HUNGER FOR ENGLISH. GUIDE.

GUIDE

1. Match the words to their definitions.

1. timid

2. to fidget (with sth)

3. to enunciate

4. to blurt out

5. to dart

6. to falter

7. to detour

8. minion

9. to sprout

10. quest (for sth)

a) to say something suddenly and without thinking carefully enough

b) a long search for something, especially for some quality such as happiness

c) to move suddenly and quickly in a particular direction

d) to take a longer route in order to avoid a problem or to visit a place

e) shy and nervous; not brave

f) to say or pronounce words clearly

g) an unimportant person in an organization who has to obey orders; a servant

h) to keep moving your body, your hands or your feet because you are nervous, bored, excited, etc.

i) to speak in a way that shows that you are not confident

j) to appear; to develop something, especially in large numbers

2. Define the following word combinations:

• an immersion course

• to give sb a leg up

• rote memorisation

• a status symbol

3. Fill in the correct prepositions:

• He blurted … the answer without thinking.

• Kim took the vegetable … a bow and darted … … her giggling classmates.

• The complex looks like a minitown scooped … from a European country and transplanted … the South Corean countryside dotted … pine groves and rice paddies.

• In this complex, … a six-day immersion course, pupils check … … a hotel, shop, take cooking lessons – all … English.

• South Korean officials are often accused … grouping together … international conferences afraid to mix … native English speakers.

4. Answer the following questions:

• What do South Koreans consider to be their biggest weakness in global competitiveness?

• What is the “English Village”? What does the complex look like?

• What is the motto of the language camp?

• What are the students doing in the camp?

• How many English Villages are there in South Korea?

• Why education has become a true obsession in South Korea?

• What reaction do many Koreans have when they see a Westerner coming their way? Why?

• Why do many college graduates falter in chats with native speakers? What flaws does the local national school system have?

5. Discuss:

• What is your opinion of such language camps? Are they effective? Would you like to spend some time there?

• The fear of speaking in English to native speakers. Do you have such a problem? How to cope with it?

ENGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE

ENGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE

Today, when English is one of the major languages of the world it requires an effort of the imagination to realize that this is a relatively recent thing – that in Shakespeare’s times, for example, only a few people spoke English, and the language was not thought t be very important by the other nations of Europe, and was unknown to the rest of the world.

English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in North America. Above all, it is the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has given the English language its present standing in the world.

People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have learnt it as their native language; those who have learnt it as a second language in a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose – administrative, professional or educational. One person in seven of the world’s entire population belongs to one of these three groups. Incredibly enough, 75% of the world’s mail and 60% of the world’s telephone calls are in English.

BASIC CHARACTERISTICS

SIMPLICITY OF FORM. Old English, like modern German, French, Russian and Greek, had many inflections to show singular and plural, tense, person, etc., but over the centuries words have been simplified. Verbs now have very few inflections, and adjectives do not change according to the noun.

FLEXIBILITY. As a result of the loss of the inflections, English has become, over the past five centuries, a very flexible language. Without inflections, the same word an operate as many different parts of speech. Many nouns and verbs have the same form, for example swim, drink, walk, kiss, look, and smile. We can talk about water to drink and to water the flowers; time to go and to time a race; a paper to read and to paper a bedroom. Adjectives can be used as verbs. We warm our hands in front of the fire; if clothes are dirtied, they need to be cleaned and dried. Prepositions too are flexible. A sixty-year old man is nearing retirement; we can talk about a round of golf, cards, or drinks.

OPENNESS OF VOCABULARY. This involves the free admissions of words from other languages and the easy creation of compounds and derivatives. Most world languages have contributed some words to English at some time, and the process is now being reversed. Purists of the French, Russian and Japanese languages are resisting the arrival of English in their vocabulary.

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH. Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. It is the language of business, technology, sport and aviation. This will no doubt continue, although the proposition that all other languages will die out is absurd.

Comprehension

Work in pairs. Do you think the following statements are true or false?

• English was already an important world language four hundred years ago.

• It is mainly because of the United States that English has become a world language.

• One person out of seven in the world speaks perfect English.

• There are few inflections in modern English.

• In English many verbs can be used as nouns.

• English has borrowed words from many other languages.

• In the future, all other languages will probably die out.

Where does English belong?

Although English has a mixed vocabulary and contains a large number of words from different languages, it is essentially a Germanic language in its grammatical structure. The Germanic tongues: German, English, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish belong to the Indo-European family of languages.

English is a branch of Low German, the speech of the lowlands of North Germany. About 450 A.D. different Low German tribes, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes - later collectively called English - began to settle there. They gradually pushed back the Celts, who had possession of the land when they came. Though Celtic is still represented in Great Britain by modern Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, the prevailing literary language has long been English. The present literary language is, in its essential features, an outgrowth of the speech of the Midlands.

How many people speak English?

English is one of the most widely used languages in the world. Recent estimates suggest that the number of second language speakers varies greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured. Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.

According to 2006 Census the countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million), United Kingdom (61 million), Canada (18.2 million), Australia (15.5 million), Nigeria (4 million), Ireland (3.8 million), South Africa (3.7 million), and New Zealand (3.6 million).

English is the favoured language of the world's major airlines and international commerce. Over 80 per cent of the world's electronically stored information is in English and two-thirds of the world's scientists read in English. Of the estimated 40 million users of the Internet, some 80 percent, currently communicate in English. English is an official language, or has a special status, in over 75 of the world's territories.

If the rest of the world isn't talking English, they're borrowing English words to add to their own language: the Japanese go on a 'pikunikku' (picnic), Italians program their computers with 'il software', Germans talk about 'ein Image Problem' and Czechs say 'ahoy!' for ‘hello’ - a greeting traditionally used by English sailors, which is interesting as the Czech Republic has no coast!

Why are many English words pronounced differently from the way they are spelt? 

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead, 

For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat,

They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

Anon

English spelling is unpredictable at the best of times, and occasionally totally chaotic - an opinion no doubt shared by British schoolchildren and those studying English around the world. However, studies of the language claim that there are only about 400 words in English whose spelling is wholly irregular. Unfortunately many of them are among the most frequently used in the language.

The problem with the English spelling system came about as the language developed over a period of 1000 years. Some complications arose early on, when the Romans tried to write down Old English using the 23 letter Latin alphabet. Old English contained nearly 40 vowels and consonants.

The influence of French after the Norman Conquest also made an impact on English spelling. French scribes introduced 'qu' where Old English had used 'cw' e.g. queen, and 'gh' instead of ‘h’ e.g. night, amongst other changes. 

The introduction of the printing press in 1476 meant that a standard spelling system began to emerge. The system reflected the speech of the London area. The pronunciation of vowels underwent further changes during the 15^th century, but because of the advent of the printing press, spelling never caught up.

Previously, scribes would have simply written down a new spelling to reflect the new pronunciation. Thus modern spelling in many ways reflects outmoded pronunciation of words dating back to the Middle Ages. Despite many attempts to reform the English spelling system, so far no changes have been made since the 16^th century - mainly because nobody can agree on what the best alternative may be!    

Why is English spoken with many different accents?

Most British people can recognise where someone was brought up by their accent. Every region has its own way of pronouncing the words and sentences of English that identifies the speaker with that particular geographical area. Differences arose from the time when English was spoken in a variety of different forms during the Middle Ages - Northern (developed from Northumbrian Old English), West and East Midlands (diverging from Mercian Old English), South Western (West Saxon) and South Eastern (Kentish).

After 1500 the Language of London gradually emerged as the most dominant form, and today the London or Southern accent is usually accepted as Standard English. This is sometimes referred to as 'BBC English' since at one time all announcers on BBC radio and TV were required to speak it.

Regional accents have persisted and diversified over the centuries. Today the identification of an accent can place the speaker in a general area of Britain - such as West Country or South Wales, or be quite specific, referring to individual counties or cities; e.g. Liverpool, Yorkshire or Glasgow accents.

Although Standard English was once the accepted form of English for public speaking or broadcasting, today regional accents are widely used on television and radio.

LANGUAGES. A HUNGER FOR ENGLISH LESSONS

A hunger for English lessons

By Choe Sang-Hun

Published: Friday, March 24, 2006

PAJU, South Korea — Kim Hyo Jin, a timid junior high school student, stood before her American teacher fidgeting. The smiling teacher held up a green pepper and asked in clear, enunciated English: "What is this?"

"Peemang!" the South Korean teenager blurted out, then covered her mouth with a hand as if to stop - too late - the Korean word that had left her mouth.

Mortified, she tried again. Without looking the teacher in the eye, she held both her hands out and asked, this time in English: "May I have green pepper?"

Kim took the vegetable with a bow, and darted back to her giggling classmates - beaming and feeling relieved that she had successfully taken a small first step toward demolishing what South Koreans consider one of their biggest weaknesses in global competitiveness: the fear of speaking in English to Westerners.

Kim was among 300 junior high school students going through a week long training in this new "English Village." Built a few kilometers from the western border with North Korea, the government-subsidized language camp is, at 280,000 square meters, or 3 million square feet, the largest of its kind in the world, officials say.

