Jun 22nd , 2011
Are you part of the English Mania?
If you are reading these lines then your English language skills are most likely quite good. You might be a native English speaker or someone who speaks English as a second language or as a foreign language. You might be surprised to know how many people speak English. There are about 350 million native English speakers in the world, and about as many who speak it as a second language. 750 million speak English as a foreign language. Moreover, English is being learned by about a billion people. Billion! That’s a huge number. Have you ever stopped to think why English is so popular and why it is important to speak English?
And why is it? Try to ask this question on Yahoo! Answers. The most popular answer is “Because English people are too lazy to learn yours!” Hmm, amusing as it might be, it’s not really the reason. In reality, English is the lingua franca of the world, but not because it’s spoken by the largest number of people. It’s mainly because English is spoken as a native language or is a very dominant language in more continents than any other language. Think of the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, India, South Africa and also the Caribbean. No other language has the same impact on so many parts of the world.
Still not convinced? You must have missed the fact that English is everywhere. It is used by non-English-speaking tourist destinations to communicate with visitors, it dominates most of the World Wide Web’s stored data and pages, it is critical for international business and even for landing a good job. That’s why a billion people are learning English.
And indeed the world has a new mania: the English Mania – a relatively new obsession with learning English. Watch Jay Walker talk about this new mania. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English — “the world’s second language” — by the thousands. Check it out:
To summarise, there’s no doubt. It’s important to speak English and it can certainly make life easier and more enjoyable. The more you master it, the better. It only makes sense to hop on the English Mania train and not wait for the lazy native English speakers of the world to start learning other languages.
And what do you think? Are you an enthusiastic English learner? Are you a native English speaker who feels that English is more than enough? Or do you believe that this is just a temporary trend and that a different language is going to take over the world? Don’t be shy, share your thoughts with us!
Adios for now -
Sharon and the Ginger team
Posted in English as a second language, English learning | Tagged English language, mania
14 Responses to Are you part of the English Mania?
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Hi Shez,
I can feel your pain. Vocabulary is not something you can learn overnight. It’ll increase with time but there are things you can do to speed this up:
Read as many texts in English as possible (books, newspapers, internet stories…)
Watch movies in English without the subtitles (or with English subtitles, I find this very helpful!)
Interact as much as possible in English. Try online forums or chat rooms for example.
If you’re really into this you can test yourself using lists of new words that you learn every week.But the most important thing is don’t worry, it can only get better!
Sharon
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David Henry says:
The letters of the English alphabet and the numbers 0-9 can be found in the patterns of butterfly wings. Try that with Chinese or Arabic. HAHA!
Also, the Bible says that in the end times, the whole world will be of one language again. I think it is going to be English, hence the ‘English Mania’. -
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Hi
I am a Malay and English is my second language. I’ve used Grammar checker for almost a week now. It has improved my writing skills and yes I am an enthusiastic English learner. My understanding in English is average however have a problem with conversation when someone uses big vocabulary or phrases.
English is an international language unless working in government sector.