"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

This book explores language ideologies in China, which encounters the unprecedented global spread of English as a lingua franca, against the backdrop of globalisation where China emerges as a rapidly developing economy with vigorous promotion of Chinese around the world. The book addresses Chinese speakers' ideologies in relation to ELF and provides insights into non-native English speakers' engagement in the development of English in the future.

This book investigates inherent, structural differences in the Chinese and English writing systems which predispose learners from childhood to develop specific literacy-learning strategies, which can impair later efforts at learning foreign language literacy if the foreign language script varies significantly from the native language script. It compares educational practices and philosophies in Chinese and English-speaking classrooms, and examines the psychological underpinnings of these literacy learning strategies. This book presents psychometric testing of adult reading strategy defaults and examines case study data, revealing that Chinese students are susceptible to misapplying Chinese character-level processing strategies to English word identification tasks, which decreases reading efficiency, and ultimately can lead to learning failure. Finally, a new educational framework is proposed for teaching beginning language-specific word identification and literacy-learning skills to learners whose first language script varies significantly from that of the target language.