We are very pleased to announce that the joint online course, "World Englishes and Miscommunications in view of English as an International Language (World Englishes and Miscommunications)", starts in September 29, 2011. We believe that this is the unique and innovating method of distance education, in which the professors and students of the several major universities in the Asia- Pacific region jointly create the omnibus course.
This time we have six universities in the course: De La Salle University (Philippines), Fudan University (China), Hannam University (Korea), Namseoul University (Korea), Waseda University (Japan) and WenZao Ursuline College of Languages (Taiwan).
We are very grateful to the participating universities who agreed to the initiatives Waseda University proposed. Our special thanks to the internationally well-known professors who contribute to the course:

- Prof. Abdul-Latif Al-Jumaily, University of Baghdad
- Prof. Anne Pakir, National University of Singapore
- Prof. Brian H. Spitzberg, San Diego State University
- Prof. Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley
- Prof. Azirah Hashim, University of Malaya
- Prof. Danilo T. Dayag, De La Salle University
- Prof. David Block, University of London
- Prof. David Wei-Yang Dai, China University of Technology
- Dr. Jennifer Jenkins, University of Southampton
- Prof. Kyutae Jung, Hannam University
- Dr. Larry E. Smith, International Association for World Englishes
- Prof. Low Ee Ling, Nanyang Technological University
- Prof. Masanori Oya, Waseda University
- Prof. Michiko Nakano, Waseda University
- Prof. Ravinder Gargesh, University of Delhi
- Dr. Sudaporn Luksaneeyanawin, Chulalongkorn University
- Prof. Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University
- Prof. Tony T.N. Hung, Hong Kong Baptist University
- Prof. Yasukata Yano, Waseda University
- Prof. Yiu-Nam Leung, National Tsing Hua University
- Prof. Yoji Tanabe, Waseda University
- Prof. Xiong Xueliang, Fudan University

The goals of the course

English has been used as a common tool of communication in Asia. It has been reported that non-native users of English in the so-called Outer Circle and Expanding Circles outnumber the native speakers of English in the Inner Circle. ... As long as regional group accents do not jeopardize mutual intelligibility, World Englishes should be accepted as part and parcel of EIL. However, in our experiences of communication in cyberspace, learners' English reveals some difficulties, often leading to inadvertent misunderstanding. For this reason, in this omnibus course, we would like the students to learn the phonetic features, syntactic features, socio-cultural differences, and para-linguistic features which might cause some misunderstanding among native speakers and Asian interlocutors.

We hope all of you will actively participate in this course and have fruitful results at the end of the course.