Hideo Watanabe

ABSTRACT Background While Australia attracts overseas tourists and residents for beach‐related leisure and sports, coastal drowning is a serious issue in Australia, with 150 drowning deaths and about 9000 rescues recorded in 2023/2024. Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities are at high risk due to their unawareness, linguistic barriers, lack of rip current knowledge and limited access to water safety education. Aim To provide further support for CALD communities, this study developed a new pedagogical tool, a reading exercise for standardised English exams such as IELTS, incorporating beach safety information; it examined to what extent this material would improve international students' knowledge of rip currents and safety strategies. Research Method This study utilised a quasi‐experimental design to measure the improvement of beach safety knowledge using a pre‐test, post‐test and follow‐up test. Statistical data were analysed in SPSS and R Studio, utilising descriptive analysis, and generalised estimate equations. Additionally, a thematic analysis of textual responses was conducted in NVivo. Results The results show that there was a significant improvement ( p  < 0.01) in the participants' knowledge of rips, beach flags and safety signage warnings after using the material. Additionally, participants started pointing out a wide range of characteristics when describing rip currents. Although some deterioration of knowledge (except regarding beach flags) was detected 4 weeks later, the improvement was still significant across all topics. So what? Considering the high demand for English language learning material among migrants in Australia, this material should be shared with CALD communities to improve beach safety knowledge.

Abstract This article examines evaluations of entities associated with countries in English language textbooks for junior high school students in Japan. Drawing on an APPRAISAL analysis and interviews, the study explores how evaluations of national entities are realized in the textbooks. Eighteen textbooks were analyzed, and three interviews were conducted, one with a textbook writer and two with textbook editors. The findings reveal that the English language textbooks evaluated entities associated with Japan in a positive light much more frequently than those related to other countries. This was realized by the writer and editors’ intention that the textbooks be used to teach aspects of Japanese culture and to nurture learners’ diverse perspectives toward countries and their cultures.

Abstract This article aims to identify how Chinese and Japanese online English-language newspaper editorials construct their arguments about a group of disputed islands – the Diaoyu Islands in Chinese, and the Senkaku Islands in Japanese – from a linguistic perspective. Newspapers in the two countries have played an important role in appealing not just to domestic readers, but also to international readers on this issue. A corpus of 50 editorials published between 2012 and 2016 was compiled from the English-medium Chinese and Japanese newspapers. The article examines evaluative language in the editorials, using an APPRAISAL framework developed within systemic functional linguistics. This project also adopts corpus techniques for selecting the samples. The findings show that the two corpora frequently used negative evaluations towards the opposite country. The two corpora, however, differed in the varieties of evaluations in the editorials. By exploring the discursive construction of the editorials in relation to contextual information, the analytical focus is on the way the discursive resources contribute to realising the ideologies behind the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute. The findings contribute to our understanding of the way conflicting views can be constructed with the use of linguistic resources in the context of online English-medium news media.