英语论文网

Introduction引言

根据麦克拉姆人（2002:9）的说法，英语的崛起是一个奇迹。他们说，很多很多年前，其实英语是并不存在的。在2000多年前，当凯撒开始踏上英国的土地之前，没有一丝的英语的迹象可以找到。所以，英语一开始就在一个非常有限的范围内使用。直到16世纪末，当威廉莎士比亚在他的创作高峰期时，只有500至700万英国男人把英语作为他们的母语。然后，英文才步入快速发展的时期。四百年后，在世界各地至少7.5亿人在使用英文了，但是，其中许多人其实没有把它当作母语。The rise of English, according to McCrum et al (2002:9), is a miracle. They say thatmany, many years ago, English actually did not exist. When Julius Caesar stepped on the land of Britain over 2000 years ago, no trace of English could be found. Then, English beganto be used within a very limited scope. At the end of the 16thcentury, when WilliamShakespeare was at his peak, only between 5 and 7 million Englishmen took English as theirnative speech. Then, English stepped into an era of rapid development. Four hundred yearslater, English was used by at least 750 million people across the world, many of whomactually did not speak it as a mother tongue. With the speeding process of globalization,English has now become an international language used most frequently as a lingua francaamong its non-native speakers from different L1 backgrounds and the population ofnon-native speakers is increasing enormously (McCrum et al 2002:10). According to Crystal(1997, Cited in Lowenberg 2000:207), Strevens (1992, Cited in Lowenberg 2000:207) andJenkins (2003:2), a majority of current English users are not native speakers, but non-nativespeakers. Strevens (1992, Cited in Lowenberg 2000:207) further suggests native speakersonly make up a fifth or less of the English users in the world. Graddol (1997, Cited inMelchers and Shaw 2003:8) lists first-language speakers as 375 million, second-languagespeakers as 375 million and foreign-language speakers as 750 million. Pakir (2000:14) alsoclaims ‘there are two non-native speakers for every native speaker’.In the meanwhile, English has come to be used in many domains. Melchers and Shaw(2003:8) suggest that English is mainly used in books, newspapers and magazines, airportsand air-traffic control, international business and academic conferences, science andtechnology, diplomacy, sport, international competitions, pop music and advertising.Bloomer et al (2005:408) describe the role of English in the modern world as one that isquite unlike any other language. It is used as the lingua franca at international conference innon-English speaking countries even when none of the participants speaks English as theirmother tongue.In daily life, just as Melchers and Shaw (2003:184) claim, increasingly, English is usedto address foreigners or tourists. Tourists who speak Asian language assume that everyone inEurope knows English, and Europeans assume that people of Asian appearance willunderstand English.What is more important is that education has been carried out through English in manycountries. Melchers and Shaw (2003:184) state that at the highest level, PhD theses in manysubjects are routinely written in English in many countries. Even at undergraduate level,students or their parents may like to see courses taught in English so that they learn thelanguage along with the subject. Similar pressures have led to the popularity of English insome secondary schools. (Melchers and Shaw 2003:184)The important status of English makes it easy to think of the motto in the headline in theintroduction to a recent account of New Zealand English by Gordon and Deverson in 1998,‘English, English everywhere’ (Melchers and Shaw 2003:6).From the above statements and statistics, i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。