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

Abstract

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.