Abstract-This paper examined the largely unexplored effects of exposure to foreign customers' language (e.g., English) as informal learning for service-industry workers, a pattern common in developing countries where resources to learn English were not widely accessible to lower-status workers in the labor market. It also pointed out the paucity of research on service-industry workers' language development in applied and sociolinguistic literature. This pilot study adopted two analytical tools, the magnet of trend's model and the concept of "quadrant," to highlight the English learning opportunities provided for the service-industry workers in a developing country, and explored how the development of their language abilities enabled them to expand and navigate more quadrants. Field visits and qualitative interviews were undertaken to gather data from the sample, consisted of 200 participants. Broad content analysis conventions were deployed to interpret interview data and field notes derived from observations, aimed at combining both emic and etic (interactional) data. The paper reported the role of English-speaking customers as informal tutors to facilitate these workers' English language development. This paper turned to different case studies of exemplar workers who reported following the English-for-customer (EFC) pattern, because they illustrated two themes common across the sample studied. The results revealed that, among these workers, (1) educational background and (2) exposure to English-speaking customers in an informal educational setting may contribute to fostering the learning of English.Index Terms-service industry, Thailand, English as an additional language for work, English for customer

Attitudes toward languages of bi-and multilingual children and adolescents have not yet become a focus of research. Despite rapid growth in the number of bi-and multilingual children and adolescents across the globe, surprisingly few studies have been devoted to this significant phenomenon. Bi-and multilingualism is a major consequence of immigration and cross-cultural marriages. Regardless of whether cross-cultural marriage is involved, the immigration of families has considerable linguistic consequences on children and adolescents. This paper draws on five case studies in examining the complex factors determining the attitudinal patterns evinced by bi-and multilingual children and adolescents from immigrant families in Thailand. Five households agreed to participate in this research endeavor and data were also collected from surveys, interviews, observations and field notes acquired through the employment of ethnographic investigative methods. The data collected were analyzed through constant comparative method and content analysis. Findings showed consistent patterns for those bi-and multilingual children and adolescents whose Thaispeaking mother was linguistically dominant in a family with an immigrant father speaking a minority language. The results showed that these children were more likely to perceive Thai as more highly regarded language. By contrast, it was also found that Thai was not as highly regarded by the children of parents if both were minority-language speaking immigrants. It was concluded that the family structure of immigrant families is associated with the language attitudes of their children. By the same token, the type of marriage of immigrant families has long-reaching effects on the development of children and adolescents' language attitudes. Moreover, data showed that a non-migrant mother's dominant language played a more influential role in contrast to the minimal role-played by the migrant father's minority language in the development of children and adolescents' language attitudes.

This research addresses an important set of social scientific issues-how language maintenance between dominant and vernacular varieties of speech-also known as dialects-are conditioned by increasingly globalized mass media industries that are created by them and accompany them. In particular, it examines how the television series and film industries (as an outgrowth of the mass media) related to social dialectology help maintain and promote one regional variety of speech over the other. The value of this thesis is ultimately judged by its contribution to the sociolinguistic literature. All of these issues and data addressed in the current study have the potential to make a contribution to the current understanding of social dialectology literature-a sub-branch of sociolinguistics-particularly with respect to the language maintenance literature. The researcher adopts a multi-method approach (literature review, interviews and observations) to collect and analyze data. The research is found support to confirm two positive correlations: the number of production of dialectal television series (and films) and the distribution of the dialect in question, as well as the number of dialectal speakers and the maintenance of the dialect under investigation.

Abstract-This inquiry on young refugee language learners presents findings that have been yielded from an empirical study and conducted over a period of 8 months in Thailand. This study took an angle in multidisciplinary fields of language teaching by examining socio-economic inequalities occurred to urban refugee children and adolescents resulted from their formal schooling interruption as closely in relation to what languages are taught in their humanitarian based language learning programs. A central argument throughout this paper has been balancing languages to teach for these young language learners by refocusing attentions on teaching needed Thai language that helps formal schooling interrupted refugee children and adolescents to resume their study in local Thai schools, accompanied by teaching globally-oriented English language. By the same token, while the promise of English language teaching and learning might empower young urban refugee students, English language teaching cannot be at expenses of Thai language teaching because the latter is urgently needed for these young urban refugees to continue their formal schooling and decreases inequalities.Index Terms-English language teaching, Thai language teaching, urban refugee language learners