A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Libraries informs students, ajarns, and staff whether it is worth making an effort to improve our knowledge and understanding of the English language. Communicating with Asia: the Future of English as a Global Language discusses how English is taught, studied, and used in Pakistan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore,  India, Hong Kong, and Philippines, among other places. The book may be found at the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus. In a timely way, on July 6 and 7, TU will host an international conference at the Tha Prachan campus on English language teaching (ELT) in the digital age. Organized by the Department of English and Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University, the conference will deal with such subjects as technology and language teaching; intercultural communication; world Englishes/English as a global language; English as an international language/English as a lingua franca; linguistic ecology; language teaching methodologies; and language acquisition/psycholinguistics. The editors of Communicating with Asia, Professors Gerhard Leitner, Azirah Hashim and Hans-Georg Wolf, are all experienced teachers of English as a foreign language. Professor Leitner has taught English as global language in Berlin, and as visiting professor in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India and Italy. Professor Dr. Azirah Binti Hashim teaches at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Professor Dr. Hans-Georg Wolf teaches at the Department of English and American Studies, University of Potsdam, Germany. Professor Leitner is currently based at the Institute for English Language and Literature of the Free University of Berlin, a research institution noted for its work in the humanities as well as the social, natural, and life sciences.

At a 2012 symposium at the Free University, English in Asia’s Languages Habitats and Europe’s Asia Competence, it was noted:

The future of English has much to do with its status and use in Asia. The largest number of users of English comes from Asia and it seems to be growing. English is deeply embedded in Asia’s multilingual languages habitats and functions as a (first or second) official language, a foreign language or a lingua franca. English is an icon of social transformation processes in multilingual nations and regions. As nation-building, globalization, and large regional bodies are making significant demands on modernizing traditional societies, communication and English gain a central role in mediating change. Particular demands are made of the institutions in education including professional formation. The language and socio-political impact of these issues have become a key subject of inter- and multidisciplinary and applied research in Asia.

Along these lines, as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2012, about two billion people in the world, of a total population of seven billion, are able to speak some English. 450 million of these use English as a first language, 500 million as a second language, and another billion use it without understanding it too well. English will likely remain the shared language of choice in Asia because its speakers are scattered in different countries. The second most used language, Mandarin, with 1.1 billion speakers, is used mostly in China. People looking at the statistics published by the English Proficiency Index understand that almost one-third of the people in the world have studied English. It is estimated that by 2050, half of the people in the world will speak English with some skill. Asia has about 800 million English speakers, especially in China and India, more than in what are generally considered the English-speaking areas of the world, including Europe and America. China has about 330 million English speakers and around one million  teachers to educate up to 200 million grade school and 13 million university students of English. Like China, India also has around 330 million English speakers. Therefore the subject of English usage is not a minor concern or sideline, but one affecting much of the world. Among the chapters in Communicating with Asia is one on the development of English in Pakistan, noting that English has ties to power, class, sophistication, and elite status, making English both a class-oppressor and a class-changer. To advance social status in Pakistan, it is necessary to learn English. Without it, people are held back from career development. Japan has been declining lately from its once-supreme level of mastery of English as a foreign language, according to the English Proficiency Index. Doubts have been cast on a Japanese educational method for English instruction known as yakudoku. Instead of using the spoken language as a basis for learning English, Japanese teachers who follow the yakudoku method concentrate on having students translate English language texts into Japanese language, trying to get identical results from all students. This training does not help students who will need to communicate with people in other Asian countries. In 2016, Professor Edgar W. Schneider, who teaches English linguistics at the University of Regensburg, Germany, stated in an interview that the importance of English world-wide, including in Asia, will likely continue. As a student of what are called World Englishes, with the plural suggesting that varieties exist, Professor Schneider noted:

I suppose the topic as such will continue to grow in importance, both within linguistics and from a practical perspective. The unbroken force of globalization, increased travel, and continuously growing international ties, building upon English as the default communicative tool, will keep boosting the transnational attraction associated with English, and will consequently strengthen both the establishment of new local varieties and the process of striving for some degree of competence on the side of millions of individuals. True, there are competitors—strong regional languages like Malay or Spanish, or Chinese, which is increasingly acquired as a foreign language and being pushed; but for the time being I do not see any factor likely to break the predominance of English on a global scale. And we as societies and scholars need to understand what is happening here linguistically and culturally—how and why these new varieties emerge, which properties they have, what people think about this, which symbolic meanings are implied by certain usage forms, what all of this means for intercultural communication, intelligibility, language teaching, and so on. So I trust it will remain a strongly growing field for the foreseeable future… The globalization of English and the establishment of World Englishes is truly a major component of a “language revolution” which will transform what “English” means, for good.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)