The complex - where the motto is, "We produce global Koreans!" - looks like a mini town scooped up from a European country and transplanted into this South Korean countryside dotted with pine groves, rice paddies and military barbed-wire fences. It has its own immigration office, city hall, bookstore, cafeteria, gym, a main street with Western storefronts, police officers and a live-in population of 160 native English speakers. All signs are in English, the only language allowed.

Here, on a six-day immersion course that charges students 80,000 won, or $82, apiece, pupils check in to a hotel, shop, take cooking lessons and make music videos - all in English. There are language cops around, punishing students speaking Korean with a fine in the village currency or red dots on their village passports. To relieve the stress, the authorities do permit students to speak their native tongue a few times during their stay, usually at mealtimes.

Across South Korea, the English Villages are sprouting up. Ten are already operating, with more on the way. They represent the latest big push in South Korean parents' multi billion-dollar-a- year campaign to give their children a leg up in conquering English skills.

With few natural resources, South Korea realized early on that it must push exports and produce high-quality work forces. Education is an obsession. Mastering English is a nationwide quest from kids to office minions in corporate giants like Samsung and Hyundai.

"It's funny because Koreans know English," said Jeffrey Jones, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea who heads the Paju complex. "They spend a lot of time learning English. They can read, probably better than I can. But they have trouble speaking."

Jones, a longtime resident of South Korea, says that when many Koreans see a Westerner coming their way on the street, they detour or run away.

"They are afraid that they might have to speak English," Jones said. "So one of the things we do here is to break the wall of fear. And students come away not being afraid of foreigners and Westerners particularly."

South Korea has become one of the most aggressive countries in Asia at teaching English to its citizens. The language is taught from the third year of school; beginning in 2008 it will begin in the first year. Outside the school system, parents are paying an estimated 10 trillion won a year to help their children learn English at home or abroad.

Yet many college graduates falter in chats with native speakers. South Korean officials are often accused of grouping together in international conferences, afraid to mix with native English speakers. That, linguists say, is a result of a national school system that traditionally stresses reading and rote memorization of English grammar and vocabulary at the expense of conversation.

The public sector in this highly competitive society is racing to address the problem. The country is building a $15 billion international economic free zone on the coast west of Seoul, where English will be a common language. The southern port city of Busan is planning a town where English is an official language.

In Korea University of Seoul, 30 percent of all classes are now in English.

There is also growing pressure at home. South Korean mothers have been instrumental in sending their children to language classes or international schools in the United States and, when immigration rules there tightened, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines and even Fiji and Togo. The mothers often go with them, while the fathers stay home to finance a phenomenon known as an "overseas expedition to master English."

Speaking English with a native accent has become such a status symbol that some parents reportedly put their children through the clinically questionable surgery of snipping the thin tissue under the tongue to make it longer and supposedly nimbler, helping the children to pronounce the R sound better.

Languages. Not the Queen's English

Not the Queen’s English

From Caracas to Karachi, parents are paying for lessons for their children at English language schools. China's enthusiasm for English even has its own Mandarin term, Yingwen re, and governments from Tunisia to Turkey recognize that along with information technology and travel, English is an engine of globalization. In the next decade, two billion people will learn English and about half the world, three billion people, will speak English, according to a recent report from the British Council.

Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers 3 to 1, according to English-language expert David Crystal, "There's never before been a language that's been spoken by more people as a second than a first," he says. In Asia alone, the number of English-users has topped 350 million—and there are more Chinese children studying English than there are Britons. But the new English-speakers aren't just passively absorbing the language--they're shaping it. New Englishes are appearing all over the globe, ranging from "Englog," spoken in the Philippines, to "Hinglish," the mix of Hindi and English that now crops up everywhere from fast-food ads to South Asian college campuses. Indeed, English has become a common language. Whether you are a Korean executive on business in Shanghai, a German beurocrat making laws in Brussels or a Brazilian biochemist at a conference in Sweden, you're probably already speaking or are going to speak English. And as the world adopts an international brand of English, it's native speakers who will lose most. British graduates who insist on speaking the Queen’s English could be met with blank stares. British or American businessmen who do not understand how English is used by non-native speakers might lose out on business deals.

All languages are works in progress but the globalization of English is set to revolutionize the language in ways we can only begin to imagine. In the future, suggests Crystal, there could be a tri-English world, one in which you could speak a local English-based dialect at home, a national variety at work or school, and international standard English to talk to foreigners. With native speakers becoming a shrinking minority of the world's anglophones, there's a growing sense that students will stop trying to copy the Queen’s English and develop their own versions. Researchers are starting to study non-native speakers' "mistakes"--"She look very sad," for example--as structured grammars.

