Wednesday 3 September 2008

Draft of second part of my essay

4 Language (219 words)
English is used as a global lingua franca in a lot of fields. The world status has been caused by the expansion of British colonial power and the emergence of American economic power (Crystal D., 2003). Now it is dominant in communications, science, business, media, diplomacy and so forth. Acquisition of the English language leads to access a great deal of knowledge of broader world. However, local languages such as Welsh in Wales and Maori in New Zealand are likely to disappear. According to the study of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the experts estimates that “one language disappears on average every two weeks” (2008). People tend to suffer from the loss of identity and uniqueness due to the language loss. In addition, languages influence each other and change gradually. English speakers may feel threatened by the considerable growth of an immigrant language and English may be controlled by its words and phrases. New varieties of English, which is called New Englishes, started to emerge by the end of the 19th century. They are going to different directions from Standard English. Standard English users may become worried about the spread of that kind of English. In conclusion, both English and a local language are important as a global language and as a symbol of identity.


5 Positive effects on English Language Teaching (164 words)
Demand for English teaching has increased because of the world status. English has been chosen as their main foreign language at schools and a great number of English language teachers have been required all over the world. As a result of this, a lot of universities in English native countries started to offer short-term teacher training courses as well as postgraduate courses such as teaching English for speakers of other languages (TESOL) and teaching English as a foreign languages (TEFL). There are a great number of English language schools and courses in the world and the market became one of the major industries all over the world. When it comes to materials for teaching English, good audio materials and various kinds of resources are available because of the spread of the Internet. Classroom activities and lesson plans can be used through websites such as BBC and British Council. In addition, giving attractive lessons using multimedia approach may give a great motivation to the learners.

6 Negative effects on English Language Teaching (146 words)
However, the presence of a global language has changed learning conditions and reduced opportunities to learn other languages. People will be lazy about studying other languages. In fact, only English has been taught as a foreign language at Japanese schools in recent years. In addition, globalisation has made language teaching more diverse and complicated. Teachers in non-English speaking countries have been worried about which English should teach because the word, pronunciation and spelling are different among English speaking countries such as America, Britain and Australia. Moreover, as the number of countries using English as a second language grows, the situation has been more and more complicated. Many unique words and forms are identified in Caribbean English and the former British colonies English. It may be difficult for English language teachers to judge them correct or incorrect, well-formed or ill-formed and acceptable or unacceptable (Finch G., 2003).

No comments: