Focus on the global language!?

Essay em inglês realizado para fins acadêmicos sobre uma palestra TED. 

Patricia Ryan, an English teacher in Arabic countries, gave a TED speech in 2010 with a tricked statement: Don’t insist on English! But what does it mean? Do we have to stop teaching English? Is English not important anymore? Is it time to change the precedents of use of English? Teaching for over 30 years, Patricia was able to see some changes in how English as a global language has morphed over the years and how it affects other languages.

English is the third most spoken language in the world only losing for Spanish and Chinese. English is considered no longer another language in the curriculum, but a business, commercial, “globalizational” and educational language. That means that who has this language has the opportunity to go to the best schools, universities in the USA and the UK, also the power of negotiating money actions in other countries, also the power of controlling a population for being “superior” to them just because of the language. But even though this language grows a little bit more every day, several other languages die, that is because we consider these dying languages not important or not prestigious enough.

Over 339 million people speak English around the world and those who don’t speak yet want to learn someday, because it means having more opportunities for education and also work. However, these opportunities are taken only by those who has money to pay the TOEFL test, and dominates the English as the teachers want them to, which is not fair for the poor, the ones that don’t know English or just know a little of it, and for those whose focus in life is not on language grammar itself but in other things as computer, music, cars etc. The English instead of being the opening door for them is the barrier. 

Having a global language is important nowadays, but we cannot use it to satisfy only the “good and native” speakers, but for those that speak all over the world. English is not restricted only for UK and USA, but to the whole world, so everybody must have the same opportunities as the native speakers. Knowing English does not mean that you are superior or more intelligent, just means that you know English. You don’t have to learn English to be a genius, or a famous person, or a writer, of course, for being the language of the global business, it can give you many opportunities, but again, sometimes these opportunities won’t achieve you, only a minority part of the global population.

Seeing as a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I think we should always remember where we came from, that means that we shouldn’t wait to lean English to be good at something, or smart, or anything we want. We should be awesome in our own language, so it can’t die on our hands. Every language is important and everybody should have opportunities for being great in life.