Widespread introduction of English, longer courses

In Western Europe the teaching of English has become the general rule, and all pupils now learn English. This situation has come about at different rates depending on the country and its specific circumstances and first made its appearance in the countries of Northern Europe, the Netherlands and the German-speaking countries. The trend spread to France and then to all the Southern European countries.

According to a Eurydice study covering 29 countries (the 15 Member States and the applicant countries), nine of them, including the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and several German Länder, have made the learning of English compulsory.

Note: The Eurydice [juri’disi] network supports and facilitates European cooperation in the field of lifelong learning by providing information on education systems and policies in 36 countries and by producing studies on issues common to European education systems. It consists of 40 national units based in all 36 countries participating in the EU Lifelong Learning programme (27 Member States, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) and a coordinating unit based in the EU Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency in Brussels. Since 1980, the Eurydice network has been one of the strategic mechanisms established by the European Commission and Member States to support European cooperation in the field of education. Since 2007, Eurydice has been included in the EU Action Programme in the field of Lifelong Learningin which, as part of the transversal programme, it helps to support the development of policies as well as cooperation at European level.

In the others, the obligation to learn a foreign language, in conjunction with the widespread introduction of English teaching, gives English a quasi-compulsory status, albeit one that differs on the political and cultural front. English courses are getting longer in nearly all countries. Language learning in primary school (children under 11) is an ancient tradition in central and Eastern Europe. Northern European countries have organised it on a large scale since the 1970s.

It became the general rule in all non-English-speaking countries of the European Union in the 1990s. In all cases it has been or is about to be made compulsory, with learning starting between seven and ten years of age. The early learning of languages has benefited English almost exclusively. The only other language taught to any significant degree is French but even here only 4% of the school population is reached. The share of the other languages is too small to appear in the statistics.

English and other languages

While English and other languages are still competing in central and eastern Europe, such competition has virtually ceased in western Europe. The other languages are taught when the curricula include a second or third foreign language (FL-2) but their place is much smaller than that of English. The teaching of two languages is very far from universal.

During the 1990s the proportion of the school population learning French remained at 32% to 33% (including the English-speaking countries, where it is the first foreign language), while the proportion learning German – confined mainly to the northern European countries – amounted to between 18% and 19%. The learning of Spanish is largely limited to France and Luxembourg, although it is tending to increase elsewhere from a very small base. Where other languages are taught they are chosen only by marginal percentages of the school population. (Sources: Eurydice)

Membership of the European Union has undoubtedly acted as a spur. When they joined in 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden decided to diversify their strongly English-oriented language teaching. In Sweden the proposition of the school population learning French rose from 3% to 20% and German from 20% to 40%. Spain, which was the last European Union country to teach only one foreign language, decided to introduce a second language as from 1997, at least outside the autonomous communities, which have more than one official language. The applicant countries have also expanded their range of languages.

 

English as a teaching language

The use of English as a teaching language in primary and secondary education is still quite limited in Western Europe, except in the international schools. It is much more frequent in central and Eastern Europe, where it is to be found in highly selective bilingual courses which admit pupils on the basis of competitive examinations. Such courses also exist for other languages (French, German, Italian) but those involving English are generally the most sought after.

This function of English is developing particularly in higher education. We have the example of institutions which issue higher-level qualifications of international repute (eg the European University Institute, Florence) and of others specialising in commerce and business (among them those delivering the Master of Business Administration (MBA) qualification). These bodies want to attract foreign students willing to pay large sums for such training and to persuade them not to prefer American or British universities.

In northern European countries, the Netherlands and more recently Germany, university courses open to foreign students make broader use of English as a teaching language. These courses compete not only with those of American and British universities and those offered by on-line education, a sector dominated by the American electronic campuses, but also with those provided by European universities which use the more widely spoken languages. This is particularly the case in the exchange programmes.

The universities taking part in the European Union's Socrates programme like their students to be able to acquire additional training abroad but as those programmes take place on a basis of reciprocity they turn to English when they consider that their language forms a barrier to attracting foreign students.

We are witnessing a general process of internationalisation of higher education. In a context of competition, English represents a selling point, an inducement. This trend will probably become more pronounced with the creation of a common European higher education area – the Bologna process, which has been embraced by a number of European governments.

Common diplomas will be introduced under this process. Users of English will probably be more highly prized than those using the national language as they will be considered better adapted to the globalisation context. Universities may consequently fear that by making an effort to make the usual teaching language accessible to foreign students they will appear outdated and backward-looking.

The laws of the market also encourage the use of English for publishing textbooks and other books used in universities. The major international groups which control the sector are tending to abandon uneconomic linguistic markets.

In the countries concerned the only works available in a number of educational fields are in English. This is another factor that increases inequalities between linguistic communities.

 

English in the sciences

Scientific research is the field whose linguistic practices have been the most thoroughly studied. It has been the subject of several sociolinguistic studies (particularly Skudlik 1990, Truchot 1990, Ammon 1998 and 2001) and numerous symposia. Official reports record the languages used in publications and databases. All the analyses show clearly the factors that have led to the large-scale use of English.

After the Second World War much of the world's scientific potential became concentrated in the United States. One of the consequences was the leading position acquired by that country in scientific publishing and in the storage and dissemination of scientific and technical information (STI). The design, production and dissemination of knowledge then became internationalised and globalised, especially in the fields with the greatest economic implications. However, American research remained at the centre of the process and the United States has always been strongly involved for strategic reasons (East-West relations, US business interests).

