In foreign language education, decisions must be taken on what languages to teach, who will teach them, in which schools (i.e. all, only urban, only rural), in which grades, the number of hours a week, and the cost involved. This book explores the answers to these questions across a number of Asian polities. It illustrates why some of the efforts undertaken are successful and why some are not, why - despite significant investments of time and resources - some students do not seem to acquire the languages being taught, and why some teachers responsible for instruction in the designated foreign languages have problems achieving fluency in the designated language or have other language teaching difficulties. It suggests some strategies various polities might attempt to achieve their stated language learning objectives.

1. Why educational language plans sometimes fail Robert B. Kaplan, Richard B. Baldauf Jr. and Nkonko Kamwangamalu 2. Singapore's E(Si)nglish-knowing bilingualism Siew Kheng Catherine Chua 3. English in primary education in Malaysia: Policies, outcomes and stakeholders' lived experiences Nor Liza Ali, M. Obaidul Hamid and Karen Moni 4. Compulsory "foreign language activities" in Japanese primary schools Kayoko Hashimoto 5. Shaping socialist ideology through language education policy for primary schools in the PRC Minglin Li 6. Parents' perspectives on the effects of primary EFL education policy in Taiwan Ai-hua Chen 7. Primary English language education policy in Vietnam: Insights from implementation Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen 8. Linguistic capital continuity and change in educational language polices for South Asians in Hong Kong primary schools Gao Fang 9. Beyond the façade of language planning for Nepalese primary education: monolingual hangover, elitism and displacement of local languages Prem Bahadur Phyak 10. Timor-Leste: Sustaining and maintaining the national languages-in-education Kerry Taylor-Leech 11. Primary second language programs in Asia: What do the data tell us? Robert B. Kaplan, Richard B. Baldauf Jr., Nkonko Kamwangamalu and Pauline Bryant