This time, a whale shark error in P100 bill
By Antonio Calipjo Go, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, December 27, 2010―The whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the biggest shark as well as the biggest fish in the ocean, is featured on our new P100 bill. This is wrong.

Whale sharks are found worldwide in warm oceans on or near the equator, both along the coastal areas and in the open seas (except the Mediterranean). They navigate and populate all the tropical seas of the world.

We cannot impose proprietary rights to something which is merely passing through our turf or territory, only during certain times of the year, declare that to be an endemic Philippine species and then appropriate it as a national symbol.

The annual migration of whale sharks each spring to the continental shelf of the central west coast of Australia is well-documented, coinciding as it does with the spawning of the corals of the area’s Ningaloo Reef. Going by the same reasoning, Australia has just as much right as the Philippines to adopt the whale shark as its national symbol!

And what about all the other marine creatures (whales, sharks, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, etc.), birds, bats and insects that make the Philippines a pit stop in the course of their seasonal migrations? Shall we also lay claim to them and say that they are endemic to the Philippines?

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Alive and well on Tuesdays with Gani
By Isagani Yambot, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, December 12, 2010—During his trial for allegedly “corrupting” the youth of Athens, Socrates, in his Apology (the Greek word apologia means a defense), said that “[t]he unexamined life is not worth living.” (The Greek word bios used by Socrates means “a way of life” rather than just biological life.) Paraphrasing Socrates, the Inquirer family believes that the unexamined newspaper is not worth reading. That is why the Inquirer undergoes constant examination by its editors and business officers, to see how it can be improved and probably, even reinvented.

The Inquirer is examined every day (at the daily meeting of the daydesk and other senior editors), every week (at the Tuesday editorial assessment meeting), every other week (at the executive committee meeting) and almost every quarter (at the management meeting). It is probably the most thoroughly “examined” paper in the country today.

As publisher, I preside over the editorial assessment meeting which is held every Tuesday except during Holy Week and Christmas Week. Sometime in the 1990s Eugenia D. Apostol, founding chair and first publisher of the Inquirer, directed me, the executive editor then, to conduct the weekly meeting to critique the paper, and particularly to note and correct grammatical and linguistic errors as well as factual errors.

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Amateur
By Lakan Umali, Philippine Daily Inquirer

I sit in my room, staring at a blank computer screen. I wait for the screen to be filled up with words, words that convey a meaning, a theme, a message, an emotion to someone else. I sit, waiting for the words to travel through my veins and miraculously flow out of my finger tips, making me feel like sparks of electricity were shooting through them. But nothing comes. I feel the words, but they seem to be dormant, hiding, like an animal refusing to emerge from the thick of the forest. Sometimes the words are just out of reach, like fruits in a fairytale. I can see them waiting for me to pluck them, but when I reach out, they seem to escape my grasp and move slightly higher. I do eventually start to write, but the words are inadequate, unsatisfactory, a shabby, hollow imitation of what I originally set out to write.

Sometimes I feel like Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement. She seems to also struggle with the process of writing, of finding the precise words to use in telling a story. She can’t seem to create real, believable characters, because, well, she doesn’t know many real people to base her characters on. She thinks that creating characters and stories out of her own imagination, out of her own mind without any basis, would be tantamount to “lying” to the reader. She could always go to her family library to read about characters. She could learn about what makes an anxious person tick, or what makes a repressed woman reach her breaking point. But it would also just be a shoddy imitation. Real characters are a combination of imagination and reality...

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Why Sight-Words Sabotage Reading and Start Dyslexia
By BruceDPrice, RantRave.com

There are two ways to teach children to read.

Whole Word enthusiasts say that children must memorize the shapes of words one by one, just as the Chinese memorize their ideograms. This is the wrong way.

English has far too many words for this approach ever to be considered.

Even if an industrious child could memorize 2,000 word-shapes (which is extremely difficult and takes MANY years), that child would still be functionally illiterate. The vast majority of the English language remains unknown.

Just as bad, words the child supposedly knows are rarely known with automaticity. Sight-word readers typically stumble, hesitate and sweat as they try to remember the meanings.

Furthermore, every English letter and word appears in a bewildering number of variations. Even if a child memorizes "bright," it's not likely that the child would recognize "BRIGHT."
Whole Word is a Ponzi scheme. It creates an illusion of early success…

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It’s rude! It’s crude! It's stupid! Just sayin’
By Scott Simon, NPR.org

December 18, 2010—This is the time of year when various authorities release lists of words, phrases and acronyms that have recently joined the English language: “BFF,” “retweet,” “unfriend,” and “vuvuzela” made many current lists. I’m glad for all of them.

