Views on the Topic: English Language

After reading through the articles, "Beijing steps up English-language drive" and " Global English Strengthening U.S. Supremacy", i feel that all that is written in the articles further emphasised the importance of the English Language to the extent that everyone is learning it and how it would affect us. As such, we should take this language seriously.

This is because in the world we live in now, the need to know the English Language is essential and vital as the English language has become the language of international communication. Many people living in the European Union speak English as a foreign language and use English to communicate with people from all over the world. This is especially so in the Business world as for example, If you are an German doing business with a Chinese customer or supplier, it's more likely that the two of you can speak together in basic English than that either of you will know the other's language. By speaking the English language, it creates a common platform of communication among people and thus, enabling work and deals to be done more quickly, efficiently and effectively.

However there are also some disadvantages of learning the English Language. This can be seen in cases where it would likely discourage native speakers of English from learning different languages. Most would then view the idea of learning a new language as pointless as so many people already speak English. Another disadvantage is that for non-native users, they spend more time in acquiring English and thus spend less time on their own language so the proficiency in the native language weakens because of the learning of English. One example is a Chinese spending lesser time on his/her Mother Tongue Language to focus on the English Language(as commonly seen in schools now). As such, because they spend lesser time on their Mother Tongue languages, their results would also gradually drop and the overall standard of Mother Tongue language in the society would follow suit too and over time, the Mother Tongue language might even die out as it is slowly being replaced by English as the main communication tool.

In Conclusion, while there are disadvantages of focusing too much on learning the English Language. But overall, i think that the advantages, economically and socially, would outweigh the disadvantages created and it is also very encouraging to see countries emphasizing the importance of the English Language. This is further supported by the education system in Singapore where the English language is taught straight from the Primary School level so that the students have a good foundation to work on. In addition, the language is also a required subject to be calculated into the results of the PSLE and more importantly,the GCE examinations(L1R4/L1R5 system) where the L1 refers to the English Language. Therefore, all of the above shows the importance of the English Language and that we should all take it seriously as we would need to count on it in almost everything we do.

WEI JIE