To achieve fluency, non-native speakers are taking up English at an ever younger age. Last year primary schools in major Chinese cities began offering English in the third grade, rather than middle school. A growing number of parents are enrolling their small children in a growing number of local pre-school English courses. Why such enthusiasm? In a word, jobs. More and more organizations are recognizing the importance of English in the workplace. At the Toyota and Peugeot plant in the Czech Republic, English is a working language of the Japannese, French and Czech staff. Says Jitka Prikylova, director of a Prague English Language school, ‘ The world is opening up for us and English is its language”. Governments begin to agree. From this year in Malaysia core school subjects such as maths and science are taught in English.

Technology also plays a huge role in English's global triumph. Eighty percent of the electronically stored information in the world is in English; 66 percent of the world's scientists read in it, according to the British Council. New technologies are helping people pick up the language, too: Chinese students can get English help on their mobile phones. English-language teachers point to the rise of Microsoft English, where computers help people to prepare letters. English and its teaching are becoming more complex. Ilan Stavans, an college professor, has finished a translation of Cervantes's "Don Quixote" into Spanglish, English-Spanish spoken in the United States and Mexico. In China Hu Xiaoqiong wants to see a revision of the English curriculum toward Chinese English Incorporating phrases as standard English in future. In countries like Germany, where most children begin English as early as the second grade, the market for English studies is already decreasing. German language schools no longer target English beginners but those pursuing interest in business English or English for presentations.

CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION. LANGUAGES.

DON'T GIVE UP ON ENGLISH

By Will Stanton

Reader's Digest

(New York, N.Y)

The English language is like a woman's wardrobe - full of things she can't use, and yet the one thing she needs she can't find.
For instance, we don't have a good general interrogative like the French N'est-ce pas? One possibility is the word Right? The trouble is that people who start using it can't stop. "So, I'm driving down the street, right? Now, I'm not going to hassle any truck, right?"
And how do you contract Am I not? Amn't I? Ain't I? Aren't I? I can't use anyone of these without feeling like a simpleton, so I am forced back to am I not. Right?
Then there are words that have been kicking around the language for centuries without ever doing a lick of honest work.
Take adumbrate, which means to foreshadow or reveal, to overshadow or conceal, to outline in a shadowy way - or to reveal some, to conceal some. It's like a dispenser that puts out salt, pepper, napkins and maple syrup all at once.
There are combinations of words that don't make sense. Raise means to build up; raze means to tear down - as for instance by burning up. Which means burning down.
Fasten is the opposite of loosen. But unfasten and unloosen are the same. If you look over something, you give it a good look. If you overlook it, you don't look at it at all. If you oversee it, you give it a good look again.
Then there is the way we put words together. You hear a cuddlesome girl referred to as honey lamb - as a young sheep dipped in honey was something you might hug.
When a person does something stupid, we call him a dumb bunny. Like if he gets out of warm bed to go outside in the wet bushes and hide easter eggs. True, it's the bunny who gets credit for this idiocy, but who actually does it? And what do you suppose the bunny is doing in the meantime? Okay.
The language is constantly changing, and its not experts who change it. It's the dummies who don't know any better.
The word awful used to mean something awe-inspiring like a cathedral. When a new church was built, everybody would go to see how awful it was. Sunday after Sunday. The kids would maybe rather have fooled around down at the creek or over some girl's house. But no, back to the old cathedral. "You ever see such an awful church?" they'd say. "No, I've seen churches, but this takes the cake for awful." And they would cross their eyes and make gagging sounds, and the word acquired the meaning it has now.
According to the rules, you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. This is a rule I don't believe in. A preposition at the end gives a sentence zing - show's where it's at. My son seems to share the same feeling. One time I went up to his room to read him a bedtime story and took the wrong book. He said, "What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
English has a rule that says two negative make a positive. This may be alright for math, but it's a little unrealistic in practice. Let's say you ask a girl for a date and she says says, "I don't want nothing to do with you, no time, no way." To an English professor she means yes. This may be the reason so many scholars wind up overcautious.
Two words that cause a lot of trouble are lie and lay. You can lay your head down or lay yourself down, but you can't just lay down. Unless it's the past tense. If you lay down half a second ago, that's fine. But right now you are not laying, you are lying. When the change takes place, I don't know - and try explaining it to somebody from Albania.
Sit down and set are just as bad. A setting hen sits on eggs. When she's laying, she's not lying - she's sitting again. The only time a chicken lies down is when it's dead. Just looking at a chicken, you'd never guess it led such a complicated life.
Don't get me wrong. I have no patience with people who say English is a "dying" language. That's not the word to describe it at all. The words you might use to describe English are the same ones you might apply to your wife: charming, exasperating, enchanting, maddening, unreasonable, beloved.