But there is one phrase that I hear most every day that I don’t like at all: “I’m just saying.” Its origins are murky. Some people swear they heard it in an early Eddie Murphy routine. Others insist that it dates from Seinfeld episodes. In any case, the roots of the phrase seem to be sitcom, not Shakespeare—I’m just saying.

Each week, I get emails and messages that go something like, “You are witless, stupid and immoral, and I wouldn’t let you near my tropical fish for fear you would contaminate them with your depravity. Just sayin’!”

Saying, “I’m just saying,” puts a fire escape onto the end of a sentence. It lets you express ‘a stern—even rude— pinion, but not really. You're just saying. It invites the listener to discount what we've just heard, even as we're reeling from it.

The Urban Dictionary website explains that the phrase makes it “possible to deliver a rude comment or burn and have it bounce off simply as an opinion disguised as an objective opinion, and who can argue with you over an opinion that you don't apparently support.”

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English as official language is a noble idea
By Chris King, TomahJournal.com

December 21, 2010—Whether to establish English as the official language is a question that most would answer based upon two assumptions: establishment of any language as official is discriminatory of those who don’t speak the official language (i.e., “linguistic minorities”), or instituting a common language will serve to encourage integration into society. However, I would like to highlight a subtly growing middle-of-the-road approach that does indeed call for the establishment of English as the official language.

Yet, where this approach differs from what left-wing ideology may consider a conservative standard is recognition of the fact that establishment of an official language must also integrate English language education into the immigration process. The middle ground is expanded when one recognizes that an “official” language, in particular, applies to government documentation, forms, interpreters, and the costs associated with the additional related personnel and supplies.

Demonstrating respect for the unique link between language, culture, and heritage, this measure does not seek to eliminate the speaking of foreign languages in any location; there is no appeal to nationalist or intolerant philosophies. Rather, the measure aspires to provide any individual who wishes to become a citizen the basic tools needed to sustain themselves within the exceptional culture of America, of which the English language is the predominant currency of communication.

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For the love of the English language
By Andy Rooney, Sun Journal

December 10, 2010—For most of my adult life I’ve made my living writing the English language. It’s one of the biggest and most diverse languages in the world, and I love it. I think it’s the best language, but what do I know? Spanish is the second-most popular language in the world. At the top is Mandarin Chinese, with more than 850 million speakers. Hindi is way up there, too.

I wish all the nations of the world would get together and decide to use the same language. I’d go with the crowd, but naturally I hope they’d pick English as the universal tongue. I can read and understand most French, and I like it, but it isn’t in the same league with English. French has a much smaller number of words in its vocabulary. (Je Parle Francais mais pas beaucoup.) German has an even smaller vocabulary. The only other contender for a universal language is Spanish.

I don’t have any statistics, but I’d guess that more books are written in English than in any other language because the most people who can read in the world, speak (and read) English as their first or second language.

How was it that people all over the globe speak so many different languages?

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Boosting our literacy would save us billions
By Aritha Van Herk, Calgary Herald
 
December 26, 2010—Because my popular history, Mavericks, was chosen as the inaugural book in the Calgary Public Library's One Book/One City initiative, I've spent the last month visiting different branches of the library and paying attention to what occurs in those public spaces.

I saw children, children, and more children with baskets of books, shining with curiosity and pleasure. I saw homeless people, nodding off at tables, or quietly resting in a warm, safe place. I saw older people checking out large-print books, happy to be able to continue reading despite deteriorating eyesight. I saw young parents perusing new magazines. I saw a range of people using the computers available in libraries. I saw teenagers checking out movies and music.

I met newcomers to Calgary, confident that they could find information, assistance, and a community centre.

The library occupies the heart of this community without bragging about that fact. It's a steady flame that keeps this city a human and humane place, its value incalculable, its effects hard to measure but absolute.

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World becoming increasingly Anglophone and Saudi Arabia is no exception
Editorial, ArabNews.com

As we reported yesterday, the number of expatriates who have lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for years but cannot speak Arabic, let alone read or write it, is massive. Even more amazingly, it is not just a case of Westerners. There are plenty of Muslim expatriates from Asia whose Arabic is at best limited to a few Qur’anic verses and little more.

