Japanese Pre-service Teacher Trainees' Awareness of English as an International Language

Numerous studies have investigated non-native speakers' attitudes to­ ward the nativeness paradigm, with the results showing a strong favor­ itism toward a standard variety of English found in the United Kingdom and North America. The data used in previous research was collected mostly from ESL learners and ESL teachers; few studies have explored pre-service teachers' language attitudes in regions where English is taught as a foreign language. On the assumption that the beliefs and attitudes held by pre-service teachers will influence the rela­ tionship between themselves and the target language as well as their potential students' view of English language in the international com­ munity, the current study examines Japanese pre-service teachers' be­ liefs concerning the status and value of English as an international language (ElL) as well as their views on native speaker norms.