I’ve come here to the British Council who work hard to build cultural relations between Britain and the rest of the world, and the English language is a big part of that. Let’s find out more.
The British Council provides resources for people learning English, and also teachers of English. Martin Peacock is the Director of Global English Product Development.
Richard: Martin, tell me about English as a global language.
Martin: OK, well many people talk about English as being a global language. And the reasons for that are the widespread use of English. It’s used in education, it’s used in science and technology and, importantly, English is also used in business.
Richard: Are there many global languages?
Martin: Well, no, not really. I mean there’s ‘the’ global language which is English in the sense that English is used in these many different contexts; there’s only one. There are other languages which are used very widely and spoken by many people in many different places: Cantonese, for example, a variant of Chinese, is spoken in many different places so it’s global in a geographic sense and it can be global in the numbers, but in terms of the use in different areas of education, science, research, English is the only global language.
Richard: Are there different types of English?
Martin: Well, yes, there are lots of different types. There's different accents of English. I come from the north of England, where I have a particular accent. So within England itself, within the UK, there are many variations in English pronunciation and that extends globally, so you see English in America and used in Australia, which is different in accent and also in usage as well.
Richard: And what about the impact of technology on a language?
Martin: In the past, new words were coined by people - it might have been in a speech or a newspaper article or in a book - they were written down and then other people adapted them and used them, and that could be quite a slow process and new words might come into a language over a long period: 10, 20 years. So technology allows languages to evolve much more quickly.
Richard: So technology can change the language, but in what way does it help people to learn the language?
Martin: Well, it helps in many ways. In the past, students in locations in other countries didn’t have access to much genuine English; they may have a book or an odd newspaper, but what the Internet allows them is to read and often to read and translate languages like English on a massive scale.
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People learn English for different reasons and knowledge of the language is often important in fields like medicine, business and computing. English is becoming more and more important in order to communicate in the international world.
English opens doors to employment, education and mobility. And it helps teachers and learners engage across the globe. One of the best ways to learn English is to study in Britain. But what is it actually like to learn English here?
Clare: My name is Clare, I am 26 and I come from Italy. My course at the North West Academy was very good. I studied grammar, conversation and also words linked with my work placement. The teacher was very good. She has always been available for problems during the lessons and outside the lessons.
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Over 600,000 learners a year come to Britain to help achieve their ambition, to experience modern UK life.
Maximiliano: My name is Maximiliano. I’m 23 years old and I’m from Venezuela. Everyone here is very friendly. When you tell them that you’re a foreigner, everyone is very welcoming, like everyone tries to speak with you, everyone, like, tries to just stay close to you and ask you about your experience, how your life is in your own country. And that actually helps you a lot, like, when you’re not a native speaker.
Alexander: My name is Alexander. My surname Igurov. I’m 24 years old. I’m come to the UK from Russia, from Moscow. I’m studying here business English. Sometimes we have general lessons about social English. I’m engineer in the building company. I will use English in my job. I think it will help me to improve my career.
Anthony: My name’s Anthony, and I just turned 24 last February and I’m from Malaysia. The people here are very nice. The place is amazing and learning here is a really different experience, so just come over and check it out.
Well, they seem to be enjoying learning English. And what I’ve learned is, is that the English language is more exciting than I’d first realised. And maybe, just maybe, in the future, I won’t have to worry quite as much about my grammar and spelling.
Comments
Hello everyone...
☆ Why do you think English is the world's most widely used language?
- There are many reasons for why English is the world's most widely used language. But the main reason for this is it's because of the former influence of the British Empire. By the time anything resembling a language policy was introduce, English had already reached all corners of the globe. English was taken around the world by the sailor, soldiers, pilgrims, traders and missionaries of the British Empire.
☆ What are the advantages of studying English in an English speaking country?
- Learning English would be easier in an English speaking country. It is because the people around you are speaking English and make it easy to adjust to English accent and also sentence pattern. And I believe live in a country like the UK where English is used as the primary way of communication would help learner master this language pretty quickly and accurately.
