languages

Linguistic and Teaching Context

Posted January 20th, 2008 by bdieu

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While I was checking the survey you were asked to fill in to join SMiELT, I thought the information would be helpful to better perceive our collective background. There are presently 60 participants enrolled, EVO moderators excluded. I have played with Create a Graph to illustrate participants’ linguistic and teaching environment. Note that I have not added the EVO moderators nor all participants on the list (just those who answered this specific question in the survey) Besides, as many participants work in two or three different places at the same time , the numbers in the pie chart and the bar chart do not coincide.

You will clearly notice that we have a multi-lingual and multi-cultural community here, who usually operates in two or more languages, one of which is English. Monolingual native speakers of English seem to be a minority.

This reminds me of a teleconference with David Graddol I followed in 2006. David Graddol is a British applied linguist, writer, broadcaster, researcher and consultant on issues relating to global English who was comissioned by the British Council to write two reports In the Future of English (pdf file) written in 1997, Graddol shows the possible long-term impact on English language of developments in communications technology, growing economic globalisation and major demographic shifts at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. In English Next (pdf file), he analyses demographic and economic trends in the Twenty First-Century which affect Global English and language policies worldwide and will influence its future and suggests global English may mean the end of English as a foreign language. (taken from British Council Site).

During the event in 2006, Graddol predicted that in 10 years time the world’s leading economies would be (in order) China, US, Russia, India & then Brazil and that English would continue to be challenged by Spanish in Brazil for example, (‘a gentle threat’) but would remain very widely used. He mentioned EFL & ESL "are two sides of the same coin and this coin no longer has any currency" and that English will probably be seen as something as a basic skill instead of subject on its own, with other subject matters being taught through English medium. This does transform our role as teachers of language, doesn’t it? Listen to this audio snippet (Real Player). Food for thought and discussion.