Teach English in Sicundian Zhen - Tianjin

english as a Global LanguageProbably the first thing to do when addressing the issue of Global english is to define what we mean by this term. Basically it seems to be that we can either talk about a form of english that is bastardized by the influence from various other languages or ?dialects? of english itself, or the english that is evolving as a result of english being considered today?s lingua franca. Otherwise the term can also refer to english as it is used in a global context or english as an International Language. Though the first definition is very interesting the one that I want to address in this short paper is the second one. This is the english that is not ?owned by native speakers? but developed, through use, by a fusion of perhaps the two most diffuse forms of english?.British and American?., and is becoming the language of communication in business today. Because of this I think teachers have to ask themselves what kind of english we should be teaching. The reasons for learning english is rapidly changing and though it is probably useful and right to teach the cultural aspects and literature of the language in some contexts it is not always appropriate or necessary to teach these in all contexts. More important perhaps is the kind of language that is taught. It appears to be true that non-native speakers of english have a much easier time communicating among each other than they do communicating with native speakers. Many of the reasons for this are probably obvious but include the fact that they all have a scholastic level of english, often learned following similar, if not the same, textbooks and methods. Perhaps the english that we are often charged with ?improving? should address this issue and provide english that will in fact be useful in this kind of communication. Teaching this kind of english would concentrate on the most commonly used vocabulary and grammar structures and eliminate most idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs. In effect it would be downgrading the language to its most elementary level. As a native english speaker it would actually makes me rather sad to see my own language reduced to this level and see that none of its richness is being enjoyed by many people, but on the other hand I can understand why the complexity of the language creates problems. In my opinion it is almost impossible for a EFL student to achieve a near native speaker level of discourse and comprehension without living in the country of the language for a significant period of time or being immersed in another way. For example the people of many of the northern European countries speak an excellent and very varied english probably because so much of their spoken media (TV and movies) are in english with subtitles. Also some companies, for example in the Netherlands have adopted english as the official language and therefore all daily communication is in english. But this leaves us with all of the other people who are trying to learn english. How should they be treated? And what of the native speakers? (who however only constitute 12% of the world population?though this figure would certainly change when considered in a commercial context). If they will continue blindly acting as is if the language that they are speaking is understood by everyone then the problem will always persist. There is a need for native speakers to adapt their language when speaking to non- native speakers. This is perhaps one of the biggest challenges and ideally perhaps these would be our students. Instead of teaching english as a foreign language we should be teaching native english speakers how to effectively communicate in an international context. Bibliography: http://esl.about.com/od/englishforbusinesswork/a/global.htm http://www.guardian.co.uk/GWeekly/Global_English/0,8458,400340,00.html http://www.mosalingua.com/it/il-globish-global-english-1500-parole-per-comunicare-a-livello-internazionale/ http://www.writingforgovernment.com/pdfs/gegb-2005-online.pdf