☆ Would you like to study English in the UK? Where would you go?
- It will be great if I can learn directly English in the UK. But there is one thing that has to be considerated. Cost of living and studying in the UK is very expensive. It's out of my reach now.
Finding some of the greatest teachers of the British Council in the internet is a blessing. I've been very lucky to be one of the users of it. But if I can go to the UK and where do I like to go to study?
Of course, my first destination is London.
Task 4 on using adverbs, says to add 'ly' where needed but leave blank otherwise. When I leave a blank where no 'ly' is required I am told that 8 items are remaining and if I click on finish I am told I have only completed 6 out of 14 and do I want to finish? Am I missing something here or is there a problem with the question? i am using Chrome on a Mac computer.
Hello RitaR,
Thanks for telling us about this! I've changed the exercise – now, instead of leaving spaces blank (which of course wasn't working), you must write '/' when no 'ly' suffix is needed. It should work now for you – though it may take a few hours for the change to appear on our site – but please let us know if you have any other trouble with it.
Thanks very much for taking the time to tell us about this error!
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
English is used as a lingua franca throughout the world.That's why people all around the world use English to communicate each other.As the guy said in the video it's used in business, education and techonology in the world.
When you study English in a English-speaking country, you have the advantage of living the language like you get to hear it around you in your daily life.Ergo, you are more likely to pick up the language easier than studying in your own country.
Of course,I'd love to study in the U.K. again! When I was studying English in London, I had literally immersed myself into English Language as well as soaking up hustke and bustle of London lifestyle.I intend to do my master degree in the U.K. though.If I happen to make it,I want to be able to study at somewhere else so that I get to experience more of U.K. culture and get to most out of U.K. during my stay there!
First as the world is becoming a big one village, we should admit that there is an urgent need for a global language so we can communicate and understand each other. The question is why it is English. I believe English scientists, poets, novelists had big achievements that contributed to the spreading out of English.
There is no better place to study a foreign language than its home. When you do so you have to use the language and of course it is the best way to improve it, you get familiar with it and with the slang which we don`t learn in books. For these reasons and many others I am very keen on being to Britain to improve my English and I certainly would start from London, the home of everything great.
It's probably a shame but I don't really know why English is the most widespread language in the world and I guess It is mainly because I didn't really like history at school.
I think when you are in an environment of any language you learn you experience the greatest possible amount of it everyday. You see it, hear it and speak it on a daily basis even during the most common routine.
I would definitely like to study English in the UK because I've always liked the language and the country and with the information that British Council provides I like it even more now.
If I were to UK I would go to as much places as possible, but of course London is
the first one to visit.
It's true that English is the world's most widely used language, and such a language my life in China. For example, if you speak frequency English, you may have more chance finding a higher pay job in Shanghai. As for me, I learn English mostly because of interest, and my major requires language skills. On the other hand, learn English in an English speaking country is very helpful. Since one can enjoy an English environment and culture, if one is motivational and make enough effort on learning English, I believe the person can surely learn it well. However, I will check out whether it's right like I thought after studying the University of Bath on October this year.
Hi The LearnEnglish Team,
First of all, thank you so much for your great resources that helps me a lot in learning English. Recently, after every lesson, I can't view as many comments as I can before. I tried opening your website on both tablet and desktop but the results are the same. I also tried refreshing, reloading the webpage but it can't help. I wonder whether this website is under construction.
Hi van_nguyen,
I'm sorry to hear that you're having problems with accessing parts of the site. It sounds like a strange problem - am I right in understanding that the problem is related to the comments by users at the bottom of most pages, not to the content on the pages (the language information, the media, the tasks and the transcript)? In other words, are the pages working for you apart from the comments? If so, what do you mean that you cannot see 'as many comments' as before? Can you see some comments, but not so many as you used to see?
Best wishes,
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Peter M,
It's exactly related to the users' comments at the bottom of pages. This part, for example, totally has 6 pages of comments, but I can see only the 5 latest. The rest, which just display the avatars and names of users, have no content. This strange thing has not happened to me before.
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