As was also pointed out yesterday, this is not entirely their fault. The world is becoming increasingly Anglophone and Saudi Arabia is no exception. It is not just that English has become the medium of business. Go into any shopping mall or many a restaurant in one of the Kingdom’s cities and Saudis can be heard talking to shop assistants and waiters not in Arabic but English. It is not an affectation or fashion. It is the way it is.

In such an easy environment, it is hardly surprising expatriates do not learn Arabic. It is not like being in Moscow or Madrid where the local language is a necessity for anyone working or living there. But it should not be like that. Arabic is one of the world’s major languages. It is estimated that well over 220 million people speak it as their native language — a quarter of a billion people if one includes those who have it as a second language. It is the official language of 25 countries and is spoken by communities in others...

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In Saudi Arabia, “no Arabic, mafi mushkila”
By Renad Ghanem, Arab News

JEDDAH, December 26, 2010—A simmering issue that has been in the backburner is slowly seeing the light with many locals wondering why most non-Arab expatriates either do not know Arabic, or speak only a smattering of Arabic words picked up at random, which — although sound gibberish to the purist — does enable them to at least communicate.

There are reasons for the apathy to learning Arabic, despite many having spent years working in the Kingdom. Reasons cited by the non-Arab expatriate community include claims of finding the language difficult and an absence of Arabic schools or institutions. Many, on the other hand, are simply not keen to learn the language.

As a result, many non-Arabic speaking expatriates rely on English as their chosen language of communication, something that Saudis find strange, especially when these expatriates have been living in the Kingdom for over 10 years.

The major obstacle, according to the non-Arabic speaking expatriate community, is a lack of institutions that provide short courses in Arabic that would suit working people. Although some Saudi universities do teach Arabic to non-Arabic students, most of this teaching is done at specialist universities that cater to full-time religious students.

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Japan’s best English language blogs of 2010
Looking for the latest goings on in Tokyo? Try out these 10 blogs.

While estimates suggest that more blogs are written in Japanese than any other language (despite English speakers outnumbering Japanese five to one worldwide), expats in Japan who write in English provide a very different perspective on the country.

From tales of salarymen to the life of foreign hostesses, here are Japan’s 10 best English-language blogs of 2010.

1. Green-Eyed Geisha
Her daily life may not include dressing like this.

Why we like it: Written by a 20-something professional woman working for a Japanese company, provides details of the hurdles she faces in daily life.

Humorous, engaging and insightful, her writing is akin to storytelling. She tends to publish a couple of diamonds a month rather than blog daily.

Sample entry: “Bitch, please”

“She clucked her tongue and snarled 'jama da yo' to me, which basically means 'you're in the way' and not something you say to people in the street…”

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To students of English, the Spanish Armada has a lot to answer for
By Roger Pulvers, The Japan Times
     
December 19, 2010—The main problem with Japan’s English-language education lies in its sterile approach to words, as if a grasp of their exact meaning is sufficient preparation for understanding and speaking the language. It isn’t. You can’t look at a box of paint tubes and visualize a Rembrandt. Words have no meaning outside the context of culture, history and the personalities of native speakers.

Every language presents its own special difficulties for the nonnative. For those of us who came to Japanese from the outside, the multi-readings of kanji and the length of vowels are killers. Chinese has its tones. And, if you take on Polish, you must conquer clusters of jaw-breaking consonants. But, of the major languages studied around the world, when it comes to complexity, English tops the lot.

Take spelling. The spelling of English words is often erratic and inconsistent. Yet attempts to codify and regularize it in the past 200-odd years have been rebuffed. So now, if you can’t seem to figure out how words are spelled — or spelt — you'll just have to forgedaboudit.

Then there’s stress. This word is, indeed, spot on for describing one of the most frustrating impediments to learning English. If only English had penultimate stress like Latin! Not only is the stress in words irregular, it moves...

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The bible that even atheists worship
By Andy McSmith, The Independent.co.uk

December 22, 2010—King James I of England has not always had a good press. His disdain for parliament, his dodgy favourites, the extravagance of his court and his pro-Spanish foreign policy did not do him any credit. He was the founder of that unhappy line of English kings, the Stuarts.

But whatever his faults, he was clever and he loved a good intellectual argument and all credit to him for assembling an elite crowd of bishops and scholars to Hampton Court, in January 1604, to discuss such meaty questions as: “Do we need bishops?” and: “If so, must they dress up in such swanky garments?”

