Xinrong li Professor Jan Rieman English 1101 Oct 2, 2012

Dont insist on English As we know, English is a global language and has spread in all over the world. The importance for learning English is very essential. However, there may have a disadvantage on our own language. According to the video that I saw by English teacher Patricia Ryan, she mainly talks about language loss and globalization of English. Firstly, she has taught English in Arabic countries for over 30 years and she has seen a lot of changes about that. In her view, teaching English "has morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business". She states that a language dies every 14 years, and English is the undisputed global language. From her own experience, when she first came to Kuwait to teach English because the government want to modernize the country and to empower the citizens through education. This is the major change that she has seen. Moreover, she points out: do we really want to end up the 600 languages and main one being English From my point of view, I do not want to end up our language instead of English because our own language is a culture and belief. We should not end up our belief even though English is really important. The reason why people focus on English is that they want their children have best chance in life, so they need western education. In the end of her speech, a memorable sentence deeply in my mind that mind your language, use it to spread great ideas.

She indicates the dangers of using English as a barrier. And this is what's the actually happening in the world's best universities where students' admission can be rejected for lacking English skills alone. She argues "when students come to us from abroad, we may not be giving them enough credit for what they know, and they know it in their own language." English become a barrier for some people, take an example from my uncle, he is a bright engineers in China and now he is immigrated to US. He was well trained and experienced in his career. However, it becomes difficult for him to find a job in US without scoring high on English language exams. The global community should use a diversity language; no one likes to eat the same thing every day and do the same things every day. Her point is usual, not only in a social context but also in the intellectual. Other languages can envelope ideas that cannot be expressed in English alone. By cooperating, we can achieve learning so much more. I totally agree with Patricia Ryan speech that the need for language diversity and I also believe this is important to recognize . I always ask people why English is the global language until now. We still can not figure out an logical answer for this question. From my own experience, English is neither the most descriptive language nor the most concise language. Chinese, my native language , I think is a language with deep description. Moreover, I should say do not end up our own language base on English. Taking all these factors into account, I may reach a conclusion that we should not forget our language instead of using English.