Academic English: Writing II
Assignment 1: Comparison of two newspaper articles

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The topic of the two articles by Jacques (2006) and Holt (2006) is the decline of the amount of British people who are able to speak a foreign language. Both authors discuss the necessity of being  able to speak a language different from English in today's globalized world.
 Jacques (2006) and Holt (2006) agree that it is useful to learn a foreign language even though English is one of the most spoken languages in the world. Yet, they argue for different reasons. According to Jacques (2006) it is a paradox that the British see themselves as a very global nation and are subsequently very often not able to communicate in a language different from English. Jacques (2006) argues that 'at root it remains a deeply arrogant attitude'. Furthermore, he points out that English is after Mandarin only the second most spoken language in the world and that this is likely to intensify due to the continual rise of China. 
 Holt (2006), however, opposes this statement. In his opinion, the amount of people speaking Mandarin is outnumbered by the amount of English speaking people if those who speak English as a second language are also included. So he sees it as an advantage to grow up learning English as first language because it is 'the most useful lingua franca anywhere on the planet' (Holt 2006). Nevertheless, he agrees with Jacques that second languages should be taught in schools more intensively again. His experiences as a student and as a teacher have shown that learning a foreign language makes people capable of thinking about language more analytically. The side effect is that they get to know their own mother tongue better. 
 Jacques (2006) adds to this point that as language is also 'the means by which one accesses a culture', learning a foreign language means also learning something about the people from the respective country. 
  As a conclusion, both authors agree that students should learn second languages at school for different  reasons. According to Jacques (2006), it is not sufficient to speak English because it is not true that English is the most spoken language in the world. Holt (2006) criticizes the system for not offering various foreign languages at schools. According to him, it is a good starting point to be a native speaker of English, but speaking a foreign language has positive effects on the knowledge of your own language.  




References

Martin Jacques, Does it matter if we only speak English?  in The Guardian  Friday 15 December 2006
Richard Holt, Why bother learning foreign languages? in The Guardian  Friday 13 October 2006