The conference itself did not achieve a great deal but out of it, seven years later, came one of the most venerated works of literature in this or any other language, the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, the 400th anniversary celebrations of which are now under way. King James convened the conference because hundreds of English Protestants who had fled abroad during the reign of Queen Mary, the last Catholic to occupy the English throne, had returned with accounts of how much simpler and more “pure” church services were in Protestant countries. These “puritans” had hoped that Queen Elizabeth would import the stripped-down service into the Anglican church, but she disappointed them.

She was hardly cold in her grave when her successor received a petition, reputedly bearing more than 1,000 signatures, pleading with him to rid the English church of “popish” practices...

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David Crystal: champion of the English language
By Michael Rosen, Guardian.co.uk

December 13, 2010—We’re all experts on language. A three-year-old says: “I singed a song.” That’s an expert, says David Crystal, using the grammar of how we tell of things in the past by adding “ed” to a verb. But as all the experts reading this know: “singed” is wrong, “sang” is right. So, some say: “No, dear. It’s ‘sang’.” Some don’t.

And in that story sits one of the great but quiet struggles of our time. Is it the job of linguists to describe or prescribe the language? Or both?

For more than 30 years, David Crystal has been producing books, articles, radio and TV programs and interviews by the gallon-load, and 2010 yielded a bumper crop.

It's been one long job of explaining, illustrating, discussing and suggesting but at the heart of it is a longing to educate. That's because my three-year-old and her would-be corrector aren't the only experts in language. There is another: the person who knows that the way we speak and write has got a whole load worse.

Every day Crystal deals with things like an actor who said that back in the 1960s no one said “gonna” and “shoulda.”

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A plea for the Queen’s English? RU joking?
By The Guardian UK

December 9, 2010—The English language is at it again. Three hundred years after Jonathan Swift issued a plea for a method of “ascertaining and fixing our language for ever,” Internet chatrooms and the likes of Facebook are causing a generation to break the rules in new and possibly permanent ways. According to a survey last month, two-thirds of the 18- to 24-year-olds questioned thought “variant” spellings that made it easier to type at speed were acceptable.

Into this unstable environment steps the Guardian's latest style guide, and, like an immaculately turned out child on its first day of school, one fears it may suffer at the hands of bullies in the modern English playground. (Stile gide? RU joking bruv?) Or, perhaps worse, be ignored and forced to eat its sandwiches on its own.

It is not the first time that attempts to “fix” the language have been made, against overwhelming odds. The British Library’s Evolving English exhibition, showing until April, reveals how a succession of impassioned tragic heroes have tried to impose order.

The exhibition includes a selection of early style manuals. They are less comprehensive than today’s offering, but what they lose in utility, they gain in belligerence.

One that stands out is A Plea for the Queen’s English, written by Henry Alford, dean of Canterbury, in 1863. Glowing behind a perspex shield, it is open at page 75, where Alford concludes lengthy and not very illuminating instructions on the correct uses of “lay” and “lie” with the observation: “Eton men, for some reason or other, are especially liable to confuse these two verbs.”

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Grammar is a tool to enhance understanding
By Suzanne Harrison, Sydney Morning Herald

December 20, 2010—Grammar can be taught in a traditional way to enhance the understanding of our language.

UTS journalism student Sarah Michael has expressed the hope that when the national curriculum is implemented, grammar will once more be taught and writing standards will rise. Will grammar teaching improve literacy standards, and if so, which system of grammar should be taught?

The National English Curriculum: Framing Paper expresses the sensible view that including grammar in the curriculum is justified only if it helps students write and speak more accurately, logically, coherently and precisely in an appropriate style.

While it’s possible for students and teachers to discuss English structure without using grammatical terms, it’s quicker and easier if they share a common grammatical vocabulary. But which variety of grammar are teachers to use? As the national curriculum does not specify a particular grammatical system, the debate about the two contenders—so-called “traditional grammar” and British linguist Michael Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG)—will continue.

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Outdated English-proficiency standards
By Sophie Arkoudis, The Australian

December 08, 2010—Why is the Australian higher education sector allowing immigration policy to shape notions of the standards of English language proficiency of its graduates?

This is an acute case of the tail wagging the dog.

An International English Language Testing System score of seven has become the de facto standard for permanent residency as a skilled migrant. Monash researcher Bob Birrell has been quoted as saying universities have been outflanked by the willingness of the Immigration Department and professional bodies to embrace a serious standard of English proficiency.

