The worldwide trend of bilingual development and teaching English as second language

Abstract

English is in global existence of World Englishes, as a lingua franca; or an international language. The article aims to make a glimpsed review on the worldwide trend of bilingual development which indicates that there are more second language speakers of English than native speakers and there are as many bilingual children as there are monolingual children. In the light of this trend, a pedagogical paradigm shift in Asia-pacific region (from EFL teaching to ESL teaching) is identified in theory and practice. Particularly, the article gives focus on the description of how teaching English as second language is assigned as national policies and implemented at school levels in some featured Asian countries such as Singapore, Philippines, China and Japan. Hence, some implications are drawn for Vietnamese education context in which the fact that current teaching English as foreign language (EFL) would be gradually replaced by teaching English as second language (ESL) has been taken in the national agenda.