The scene: A business meeting between Chinese and Spanish company representatives. The language spoken:English. This scenario, where people from different cultures, who speak different languages, speak English as their chosen means of communication is becoming increasingly common, so common in fact that the majority of conversations in English no take place among non-native speakers of English. It's surprising but true-roughly speaking, only one out of every four speakers of English in the world is a native speaker of the language.
This use of English by non-native speakers as the medium of communication between them has been given a name ”English as a lingua franca”(ELF). and for some years no ELF has been the subject of much discussion among English-language teaching experts, since non-native speakers conversing together must inevitably use English differently to the way native English Speakers speak it. To put it more simply, they’re making mistakes.
That certainly is the traditional view. Native English speakers are the custodians of the language and speaker it correctly. Foreigners speaking the language must be corrected whey they make mistakes! However, a new and potentially very fruitful concept has now emerged, and that is that ELF, with all its inevitable “mistakes”, is a language in its own right. It should therefore be studied to find out how ELF speakers are communicating and what new forms this language is taking. For roughly a decade research has indeed been carried out and the results are fascinating.
The principle idea to emerge is that there are mistakes that hinder communication and mistakes that don't, no one is going to misunderstand if someone makes the common mistake of saying ”This is James Baker, he look after the sales department.” The omission of the s on the end of look just doesn't really matter. Similarly, difficulty pronouncing the the sound in the thank you is not going to prevent comprehension.
This conclusion has important implications when it comes to teaching and learning English in the classroom. If the s on the end of the verb isn't so necessary, then why teach it? Now that's a revolutionary idea that fills most English-language teachers with horror. You can't desecrate the English language like that. But a weaker version of the same idea might be not to place too much importance on that s in the classroom. In other words, the task for language experts and the teacher is to work out which elements of English-language grammar, even at the lower level, can safely be skimmed over. The fact is that ELF speakers are at his moment deciding this for themselves.
1.Research shows that
A.most people who speak English didn’t speak English as children.
B.business people all over the worlds speak English
C.most business people aren’t English have difficulty speaking it.
C. most people who speak English come from America, Britain or Australia
2.The use of English as a lingua franc takes place between ___
A.Americans, the British, Australians and foreigners.
B.native English speakers and non-native English speakers
C.all speakers of English
D.people who didn’t speak English at home as children
3.English-language teaching experts now see ELF as ____
A.full of mistakes
B.different to normal English in some ways
C.difficult to understand
D.Unimportant
4.Research in ELF show that _____
A.shouldn’t teach the s ending
B.will always insist that English is spoken correctly
C.need to decide which parts of English grammar aren’t important
D.cannot decide what grammar to teach
5.English-language teachers and experts_____
A.shouldn’t teach the s ending
B.will always insist that English is spoken correctly
C.need to decide which parts of English grammar aren’t important.
D.cannot decide what grammar to teach
参考答案：1. B 2. D 3.B 4. C 5. C.
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