Is English Our Lingua Franca or the Native Speaker’s Property? The Native Speaker Orientation among Middle School Students in Japan

Abstract

[...]they opted for learning English for its currency and utility in the English as a native language setting, rather than for its transnational function as a lingua franca. The point here lies not in the objective truth but rather in the learners' subjective reality, because it is their perceptions that will influence their choices and behaviors in language learning (Riley, 1997, p. 127). [...]language attitudes in this study were seen as an amalgam of learners' attitudinal disposition towards different varieties of English and learning English. [...]the items were aggregated to form a composite scale with negative or positive disposition towards English language learning being the interpretative continuum for the scale. [...]their commitment to a native speaker ideal implies that they may envision the target speech community of English, contrary to the current scholarly theorizing of English as the language of a global transnational community.