The popularity and desirability of English language education has become somewhat unbeatable in Asian countries. In this essay, highlighting the examples of Taiwan and Hong Kong, I seek to understand the multiple threads of reasoning systems that come together to constitute and sustain the desirability of English learning. In that, I conceptualize that language education is more than teaching and learning a new/foreign language. Language is intertwined with the sphere of culture. Thus, I hope to encourage an alternative perspective for rethinking the “heat” of English language education in Asian countries.In that, I seek to underscore that it is imperative to rethinking the effects of English language education.

Vouchers and school choice discourses have been translated, reassembled, and made intelligible in different localities, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, as tactics in education reforms to ensure equality and quality. This paper presents the findings of a comparative research study that aims to investigate the effects of preschool vouchers in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I argue that laced within global and local circulations of educational choice and voucher discourses are notions of marketization and privatization. In that, I seek to understand how preschool voucher systems in Taiwan and Hong Kong work to create a normative socio-cultural administration to (re)-shape, regulate, and construct reasonable/desirable modes of thinking and acting.