Given a global change in socioliguistic landscape of English, Japan is not an exception in terms of having more encounters with non-native speakers of English than native speakers. In light of this, scholars argue that ELT learners need to become aware of the existence of English varieties and other features that accompany English as a lingua franca (ELF) (e.g. Rose and Galloway, 2019; Jenkins, 2015).
There have been efforts made to incorporate World Englishes (WE) or Global Englishes (GE) perspectives in ELT and investigate the impact of such introduction on learners. For instance, based on students' reactions and comments, previous studies report that such instructions had positive effect on the learners, such as influencing students' awareness towards English varieties (e.g. Galloway & Rose, 2014, 2018) and raising students' confidence towards their own English (e.g. Sung, 2015). However, these qualitative studies do not accurately capture the difference in students' awareness or confidence because the data were collected only after the instructions were given. Kubota (2001), on the other hand, approached differently and included a quantitative approach in her study to examine the impact of instructions about WE on American high school students. However, statistically significant result was not obtained in the areas of high school students' perceptions about English and its varieties.
Receiving ideas from Kubota's study (2001), this study aims to investigate the impact of instructions related to GE on university students in Japan by adopting a quantitative approach.
56 first-year university students in Japan participated in this study, and 27 first-year university students were set as a control group. Both groups were at a similar stage in terms of their English proficiency. 56 students received the instruction about GE perspectives that included the following: an introduction to the concept of GE, listening activities where students were exposed to varieties of English, some facts related to English speakers, and actual contacts with non-native speakers of English. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted to examine the effect of the content introduced in class. The survey asked about students' background information (such as years of English language education in school), confidence towards their English proficiency, motivation towards studying English, and beliefs about native speaker norms regarding pronunciation, fluency, and accuracy.
The result of pre- and post-questionnaires was analysed statistically for each question related to students' confidence towards their English proficiency and perception towards English. Fischer's exact test revealed statistically significant difference in the areas of students' perception about the importance of native-like English pronunciation (Q2 When speaking English, it is important to speak with native-like pronunciation as much as possible: p < .001) and fluency (Q3 When speaking English, it is important to speak with native-like fluency as much as possible: p < .05). On the other hand, statistically significant difference was not detected in other areas including students' confidence towards their English proficiency. Moreover, difference was not detected in any of the areas of pre- and post- questionnaires of the control group. In short, the instructions and activities related GE had an impact on students' perception in these two areas. The students valued native English norms less in these areas after receiving the instructions. One reason for obtaining the statistically significant result in the two areas is likely to be connected to the contents of GE components covered in class where students were exposed to English varieties more in the areas of speaking than writing.
In sum, this study aimed to investigate the impact of instructions related to GE on Japanese university students by adopting a quantitative approach. As a result, the impact was detected in the specific areas of students' perception about English. The current study contributes to the field by suggesting possible ways to quantitatively measure the impact of GE instructions. For a future direction, it is interesting to uncover how students' individual differences are linked with the instructional effects.
