ESL Discussion

A native English speaker, when I worked as a business and computing teacher in the United Arab Emirates, I helped Emirati students with aspects of English. Even though we had a huge number of very well qualified specialist English/TESOL teachers, those of us who taught in other specialisations were expected to do our bit to improve students' English too.

I found that I enjoyed very much teaching small sessions of English in my classes. The young ladies I taught were keen, interesting, humourous and good fun to work with.

I began to ask myself why it was that English was increasingly becoming the international language of choice when languages like Spanish and Chinese were spoken by so many people. The question drifted in and out of my mind for quite a few months and one day I asked an English fellow who was the head of the English department why this was the case.

He told me that English was a language with 26 letters with which English speakers could do everything they needed. English uses the 26 letters on one horizontal line, Arabic eg, has a similar number of letters, but is written on, above and below a line. So, English is more efficient.

Obviously the fact that the early British spread to all corners of the globe has had an influence also, but the Spanish, French, Portugese, Dutch and others also spread across the globe.

Whatever the reason, it means that I am fortunate that I did not have to learn English as a second language and I admire those of you who have, very much, especially now that I am now learning Vietnamese.