Outside of these long-term goals, the issue of English language competence

demands immediate attention to increase the scope for employability for youth,

but the objectives for learning English today cannot be upward social mobility

and access to higher education alone. With English becoming a global

language, not to have English is to be marginalized and excluded (Graddol,

2010). These pressing needs have led to reviewing the objectives and practices

of English language teaching in developing countries across the world. In view

of this, both central and state governments in India have been, through strategic

efforts, striving to revamp their educational institutions.

1.1 Globalization and the English language

There are many notions about behind English’s becoming a global language.

One of the most common is that the spread of the English language began with

colonial expansion, when Britain first took the language from its island

birthplace to its settlements around the world, and it gradually acquired the

status of a lingua franca in colonized countries.

According to Graddol (2003), language has traditionally become an

international language for one chief reason: the power of its people, especially

their political and military power. Over 2000 years ago, Greek became a

language of international communication in the Middle East, but because of the

armies of Alexander, the Great, not because of the philosophy of Plato and

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Aristotle. However, global or international language dominance is not solely

the result of military might. Military powers may establish a language, as it did

with Britain, but it is economic power that expand and maintains it. By the end

of the 19th century, Britain had established the pre-conditions for English to

emerge as a global language through the massive expansion of its power across

the world. English communities were settled around the world along with trade

and communication patterns (Graddol, 2010). However, without the rise of the

United States, English would not have been able to sustain its position when

British power declined after the Second World War. In this respect, the role of

the United States as a superpower is worth examining when discussing the

emergence of English as a global language.

In post-World War II, English acted as "the vulgate of American power and of

Anglo-American technology and finance." (Steiner, 1975, as cited in Graddol,

2003). English was, in other words, the common language for a country that

due to its natural and human resources emerged as the most powerful of the

industrialized countries. The United States, today, is the world’s third most

populous country with around 260 million inhabitants housing the greater

proportion of the total number of native English speakers (Graddol, 2003).

American English has become the most used variety, overtaking British

English in popularity.

Another notion about the causes behind the rise of English has to do with its

role in the minds of speakers. Crystal (2003) writes, “a language achieves a

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genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in

every country” (p. 3). The notion of ‘special role’ differs from country to

country, but Crystal emphasizes that the role must be achieved in every country

for a language to be truly global. For some the ‘special role’ for English may be

as a mother tongue. The USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New

Zealand, South Africa, and many Caribbean countries use English as a mother

tongue. Some of these are powerful countries, but they are relatively few.

Spanish leaves English behind with Spain and more than twenty Latin

American countries using it as a mother tongue (Crystal). Therefore, the role of

a language as a mother tongue in a few countries cannot give it the status of a

global language.

Crystal (2003) believes that there are two additional ways a language can

achieve such status in other countries: 1) by becoming an official language of a

country, and 2) by being given priority in a country’s foreign-language

teaching. When English is made an official language, it is generally described

as a ‘second language’ as it is seen as a complement to the L1 or the first

language. In India, for example, English enjoys the status of associate official

language with Hindi, Hindi being the official language of formal

communication. English enjoys similar official status in over seventy countries.

This is more than the status achieved by any other language. On the other hand,

the most commonly taught 'foreign language' has no official status, but it

becomes the language which children will most likely be taught in school and

the one adults are most likely to learn as well. A language is introduced as a

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foreign language due to reasons such as historical tradition, political

expediency, and the desire for commercial, cultural or technological contact

(Crystal). English is now the most widely taught foreign language in over 100

countries.

As Crystal points out “it is inevitable that a global language will eventually

come to be used by more people than any other language” (p. 6). English has

already reached this stage. According to the press release for the launch of the

British Council’s English 2000 project, worldwide there are over 1400 million

people living in countries where English has official status. One out of five of

the world’s population speaks English to some level of competence. English is

the main language of books, newspapers, airports and air-traffic control,

international business and academic conferences, science technology,

diplomacy, sport, international competitions, pop music and advertising (as

cited in Graddol, 2000).

