3. Answer questions 1-8 by referring to the three newspaper articles about different languages.

For questions 1-4, answer by matching the number of people A-G with the language they speak. There are three extra figures.

Breton Frisian English is spoken regularly by Dutch

700,000 1,2 billion 800 million 200,000 15 million 300,000 2 million

Read Text 3 and complete sentences 5-8 with the endings H-N. There are three extra sentence endings.

Ireland Portugal Denmark America

is the spiritual home of ‘world English’. has the worst foreign language learning record. has the best foreign language learning record. has the lowest proportion of young people learning English. has the highest proportion of young people learning English is opposed to official recognition of minority languages. is in favour of promoting English alone within the EC Lingua programme.

4. Which of the following categories of text type would you say the articles belong to?

1. informational

2. opinion

3. imaginative

4. descriptive

Which articles are the most / least objective?

5. What arguments does the writer of Text 3 put forward to support the use of English as an international communication medium?

6. Work in a small group. Discuss the questions below. Then share your ideas with the class.

1. Do you agree with the point of view expressed in Text 3?

2. Do you sympathise with the people fighting to save minority languages?

3. Do you think the issues raised in these articles are contrary or is it possible to both promote the spread of English as a universal language of communication and save minority languages? Support your point of view giving reasons and justifying your answer. Use the useful language from Reference Section.

LISTENING 2. Esperanto, a world language

1. As you probably know in 1880s a Polish linguist, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859-1917), created an artificial language – Esperanto. You are going to listen to an interview with Professor Nesbit. He will be talking about Esperanto.

What do you know about Esperanto? Share your ideas with the class.

2. Now read the words of L. L. Zamenhof. What was his reason for the creation of Esperanto? Discuss with the class.

In our meeting there are no strong or weak nations, privileged or unfavoured ones, nobody is humiliated, nobody is harassed; we all support one another upon a neutral foundation, we all have the same rights, we all feel ourselves the members of the same nation, like the members of the same family, and for the first time in the history of human race, we - the members of different peoples - are one beside the other not as strangers, not like competitors, but like brothers who do not enforce their language, but who understand one another, trustfully, conceitedly, and we shake our hands with no hypocrisy like strangers, but sincerely, like people. Let's be fully aware of all the importance of this day, because today among the generous walls of Bologne-sur-Mer have met not French with British, nor Russians with Polish, but people with people. (L. L. Zamenhof (1905))