Author's presentation
The English language is now closer to being the world's second language than any other 900,000,000.since the dominance of Latin in Western civilization. Today, English is the official or first language of 23 nations with a combined population of about 500,000,000. In addition, it is a co-official or widely used second language in another 25 nations with more than The best estimates are that 50,000,000 primary school students and 75,000,000 secondary school students are currently studying English as a second language. To this can be added millions more who are studying English at the adult and college/university levels. China alone is said to have more people (500,000,000) studying English than the combined populations of the UK (61,000,000). the USA (305,000,000), and Canada (33,000,000) among whom 75%- 80% claim English as their mother tongue. As a student of English, you have a lot of company. You are part of a truly global enterprise.
The fact that English is a key to many doors—technology, science, business, politics, culture accounts in large measure for its present attractiveness. To any list of causes that might be offered for this widespread use, we should keep in mind that in sharp contrast to those who have made a near fetish out of their languages, native speakers of English have not fixed it within any standard, except intelligibility. The absence of any high authority to decide what is and what is not "English" has given the language a relatively unfettered line of development which is probably more dynamic today than ever before. English has never echoed to any call for "purity." Because it is not afraid of being “corrupted” and has such a high tolerance for new words and expressions, regardless of their origins, English is able to adapt to local conditions with ease.
There have been many well-intentioned efforts directed at the needs of English learners. The traditional approaches were entirely grammar based. These were later supplemented by frequency word counts. Then came the communicative approach, which spawned audio-lingual methods seeking to teach the living language. A more recent development along this line has been Survival English.
