Unit 2

ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE

I Pre-reading
Task 1 Test your knowledge on world languages and answer the following questions.

1. How many languages are there in the world?

2. What are the three most spoken languages in the world?
3. Which country has the largest number of spoken languages?
4. Have you ever heard of a language that has been intentionally revived after
having experienced a near or complete extinction?
(adapted from EAP now!, p. 202)

Task 2 Scan the text What is a Global Language? and explain the differences between
the first, the second and a foreign language.

II Reading
Task 1 Read the text What is a Global Language? and do the reading comprehension task
below.

What is a global language?

1. A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is
recognized in every country. This might seem like stating the obvious, but it is not, for the
notion of 'special role' has many facets. Such a role will be most evident in countries
where large numbers of the people speak the language as a mother tongue - in the case of
English, this would mean the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa and several Caribbean countries. However, no language has ever been
spoken by a mother-tongue majority in more than a few countries, so mother-tongue use
by itself cannot give a language global status. To achieve such a status, a language has to
be taken up by other countries around the world. They must decide to give it a special
place within their communities, even though they may have few (or no) mother-tongue
speakers.

2. There are two main ways in which this can be done. Firstly, a language can be
made the official language of a country, to be used as a medium of communication in
such domains as government, the law courts, the media, and the educational system. To
get on in these societies, it is essential to master the official language as early in life as
possible. Such a language is often described as a 'second language', because it is seen as a

1
complement to a person's mother tongue, or 'first language'. The role of an official
language is today best illustrated by English, which now has some kind of special status
in over seventy countries, such as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Singapore and Vanuatu. This is
far more than the status achieved by any other language - though French, German,
Spanish, Russian, and Arabic are among those which have also developed a considerable
official use. Each year brings new political decisions on the matter: for example, Rwanda
gave English official status in 1996.

3. Secondly, a language can be made a priority in a country's foreign-language

teaching, even though this language has no official status. It becomes the language which
children are most likely to be taught when they arrive in school, and the one most
available to adults who - for whatever reason - never learned it, or learned it badly, in
their early educational years. Russian, for example, held privileged status for many years
among the countries of the former Soviet Union. Mandarin Chinese continues to play an
important role in South-east Asia. English is now the language most widely taught as a
foreign language - in over 100 countries, such as China, Russia, Germany, Spain, Egypt
and Brazil - and in most of these countries it is emerging as the chief foreign language to
be encountered in schools, often displacing another language in the process.

4. In reflecting on these observations, it is important to note that there are several

ways in which a language can be official. It may be the sole official language of a
country, or it may share this status with other languages. And it may have a 'semi-official'
status, being used only in certain domains, or taking second place to other languages
while still performing certain official roles. Many countries formally acknowledge a
language's status in their constitution (e.g. India); some make no special mention of it
(e.g. Britain).

5. Similarly, there is great variation in the reasons for choosing a particular

language as a favoured foreign language: they include historical tradition, political
expediency, and the desire for commercial, cultural or technological contact. Also, even
when chosen, the 'presence' of the language can vary greatly, depending on the extent to
which a government or foreign-aid agency is prepared to give adequate financial support
to a language-teaching policy. In a well-supported environment, resources will be
devoted to helping people have access to the language and to learn it, through the media,
libraries, schools, and institutes of higher education. There will be an increase in the
number and quality of teachers able to teach the language. Books, tapes, computers,
telecommunication systems and all kinds of teaching materials will be increasingly
available. In many countries, however, lack of government support, or a shortage of
foreign aid, has hindered the achievement of language-teaching goals.

2
 6. Because of this three-pronged development - of first-language, official-
language, and foreign-language speakers - it is inevitable that a global language will
eventually come to be used by more people than any other language. English has already
reached this stage. The statistics collected suggest that nearly a quarter of the world's
population is already fluent or competent in English, and this figure is steadily growing -
in die late-1990s, that means between 1.2 and 1.5 billion people. No other language can
match this growth. Even Chinese, found in eight different spoken languages, but unified
by a common writing system, is known to only some 1.1 billion.

(adapted from English as a Global Language, pp. 3 - 6)

III Reading comprehension

Task 1 Match the paragraph number with the heading that best summarizes its main idea.

a) Reasons for choosing a particular foreign language ______

b) English as a mother tongue language (first language) ______
c) The number of people speaking a global language ______
d) English being an official language (second language) ______
e) Ways of making a particular language official ______
f) Foreign language policy ______

IV Vocabulary in context
Task 1 Using the context clues, match the words (1-8) with the correct definitions below.
Paragraph number, in which the word occurs, is given in brackets.

1. complement (2)
2. emerge (3)
3. encounter (3)
4. sole (4)
5. aid (5)
6. expediency (5)
7. hinder (5)
8. prong (6)

a) usefulness or necessity for a particular purpose, but not always fair or right
b) only, single
c) a thing that adds new qualities to sth in a way that improves it or makes it
more attractive
d) to make it difficult for sb to do sth; to hamper
e) each of the two or more long pointed parts of a fork

3
 f) any help that you need to perform a particular task or a help given to a
person
g) meet with; run into
h) to become known; to start to exist
Task 2 The words covered in Task 1 are in their canonical or dictionary forms, i.e. the
nouns are in nominative singular, the verbs in their infinitive forms and the adjectives in
the positive degree. Look how they are used in the text and give a basic description of
them (i.e. part of speech; case, number; tense, voice; degree).

