Contribution to Book
The Hegemony of English as a Global Language
Education for social development: Global issues and analyses
(2008)
Abstract
English, the first language of about 400 million people in Britain, the United States
and the Commonwealth, has become the dominant global language of
communication, business, aviation, entertainment, diplomacy, and the Internet. As
such, an estimated number of over a billion people speak it as their second or
foreign language. These second- and foreign-language speakers of English include
millions of migrant and immigrant English as a Second Language (ESL) schoolage
students (see Faltis, 2006) and over 560,000 international ESL university
students in the United States (Open Doors, 2006) and over 137,000 in Canada
(OECD, 2003). About a billion others in the rest of the world speak English as a
Foreign Language (EFL). The estimated users and learners of English in China and
India alone number over 533 million, more than those in the United States, the UK
and Canada put together (Kachru, 2005).
Disciplines
Publication Date
2008
Editor
Abdi, A. A. & Guo, S.
Publisher
Sense Publishers
Publisher Statement
Copyright Sense Publishers 2008
Citation Information
Gulbahar Beckett and Yan Guo. "The Hegemony of English as a Global Language" RotterdamEducation for social development: Global issues and analyses (2008) p. 57 - 69 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gulbahar-beckett/10/