Yes, spot-on. Let’s reclaim this agenda. It’s time for universities and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to restore public confidence in the English language capabilities of graduates.

To do so, a robust, outcomes-based model of English language proficiency, against which universities can monitor the attainment of graduates, must be built.

A first step towards such a framework is an agreed set of national English standards as the foundation for universities' quality assurance mechanisms.

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Language rules are meant to be broken
By Brendan Black, Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2010—For linguists, the statement “language change is inevitable” is uncontroversial. Yet we’re constantly told that teenagers (and, it seems, celebrity chefs) are destroying the English language. If we believe the warnings, then soon all younger generations will communicate as if they’re composing an SMS or Facebook update and dictionaries will be full of inane abbreviations and words foreign to older generations.

Most languages have “standard” varieties, which are used for formal occasions, such as academia and the law. These words often have a history going back many years, and originate in Latin, French or German, for example. When communicating with friends and family, online or in other informal situations, “vernacular” or “colloquial” language is more appropriate.

Informal language is the most subject to change and to show variations in use. This is evident in changes to spelling, abbreviations such as “LOL.” “CBF,” and “FML,” and for many users, an almost total disregard for rules of grammar. An understanding of the taboo nature of certain words can be seen in the substitution of “the c word” with the inoffensive “kent.” The word “random” has taken on a new meaning of “weird” or “unexpected,” as well as being used as a noun to describe someone who is not part of the person's social group — and unwanted.

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Britain’s class ceiling
By Bunn Nagara, TheStar.com.my

December 22, 2010—Besides various forms of pidgin English or regional dialects, Britain itself practises class variations of the language.

In class-divided Britain, strata differences are evident in dress, dining and language. These differences between “U and non-U” (upper class and others, notably the aspiring middle classes) can be spotted before acquaintances are made.

“U” dress sense for men demands the open collars of shirts stay between and not lie on top of jacket lapels; the last button of waistcoats (“vests” to Americans) be left unbuttoned; and the necktie and jacket pocket handkerchief must not match lest they seem to have come from a local retailer’s discount “set”.

Diners must know their knives and forks besides their glasses for the different beverages, including a variety of wines. And each spoonful of soup in the bowl must be scooped gently outwards, not inwards.

And so on. But if so many conventions apply even to a “simple” meal or daily wear, imagine the various language conventions at play.

Britain gave the world the English language, and nothing spread its spores better than the once-global British Empire. The colonies were disproportionately exposed to “U” English before the passing of empire to post-1945 American lumpen culture and mass marketing.

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It’s Greek to me!
By Dr. Lim Chin Lam, TheStar.com.my

December 10, 2010--English has borrowed far and wide from other languages, notably from Greek (but not forgetting Latin) but, as remarked by a wit, it has not paid back the loans. To be facetious, I must say that English owes a great debt to Greek for the loan of the latter’s words. Greek (the language) has certainly made no claim against English (the language) for repayment; yet Greek is no poorer for the loan, and English (its vocabulary) is all the richer for it.

Let me outline some of the ways in which Greek has contributed to English.

Many Greek words have gone into English – almost directly but for the matter of transliteration. Greek has its own alphabet while English uses an alphabet based on Latin (which had 23 letters, to which “J”, “U”, and “W” were later added). Because of the differences between the two alphabets, the transliteration of words from Greek to English necessitates that letters of the Greek alphabet be given their equivalents in the English alphabet. For example, the Greek letter alpha (it is not feasible here to reproduce the symbol for this letter and, for that matter, for other Greek letters) is rendered as “a”, beta as “b”, gamma as “g” and delta as “d”. Some of the less obvious “pairings” of Greek letters and their English equivalents [in square brackets] are as follows: theta[th], kappa[k] or [c], rho[rh] or [r], upsilon[u] or [y], phi[ph], chi[kh] or [ch], and psi[p].

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Master English or be left behind in global market
By John Greig, TheStar.com.my

November 30, 2010—It is completely incorrect to suggest that Japan, South Korea, and Germany have advanced economically and scientifically without English. Scientists in these countries publish their papers in English.

There is a trend among Japanese companies to make English their official in-house language. Japan’s biggest online retailer, Rakutan, plans to make English the firm’s official language. “No English, no job,” the CEO said.

In Beijing, learning English is part of an official drive to transform the Chinese capital into a “world city”. A government programme calls for all pre-schools to introduce English courses within five years. Police officers and civil servants would be required to pass English tests.

One could go on but – like it or not – English is becoming the world’s first truly universal language. It is the international language for business, the language of the information age, and of science, medicine, sports, diplomacy etc. For this reason, almost all the countries in Asia (and most of the world) are working hard at mastering the English language.

In Malaysia, English is not a compulsory pass subject in SPM. This has an important negative consequence. While the stated objective of the Education Ministry may be that all students acquire competence in English, in effect, the official policy is that English does not matter because students are not given an incentive to learn it.

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Evaluating teachers
BY TAN EE LOO, TheStar.com.my

November 28, 2010—An English language teacher enters a class, opens the textbook and instructs her students to read a few chapters. Then, she pulls out a women’s magazine from her handbag and is so engrossed reading, she barely hears the school bell ring until reminded by her students.

The scenario is almost similar in another school where a teacher tells her pupils to work on the exercises in their workbooks, while she clears her excessive paperwork.

While their indifference may not be atypical of most teachers in government schools, they are a small but growing group of ineffective and incompetent teachers who are not being held accountable for their job performance.

What is it that makes them so? Could it be because of job security in the civil service? As it is now, teachers – like others in the government – get steady increments based primarily on their educational qualifications and years of service.

However, the dynamics of all this is changing as there are some quarters who strongly feel that teachers should give up the safety of a tenure in exchange for a pay structure that rewards merit and hard work.

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Peer intervention as a teaching method
By Dr Asantha U Attanayake, DailyNews.lk

Peer intervention is used in the form of a correction method in the language classroom. In contemporary times in English language teaching, it is used as one of the correction methods and not as a major part of teaching methodology. But in the Sri Lankan context, for adult learners (those who have five to ten years of English language learning background in school behind them), I have experimented that it helps immensely in language teaching as an independent discourse. In other words, it could be used as a complete language teaching methodology.

One basic requirement is that learners are in small groups (of four to five). They work on the basis of the sameness. When the sameness is emphasized, sharing steps in. The idea is to make learners use their previous knowledge to accomplish the task given to them. It is assumed here that any Sri Lankan adult learner who decides to follow an English course would have some knowledge of basic language structures, some basic vocabulary, and some ability to read at least a couple of words in English. It is understood that this knowledge has various levels in it. One might find this disadvantageous in a classroom that requires catering to different language improvement needs. But when using peer intervention as the main teaching technique, this heterogeneity in language ability is exploited as one of the main assets.

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Students need to improve English language for better careers
By Arsalan Haider, DailyTimes.com.pk

LAHORE, December 14, 2010—A common man thinks an educated man can speak good English, which, from a certain perspective is quite right. Despite this perception, a minor ability to speak fluent English can also help get attention of many people.

But, in our society, majority of graduate and postgraduate students are unable to speak English fluently, for which the outdated syllabus can be blamed first. Besides, the students, even while having the facility of Internet and cable TV channels at their houses, still need to go a long way in learning one of the most essential tools for making a good career in almost any field.

Pakistan boasts a large English language press and media. Many major dailies are published in this international language.

English is taught to students at all school levels in Pakistan, and in many cases the medium of instruction is also English. There are at present three kinds of schools in the country – private schools that cater to the upper class, government schools which serve middle or other classes of population, and madrassas (religious schools). At college and university level all instruction is in English.

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Role of Korean teachers of English
By David Leaper, The Korea Times

December 9, 2010—While the recent moves by Gyeonggi Province’s education authorities to cut the number of native speakers teaching at public schools was motivated by budget considerations (“Gyeonggi to hire fewer foreign teachers,” The Korea Times, Dec. 2), in principle it is not necessarily negative for English language education in Korea.

To explain this statement it is necessary to examine the wider context of English in the world. There are now more native speakers of Mandarin and Spanish than English, and soon there may be as many Arabic speakers. While in terms of native speakers English is being overtaken, it is in the number of non-native speakers and their spread that English stands out.

It has been estimated that there are more than three nonnative to every native speaker of English. It is an official language in more countries than any other. The importance of English as a second or foreign language can be seen when only four countries that are normally classified as “native English speaking countries” are listed among the top 10 English-speaking countries in the world. Moreover, despite the rise of Mandarin, English will probably remain dominant in the spheres of science and business for some time to come.

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