English has long been a competitor for the language of science and technology

at international level. Its roots date back to 17th century when, in 1662, The

Royal Society sought to make the English language a vehicle of clarity and

precision. Carter and MacRae (1997) write that the main purpose of the society

was "to guide and promote the development of science and scientific

exploration, but it created a climate in which language itself could be subjected

to greater investigation"(p.148). The renaissance of British Science put English

language science publications at the foremost of the scientific world, although

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the position was lost for a while, to German, until World War I. After the war,

though, the growing role of the United States was instrumental in putting

English back on top, and it became again the most-used language of science,

technology, experiment, and discovery (Graddol, 2003). Gibbs (1995, as cited

in Graddol, 2000) gives an interesting example of the Mexican medical journal,

Archivos de Investigacion Medic. The journal, at first, published only the

abstracts in English, then it provided English translations of articles, but,

finally, it hired an American editor and accepted articles only in English. The

name was then changed to Archives of Medical Research. Meneghini and

Packer hope to promote non-English work even though they know how

prevalent the use of English is in science. In their 2007 article, "Is There

Science Beyond English?" they concede that "Any scientist must therefore

master English—at least to some extent—to obtain international recognition

and to access relevant publications," but, they point out that only nine of the

last twenty-five Nobel laureates in science wrote originally in English. Despite

efforts like theirs, though, English clearly dominates as the language of

academic publication. The Figure 1.1 shows that nearly 86% of the world's

academic journals are published in English. Many of the journals that aren't are

also published as translations into English. Thus, the rise of English is the

result of both Britain’s colonial expansion and the rise and activities of the

United States. However, the sustainability of English as a global language

depends on globalization.

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7
Figure 1.1 Academic Knowledge and Language. Geographies of the World's Knowledge by Graham, M., Hale,
S. A. and Stephens, M. (2011) . University of Oxford for the Oxford Internet Institute 2008.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) defines globalization as “…the

growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through the

increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and

services and of international capital flows, and also through the more rapid and

widespread diffusion of technology” (para.1). The explanation of the term may

also include cross-border socio-cultural, political, and technological exchanges

between nations and in particular, between people.

Richardson (2000), describes several forces behind globalization, but the first is

the digital revolution. The incredible advances in communication technologies

have rendered the notion of time and space virtually irrelevant and obsolete,

and use of it for global communication has grown incredibly quickly.

According to a study conducted by the American Management Association

International (AMAI) in 1998, e-mail was already taking the place of face-to-

face and telephone communication as a means of business communication. At

that time, it was already found to be extremely popular among students with

more than 95% of university students in the United States using the Web to

conduct research and stay in touch with friends (Diederich, 1998, as cited in

Kern and Warschauer, 2000). The United States has, from the beginning, been

a world leader in Internet use, with the world's highest percentage of its

population online with approximately 78.6% of U.S. resident online by the end

of 2011. In number of users, however, China far surpasses the U.S. with more

than 500 million users compared to an estimated 245 million in the U.S. The

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fastest growth in use of the Internet has occurred in emerging economies of

Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America.

The Internet has revolutionized human communication and, with it, language

learning. It has, in a sense, commodified the English language to a degree that

no other historical development ever has. Block and Cameron (2002) argue that

in the context of globalization “the commodification of language affects both

people’s motivations for learning languages and their choices about which

languages to learn. It also affects the choices made by institutions… as they

allocate resources for language education”( p.5) and, in this sense, learners are

fortunate.

Steiner (1975) wrote "There is ample evidence that English is regarded by

native speakers of other languages… as easier to acquire than any other second

language." English appears to require "mastery of fewer and simpler phonetic,

lexical, and grammatical units" than other languages. If this is the case, India,

with it's long historical relationship with English, should be well-positioned for

English language learning at a national level.

1.2 English at the national level

Graddol (2010) introduces the story of English in India this way: