589 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 37, No. 4, Winter 2003 The Impact of English as a Global Language on Educational Policies and Practices in the Asia-Pacic Region* DAVID NUNAN The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region, China This article presents the results of an investigation into the place of English in the curriculum in several countries in the Asia-Pacic region. The study indicates that the emergence of English as a global language is having considerable impact on policies and practices in all countries surveyed. However, it also reveals signicant problems, including confu- sion and inconsistency, at the level of policy, particularly regarding the issue of age of initial instruction, inequity regarding access to effective language instruction, inadequately trained and skilled teachers, and a disjunction between curriculum rhetoric and pedagogical reality. D espite the apparent widespread perception that English is a global language, relatively little systematic information has been gathered on its impact on educational policies and practices in educational systems around the world. The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of English on educational policies and practices in countries in the Asia-Pacic region, particularly Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam. These countries were chosen because they represent a range of contrasting characteristics and fea- tures, from developed to developing, ex-colonial to independent, large to small, and culturally diverse to culturally cohesive. The case study methodology revealed a variety of details about each county, which offer a glimpse at the educational policy realities of the pervasive role of English internationally. *This study is based on a Spotlight Presentation given at the 36th Annual TESOL Convention, April 2002, in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States. It was stimulated by an invitational conference on research priorities in TESOL, sponsored by the TESOL Interna- tional Research Foundation in February 2002. During the conference, the need for research into the impact of English as a global language emerged as a major theme. (For a detailed review of this and other issues covered at this conference, see Duff & Bailey, 2001.)