and so forth. In the early study of comparing two types of motivation, the integrative motivation seemed to be superior to the instrumental motivation. However, it has become clear that the instrumental motivation plays more important role for the process of language acquisition. When it comes to the factors vastly influence on the learner's motivation, I considered language policy and language planning mainly of national level. With referring to the situation of the four coun