Task 3 Match the words from column A with the words from column B to make
collocations. If you are not sure about some, check the text What is a Global Language.

A B collocation

state contact _________________________

acknowledge stage _________________________
achieve material _________________________
perform environment _________________________
foreign mention of sth _________________________
make status _________________________
teaching aid _________________________
cultural role _________________________
well-supported the obvious
_________________________
reach status _________________________

Task 4 Use five collocations from Task 3 in your own sentences.

Task 5 Find the expressions in paragraphs 2, 3, and 6 that may be used to describe a
person’s language competences.

Task 6 a) Translate the following sentence into Croatian.

It is inevitable that a global language will eventually come to be used by more

people than any other language.
b) What Croatian equivalent did you use to translate the English word eventually?

The English eventually and the Croatian mistranslation eventualno are the examples of
false pairs. False pairs refer to the pairs of words in two languages that look or sound
similar but have a different meaning.

4
Task 7 The following Croatian expressions are mistranslated. Provide the correct English
equivalents. In some cases there is more than one possible translation.
1. aktualan problem – actual* problem
2. aktualnosti – actualities*
3. eventualno – eventually*
4. evidencija – evidence*
5. revizija (računovodstvo)– revision*
6. konkurencija – concurrence*
7. ambulanta – ambulance*
8. sympathetic – simpatičan*

Task 8 Using the vocabulary covered in the tasks above, translate the following
paragraph into Croatian.

Distinctions which are often encountered between 'first', 'second', and 'foreign' language
status are useful, but they should be interpreted carefully because they often do not state
the obvious. In particular, it is important to avoid interpreting the distinction between
'second' and 'foreign' language use as a difference in fluency and ability. Although we
might expect people from a country where English has reached the official status to have
more competence than those where it has not, solely on grounds of greater exposure and
cultural contacts, it turns out that it is not always so. For example, we should make
mention of the very high levels of fluency demonstrated by the speakers from the
Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands.
(adapted from English as a Global Language, p. 6)

V Vocabulary development: meta-language

The term meta-language refers to any terminology or language used to discuss language
itself. Words and phrases such as 'verb', 'noun', 'present perfect continuous', 'phrasal verb'
and 'reported speech' are all examples of common English classroom meta-language.
Knowledge of meta-language helps you to classify and acquire any language.

Task 1 In pairs, discuss the meaning of the following terms that refer to language and its
categorization.

Nouns
- gender (masculine, feminine, neuter; a male/female/neuter noun)
- number (singular, plural)
- case (nominative, genitive/possessive case/Saxon genitive, dative and
accusative/objective case)

5
Verbs
- person (1st, 2nd, 3rd); number (Sg., Pl.);
- tense
- voice (active, passive)
- mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative)
- aspect (simple/static/perfective and continuous/progressive/imperfective)
- modal/defective verbs
- transitive, intransitive verbs
- reflexive verbs
- a verb base, a verb ending
- infinitive, suffix, prefix
- to conjugate/inflect the verb

Adjectives
- comparison (the positive degree, the comparative degree, the superlative degree)
- comparisons of equality, superiority
- regular, irregular comparison
- one-syllable adjective, two-syllable adjective

Articles
- definite, indefinite
- omission of article (zero article)
- to take article (Names of countries in English do not usually take an article)

Pronouns
- personal, possessive, reflexive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative
- first-person singular, second-person singular…

Numerals
- cardinal, ordinal numbers
- odd, even numbers
- fractional numbers/fractions

Task 2 Read the text What is a Global Language and do the following tasks.

1. Find two nouns and describe them (number, gender, case).

2. Find a monosyllable adjective and a polysyllable adjective and describe how
they form comparative and superlative.
3. Find two numerals and categorize them.
4. Find two active and two passive verbs and describe their form.
5. Find two examples of pronouns and classify them.

6
VI Speaking
Task 1 In small groups, discuss the differences between English and Croatian with
respect to some features of morphology, syntax, lexicology etc. that have been posing
problems for you in English language learning.

Task 2 If you were given an opportunity and unlimited resources to learn any other
foreign language apart from English, which one would it be? What would be the reasons
for your choice?

VII Listening
Task 1 Listen to the interview with David Crystal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=WZI1EjxxXKw), a world famous linguist and answer the questions below:

1) Why does a language become a global language?

2) Has the structure of English influenced its status?

Task 1 Listen to the interview again and write down four kinds of power which have
made English an international language.
a)
b)
c)
d)

VII Critical thinking

There are substantial benefits of speaking a global language such as easier
communication in every aspect of life, better understanding etc. However, there are also
possible dangers of one language being a dominant world language. Can you think of
some? How could these dangers be avoided?

VIII Grammar
Task 1 Tense Review (Future), Oxford Grammar for EAP, pp. 10 – 11.

7
8