Global Englishes language teaching (GELT) advocates for an epistemic reorientation of traditional English language teaching, synthesizing insights from World Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and other sociolinguistically informed paradigms and theories in language education. Focusing on the theoretical overlap between GELT and critical language awareness (CLA), this article demonstrates how GELT can offer explicit awareness‑raising opportunities that address not only linguistic diversity but also the intersections of language and power. It reports on participatory action research in two Japanese high schools, detailing the implementation and outcomes of a reading activity called the ‘CLA‑themed reading marathon’. The reading topics were organized into three interconnected sub‑themes designed to 1) develop a descriptive understanding of linguistic diversity, 2) raise awareness of issues related to prejudices and stereotypes, racism, and language, and 3) critically assess issues related to technologies and linguistic diversity, such as artificial intelligence and World Englishes. We present and discuss students’ voices identified in the post‑activity reflections, which indicate their learning outcomes and their perspectives on the activity and the selected readings. The results highlight the impact of the activity on students’ learning, such as raising awareness of linguistic injustice, disrupting common‑sense assumptions about language and enhancing reading engagement and comprehension, while also indicating challenges. One challenge was that a few students reported a sense of distance toward the CLA topics and social issues discussed in the activity, viewing them as ‘someone else’s problem’. Based on these successes and challenges, we offer implications for future research and practice in GELT.

This paper investigates the use of the Hindi complementizer ki in English‑dominant bilingual interaction among Indian university students. The occurrence of ki is examined across language categories, discourse contexts, recurrent lexical environments and competing clause‑linking strategies using a corpus of collaborative academic discussions. The results show that ki occurs predominantly in English‑dominant discourse and is most frequently associated with cognition and reporting constructions. The findings further indicate that ki occurs within a limited number of recurrent lexical environments and alongside the English complementizer that and zero complementation. More broadly, the study demonstrates how a local grammatical resource remains active within English‑dominant interaction and suggests that language contact may be visible not only in lexical choice but also in patterns of clause linkage and discourse organisation. The paper therefore contributes to research on bilingual discourse, language contact and the role of local grammatical resources in multilingual Englishes.

The article revisits Schneider and Schröder’s (2021) assessment of Namibian English (NamE) as a ‘non‑postcolonial’ variety that has moved from a phase of diffuse normative input into a yet uncompleted Phase 3 (‘nativization’) and that – due to ‘ethnic variation’ – remains well short of displaying the ‘homogeneity’ expected of Phase 4 (‘endonormative stabilization’). The article examines the historical record and draws on both perceptual and linguistic datasets collected across Namibian ethnolinguistic groups. The historical record suggests that early NamE was likely not distinct from South African English (SAE), at least in its high‑status varieties, during a period in which SAE moved through Phase 2 into the end of Phase 3. This creates the expectation that, in its high‑status varieties, NamE orbits around inherited SAE models. However, based on the datasets, (urban) NamE seems to have somewhat drifted away from SAE and moved into Phase 4 by displaying some distinctive pragmatic markers and a distinctive high‑status phonetic variety, both with considerable cross‑ethnic diffusion. Importantly, this transition into Phase 4 does not preclude ethnic variation nor continued alignment with SAE’s historically normative varieties in some sections of the population. The article finally argues that transitions into Phase 4 are best established by examining the role of English in local accommodation practices and stratified patterns of variation across gender and social class, likely to reveal the location of (endogenous or exogenous) high‑status norms on the social spectrum and degrees of consensus around them.

Recent years have seen an increase in forced migration from the Global South, e.g., Congolese refugees with long transits in Uganda, to countries in the Global North, like Norway. Many of these newly-arrived Congolese refugees in Norway have English in their linguistic repertoires after decades-long transits in Uganda. English can thus be used as a lingua franca in Norway while they are learning Norwegian, as many Norwegians also have English in their repertoires. However, the ways these refugees have learnt English differ starkly from the ways most Norwegians have learnt English. While most Norwegians have mainly learnt English formally, i.e. in school, these Congolese refugees have mainly learnt English informally, i.e. outside language classrooms. The present article explores specific examples of how these refugees have learnt English. Some have, for example, learnt English through lingua franca interaction with other refugees with whom they do not share any other languages than English; others have initiated English language awareness in the wild themselves through, for example, talking explicitly about the English language with motorcycle riders in Uganda; and others have listened to English-speaking radio programmes in order to learn English faster. I argue that many of these ways of learning English informally can be referred to as “grassroots learning” of English, since English learning is initiated by the refugees themselves. These findings from empirical research among newly-arrived Congolese refugees in Norway may contribute to developing our understandings of informal English language learning, as well as making sure forced migrants’ voices are heard.