COMMENT ON JAY WALKER “THE WORLD’S ENGLISH MANIA”

I love letters, I love languages and I would like that the humanities would play a bigger role in the society. The idea with which Jay Walker finishes his short, but intense, lecture gives a chance to that idea “English represents hope for a better future. A future where the world has a common language, to solve its coming problems”.

I like the idea of English giving us better times to come, but I don’t like the way that some people work this idea…

Through the centuries there have been several manias; during the 20^th century for example there have been and there are, nowadays, manias with some musicians like the Beatles, or with the religions or sports, etc. In a certain way, I think that this is because we need to believe in something or someone to make us feel safer, and it doesn’t if it’s in some God, in the lyrics of two young ones who changed the music or in some basketball player.

Manias has been appearing and one that started in the eighties and it’s still increasing is the mania with English. Although it’s not the more spoken language in the world, everybody wants to speak it because with it you can communicate everywhere. This fact makes that the language, that once was used with mastery by Emily Dickinson or William Shakespeare, can open you a world of opportunities, among them a better job.

Walker gives a dramatic example talking about the Chinese people wanting desperately learning English. In his words, China is nowadays the country in which more people speak this language.

The intensity of the process to acquire this L2 is beyond imagination; they study 12h every day to prepare an important test in which there is a part of English. And all this“suffering” for what? Why do they study so hard?

During the lecture appear several images of a crowd of Chinese people repeating a leader speaking in English, saying sentences as “I want to change my life”. This is the reason why: OPPORTUNITY to enhance their time in this world.

... the idea of using a language,  only as tool for the future. I know that languages are tools to communicate between ourselves, but they also are culture and learning a language in this way, in my opinion isolates the culture.

The situation in China is extreme, but I think that around the world, this L2 is been treating in the same way  because, in general, students see this language as a subject that they have to pass and is our duty as English teachers to make them see it, to make them feel that it’s  is something more than filling the gaps or studying the annoying irregular verbs. It’s about make them speak English and free them from the fear of using it, it’s the only way to open their minds to a new world of communication, to a new world of culture.