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english as a Global LanguageEnglish as a global language: Globalization is a term that has been thrown around over the past few decades. Coined by the American economist Theodore Levitt in the 1980?s, it is the idea of interdependence among countries, societies and cultures all over the world. With globalization and cross-culture interdependence comes communication. Naturally language would become the largest part of this communication. So it is no wonder that language has become in intricate part of many social aspect of today?s world. english has been deemed the business language of the world. At approximately 400 million native speakers, it is quickly becoming the most widely used language just behind spanish and chinese. With this being said many people are realizing the importance of learning english as a foreign language. The two of us have seen this to be the case from firsthand experience. While teaching down in Costa Rica I had a long discussion on this topic with a colleague of mine. He was telling me that 20 years ago it was advantageous to learn english as a second language. He said if you knew english you were ahead of the curve. Then he said but now english is the curve. If you don?t know it now you are behind the curve. And that made a lot of sense to me. english has become more than a desire of self progression and career advancement, it has become somewhat of a necessity for most people. It has become what B.S. degrees in the U.S. are today. They are no longer a ?plus?, but a standard. Today many jobs have undergone transformation from a primary or secondary industry into service jobs, meaning more communication is needed. Most of the students that I was teaching in costa rica were learning english so they could go work in a call center for some technology company such as RCA. There they would be taking calls from customers most likely from the united states. This would require them to know english prior to getting the job. This has been the trend in most countries that are non english speaking countries. Most jobs are becoming english related. So now many countries are focusing on incorporating english into the school curriculums. A great example, many of my friends from Costa Rica, Germany and France are all fluent in english and when I asked them where they learned it they said school, as in primary and secondary school. One can begin to see the trend that has started to take form. english becomes the business language; business fuels society, which has now been formed by globalization. And so it is people have begun to adapt to this. In fact it has become such a big deal now that countries are offering great incentives for people to come and teach their people english. In conclusion, globalization has paved the road for english to flourish as a language. Due to the fact that is has become the business language of the world, interdependence and global communication depends on it. In turn the people have started to become depended on english as a way to make a living, making it a focus within the schools, the business arena and society in general.
