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Teaching English As A Language Essay

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INTRODUCTION

“English seems to have joined this list of basic skills. Quite simply, its function and place in the curriculum is no longer that of ‘foreign language’ and this is bringing about profound changes in who is learning English, their motives for learning it and their needs as learners.” (Graddol, D, page 72)
If a command of English is almost normal, the value of speaking traditional languages is increasing in particular for native speakers of English.
The slogan “English is not enough” applies as strongly to native speakers of English as for those who speak it as a second language. We are now nearing the end of the period where native speakers can bask in their privileged knowledge of the global lingua franca (Graddol 2006:118)
English is used extremely widely today among speakers who have acquired it as a language for use with foreigner, rather than in their own schools, government bodies and so on.
The role of education in school is now seen as to provide the generic skills needed to acquire new knowledge and specialist skills in the future: learning how to learn. It is true that mandarin Chinese and Spanish have more native speakers, but at the present they have neither the global sway nor the multifunctional use that characterizes English today.
Graddol (2006:62) also states that “English is no longer the only show in town”. It is convenient for many learners have few grammatical endings and vocabulary derived from both Romance and Germanic root, but it is

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