way2go! 6, Schulbuch

77 English as a world language What do you need English for in your daily life? Do you think it will be important for you later in life as well? Discuss your ideas with a partner and share them with the class. Read the article below. Write down the main idea and at least one supporting detail for each paragraph. SPEAKING 3 READING 4 M p. 34 Describing language use Find the correct terms for these definitions in the article above. LANGUAGE 5 M p. 33 Discuss the following questions with a partner and write down your answers: 1 Do you think it is fair to expect people to speak English even if it isn’t their first language? 2 Should English-speaking people be made to learn at least one other language well enough so that they could hold a conversation? 3 What other language(s) could be used as a lingua franca? Give reasons for your decision. Write a PEEL paragraph on one of the following questions: 1 At what age should children in Austria start learning English? 2 How many English lessons per week should students have? SPEAKING 6 WRITING 7 a a language used to make communication possible between people who speak different languages b the language you learn when you are a small child because your parents speak it c a language you learn when you are older and can already speak another language d the language used by the government of a country, taught in schools and used for laws, etc. Do you speak English? Did you know there are around 7,000 different languages spoken in the world? This means there are an awful lot of people who don’t share a lan- guage with you. What do you do when you’re on holiday and don’t speak the local language? Chances are you might use English as a lingua franca (a common language) to communicate with people. There are around 360 million people who speak English as a first language, and nowadays it is almost ex- pected that people will speak at least some English. Around one billion people speak it as an additional language, but how and why did English become the world’s lingua franca? The British colonised large parts of the world, and in the 1920s the British Empire reached its peak. At that time, a quarter of the world’s land was colonised by the British. You may have heard the phrase “The sun never sets on the British Empire”, and this is literally true. Britain colonised so many countries that, at its height, it was always daylight somewhere in the Empire. As a result, some of these countries still have English as their official language despite speaking other languages too, but this is just one of the rea- sons why English has spread as a global language. Much of the mass media that you come across is in English. The internet (also an English term!) is full of English words, video clips, memes and so on. Advertising is another area where you will often come across English words, whether it is a language in that country or not. English is also often used when travelling – and not just by travellers; English is the official language of pilots. So, next time you’re on holiday abroad, listen carefully to find out which people use English as a lingua franca, and see how often you do this yourself !  See PEEL revisited , p. 93. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv