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Teaching English as a Global Language

With over 1.5 billion native and non-native speakers, English is the world’s most widely spoken language. Teaching English as a global language means acknowledging the reasons for its worldwide presence. It is important to provide context to help students understand how exactly English became a global language. Present a brief history lesson that traces English from its origins in England to the dozens of countries that use it as a dominant language today.

English is no longer linked to a particular country. Pull up a map and ask students to start naming the countries where English is spoken as a native language. Then, ask them to find the countries where it is spoken as a dominant language. Finally, ask them to find where it is spoken by the majority of the population. This will remind students that there are many ways that English is spoken around the world. This can help change one’s perspective from seeing English as having a single, correct form of usage to seeing it as a way to facilitate communication with people across the globe.

Students who are learning English as a global language must be reminded that statistically speaking, they are more likely to use English with non-native English speakers than natives. This is because English has more non-native speakers than native speakers! It’s estimated that 70-75 percent of the world’s English speakers are non-native. It’s highly likely that students will at some point encounter an unexpected accent or dialect of English.

It is the heavy task of the global English teacher to help students unlearn their fear of mistakes and embrace communication for the sake of comprehension. The idea that communication matters more than grammatical precision is also important to help students develop strategies for what to do when communication breaks down. This means giving them tools like asking for clarification, rephrasing their own statements, and confirming understanding. Role-playing these types of interactions helps students build confidence and prepares them for real-life situations – whether in meetings, travel, or casual conversations. By focusing on communication strategies rather than perfection, you help students become more effective, empathetic speakers.

One of the best ways to reinforce the global nature of English is by incorporating authentic materials into your lessons – materials created by English speakers from various countries and cultural backgrounds. This includes podcasts, YouTube videos, blog posts, news articles, or even social media content produced by non-native speakers or international communities. Using real-world examples allows students to encounter English in a variety of accents, formats, and contexts, far beyond the confines of standardized textbooks. It also helps them develop listening and reading skills that are more adaptable to the real-life situations they’ll encounter when using English with people from different backgrounds. It is a shared language used by billions, and it’s shaped by the voices of its global community.

Although it’s a global language, English is also uniquely personal. Whether it’s the cafe playing the latest hit song from a music artist, the name of the milkshake at their local fast food restaurant, or a new Instagram update from a celebrity, remind students to recognize the role English already plays in their lives. Invite them to interact with it by straining to understand the song lyrics or set their phones to English. Since it’s all around us, it can be easy to learn to ignore global English. Invite students to recognize it, embrace it, and engage with it in their own daily lives. Teaching English as a global language, you can help your students use this language to its full potential – to facilitate multicultural communication and collaboration and to express the full, authentic experience of humans around the globe.

Teaching English as a Global Language

With over 1.5 billion native and non-native speakers, English is the world’s most widely spoken language. Teaching English as a global language means acknowledging the reasons for its worldwide presence. It is important to provide context to help students understand how exactly English became a global language. Present a brief history lesson that traces English from its origins in England to the dozens of countries that use it as a dominant language today.

English is no longer linked to a particular country. Pull up a map and ask students to start naming the countries where English is spoken as a native language. Then, ask them to find the countries where it is spoken as a dominant language. Finally, ask them to find where it is spoken by the majority of the population. This will remind students that there are many ways that English is spoken around the world. This can help change one’s perspective from seeing English as having a single, correct form of usage to seeing it as a way to facilitate communication with people across the globe.

Students who are learning English as a global language must be reminded that statistically speaking, they are more likely to use English with non-native English speakers than natives. This is because English has more non-native speakers than native speakers! It’s estimated that 70-75 percent of the world’s English speakers are non-native. It’s highly likely that students will at some point encounter an unexpected accent or dialect of English.

It is the heavy task of the global English teacher to help students unlearn their fear of mistakes and embrace communication for the sake of comprehension. The idea that communication matters more than grammatical precision is also important to help students develop strategies for what to do when communication breaks down. This means giving them tools like asking for clarification, rephrasing their own statements, and confirming understanding. Role-playing these types of interactions helps students build confidence and prepares them for real-life situations – whether in meetings, travel, or casual conversations. By focusing on communication strategies rather than perfection, you help students become more effective, empathetic speakers.

One of the best ways to reinforce the global nature of English is by incorporating authentic materials into your lessons – materials created by English speakers from various countries and cultural backgrounds. This includes podcasts, YouTube videos, blog posts, news articles, or even social media content produced by non-native speakers or international communities. Using real-world examples allows students to encounter English in a variety of accents, formats, and contexts, far beyond the confines of standardized textbooks. It also helps them develop listening and reading skills that are more adaptable to the real-life situations they’ll encounter when using English with people from different backgrounds. It is a shared language used by billions, and it’s shaped by the voices of its global community.

Although it’s a global language, English is also uniquely personal. Whether it’s the cafe playing the latest hit song from a music artist, the name of the milkshake at their local fast food restaurant, or a new Instagram update from a celebrity, remind students to recognize the role English already plays in their lives. Invite them to interact with it by straining to understand the song lyrics or set their phones to English. Since it’s all around us, it can be easy to learn to ignore global English. Invite students to recognize it, embrace it, and engage with it in their own daily lives. Teaching English as a global language, you can help your students use this language to its full potential – to facilitate multicultural communication and collaboration and to express the full, authentic experience of humans around the globe.

If styles are general characteristics that differentiate one individual from another, then strategies are those specific “attacks” that we make on a given problem, and that vary considerably within each individual. They are the moment-by-moment techniques that we employ to solve “problems” posed by second language input and output. Chamot (2005, p. 112) defines strategies quite broadly as “procedures that facilitate a learning task. Strategies are most often conscious and goal driven.”

As our knowledge of second language acquisition increased markedly during the 1970s, teachers and researchers came to realize that no single research finding and no single method of language teaching would usher in an era of universal success in teaching a second language. We saw that certain learners seemed to be successful regardless of methods or techniques of teaching. We began to see the importance of individual variation in language learning. Certain people appeared to be endowed with abilities to succeed; others lacked those abilities. This observation led Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975) to describe “good” language learners in terms of personal traits, styles, and strategies. Rubin (Rubin & Thompson, 1982) later summarized fourteen such characteristics. Among other abilities, good language learners tend to:

1. Find their own way, taking charge of their learning

2. Be creative and develop a “feel” for the language by experimenting with its grammar and words

3. Make their own opportunities for practice in using the language inside and outside the classroom

4. Learn to live with uncertainty by continuing to talk or listen without understanding every word

5. Use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language, in learning a second language

6. Use contextual cues to help them in comprehension

7. Learn to make intelligent guesses

8. Learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them perform “beyond their competence”

9. Learn different styles of speech and writing and learn to vary their language according to the formality of the situation.

What's the Difference Between a Solstice and an Equinox?

You may know that the solstices and equinoxes signal the changing of the seasons on Earth, but do you remember which is which? Are they just different names for the same thing? Actually, a solstice and an equinox are sort of opposites.

The seasons on Earth change because the planet is slightly tilted on its axis as it travels around the Sun. This means different points on Earth receive more or less sunlight at different times of year. If Earth were not tilted, the Sun would always appear to be directly above the Equator, the amount of light a given location receives would be fixed, and there would be no seasons. There also would be no need to mark equinoxes or solstices.

The two solstices happen in June (20 or 21) and December (21 or 22). These are the days when the Sun’s path in the sky is the farthest north or south from the Equator. A hemisphere’s winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and its summer solstice the year’s longest. In the Northern Hemisphere the June solstice marks the start of summer: this is when the North Pole is tilted closest to the Sun, and the Sun’s rays are directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer. The December solstice marks the start of winter: at this point the South Pole is tilted closest to the Sun, and the Sun’s rays are directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn. (In the Southern Hemisphere the seasons are reversed.)

The equinoxes happen in March (about March 21) and September (about September 23). These are the days when the Sun is exactly above the Equator, which makes day and night of equal length.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Adaptation.