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1、30but sadly, today, languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. a language dies every 14 days. now, at the same time, english is the undisputed global language. could there be a connection? well i dont know. but i do know that ive seen a lot of changes. when i first came out to the gulf, i came to
2、 kuwait in the days when it was still a hardship post. actually,not that long ago. that is a little bit too early. but nevertheless, i was recruited by the british council along with about 25other teachers. and we were the first non-muslims to teach in the state schools there in kuwait. we were brou
3、ght to teach english because the government wanted to modernize the country and empower the citizens through education. and of course, the u.k. benefited from some of that lovely oil wealth. 1425okay. now this is the major change that ive seen - how teaching english has morphed from being a mutually
4、english-speaking nation on earth. and why not? after all, the best education - according to the latest world university rankings - is to be found in the universities of the u.k. and the u.s. so everybody wants to have an english education, naturally. but if youre not a native speaker, you have to pa
5、ss a test.now can it be right to reject a student on linguistic abilitywell, i dont think so. we english teachers reject them all the time. we put a stop sign, and we stop them in their tracks. they cant pursue their dream any longer, till they get english. now let me put it this way, if i met a dut
6、chspeaker who had the cure for cancer, would i stop him from entering my british university? i dont think so. but indeed, that is exactly what we do. we english teachers are thegatekeepers. and you have to satisfy us first that your english is good enough. now it can be dangerous to give too much po
7、wer to a narrow segment of society. maybe the barrier would be too universal.okay. but, i hear you say, what about the research? its all in english. so the books are in english, the journals are done in english, but that is a self-fulfilling . it feeds the english requirement. and so it goes on. i a
8、sk you, what happened to translation? if you think about the islamicgolden age, there was lots of translation then. they translated from latin and greek into arabic, into persian, and then it was translated on into the germanic languages of europe and the romance languages. and so light shone upon t
9、he dark ages of europe. now dont get me wrong; i am not against teaching english, all you english teachers out there. i love it that we have a global language. we need one today more than ever. but i am against using it as a barrier. do we really want to end up with 600 languages and the main one being english, or chinese? we need more than that. where do we draw the line? this system equates intelligence with a knowledge of english w