Observers (Confland, in Cassen, 1990) have shown that, of some 100,000 scientific journals published worldwide, 50% were in English but that what counts is the "hard core" of world scientific publishing, composed of about 4,000 to 5,000 journals. The latter publish articles which serve as references. It is these journals that receive priority indexing in computerised files, i.e. in databases set up for the collection and circulation of scientific information. They belong to a very small number of international publishing houses and appear for the most part entirely in English.

Moreover, the United States has the greatest concentration of databases, as well as the most influential ones, such as the Science Citation Index (SCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia. Over 90% of the information in these US databases is extracted from articles in English taken mostly from English-language journals. In European databases the position given to other languages is hardly any greater and references in English predominate.

Initially established in the publication of papers, the primacy of English subsequently spread to other fundamental language practices in scientific activity. It has become the main language for access to scientific information because researchers tend to look first of all in the "hard core" for information, which is increasingly sent over the Internet. With the internationalisation of science, English is tending to become the dominant, and often the sole, language used for discussions in symposia, congresses and similar events. Its use extends to exchanges of work in scientific laboratories where there are foreign researchers, especially if they are in countries whose languages are localised and little taught.

The organisation of research at a European level also tends to promote the use of English in academic circles and in publications, networks,programmes and institutions. The European Union's scientific programmes, for example, are managed entirely in English, from invitations to tender to completion.

Most journals of repute published in other languages have considered it necessary to resort to English if they are to secure an international audience.

Examples are Les Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, Psychologische Forschung, Physikalische Zeitung and Nuovo Cimento. Languages unable to act as a transmitter of scientific results become devalued. The devaluation process extends even to users of those languages. This is particularly the case with researcher-assessment procedures, which routinely credit work in English.

Ammon (1998) reports a comparative test in which the English versions of the same articles were systematically assessed more favourably than those in Dutch or the Scandinavian languages.

Languages marginalised as regards the transmission of scientific results tend also to be excluded from the field of university research. In Sweden the practice of writing doctoral theses in English is now common to most disciplines. A study performed at Uppsala University in 1993-94 (Gunnarson, 2001) shows that nearly 100% of theses in the exact sciences, engineering and medicine, 75% in the arts and 66% in the social sciences are written in English. In Switzerland, English is increasingly chosen even though it is a country where the more widely spoken languages are used. In 1975, 8% of theses were in English, reaching 20% in 1991.

English made rapid strides in the 1990s, especially in the German-speaking universities. In 1996, 61% of theses in the natural sciences at Zurich University were in English, compared with 39% at Lausanne University (Murray, Dingwall 2001). In Germany doctoral theses may be in English as well as German. Ammon (1998) shows that English is widely used. In the majority of theses the use of English is combined with that of German, and for a smaller but not insignificant number English alone is used.

Not all languages are necessarily abandoned for the purposes of transmitting scientific and technical knowledge. Studies and summaries used by researchers when they wish to take stock of their discipline as a whole as it relates to their particular specialisation or to obtain information about other disciplines are published in the more widely used languages. In French this is the case with the journals Médecine-Sciences and Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Sciences or, for a wider public, the monthly review La Recherche. However, suchopportunities to transmit scientific information are rarer in the less widely used languages. One consequence is the increasing shortage of terminology which afflicts them and causes them to be further devalued.

The use of English is nowadays seen as unquestioned. Yet this has not always been so. In a book on languages of scientific communication in the 1970s (The Foreign Language Barrier, 1983), J.A.Large noted that part of world research was published at that time in languages other than English and advised English-speaking scientists to learn foreign languages. (To be continued in Unit 2-13)

SUMMARY WRITING. READING STRATEGIES FOR EXPLICATION OF KEY FACTS AND IDEAS GIVEN IN THE TEXT

Instruction: Writing a good summary of the text requires practice and skills. Below are recommendations for students, abridged after Christine Bauer-Ramazani, Consultant for Integrating Technology into Online and On-campus Learning and Teaching, Saint Michael's College, Colchester, Vermont. The recommendations are published in the Internet and free of copyright limitations. You are to read, understand, and work at Claude Truchot’s study with the purpose of acquiring summary preparation strategies to employ in your prospective professional activity. There are a few preparatory steps you can learn now to avoid the worry before you’re in the heat of the moment. Give these proven study tips a try and see how much better you feel while doing your real assignment.

 

Before writing the summary – read, mark, and annotate the original:

· highlight the topic sentence;

· highlight key points/key words/phrases;

· highlight the concluding sentence;

· outline each paragraph in the margin;

Take notes on the following:

· the source (author – first/last name, title, date of publication, volume number, place of publication, publisher, URL, etc.);

· the main idea of the original (paraphrased);

· the major supporting points (in outline form);

· major supporting explanations (e.g. reasons/causes or effects);

Preparing to Write: To write a good summary it is important to thoroughly understand the

material you are working with. Here are some preliminary steps in writing a summary.

· Skim the text, noting in your mind the subheadings. If there are no subheadings, try to divide the text into sections. Consider why you have been assigned the text. Try to determine what type of text you are dealing with. This can help you identify important information.

· Read the text, highlighting important information and taking notes.

· In your own words, write down the main points of each section.

· Write down the key support points for the main topic, but do not include minor detail.

· Go through the process again, making changes as appropriate.

Section 2. Grammar workout