In today's generation, English is no longer
viewed as a foreign language - it is the global means of communication:
the language of communication wherever a deal is being done
internationally. Officially, English now has a special status
in more than 75 countries, with a total population of over
2 billion speakers.
English is a must if we want to survive in a competitive environment and
progress in a globalized world. English is important to conduct
business with the outside world.
English is the language for knowledge seeking as we move towards
knowledge-based economy. That is the reason why we
continue to emphasize the importance of the language particularly at
the tertiary level.
To be proficient in English, students have no choice but to learn it the
hard way, meaning we need to do it constantly and consistently. We
need to read extensively. We need to improve our writing. Above all we must have the commitment and the desire to improve. I find there
are a lot of opportunities now for us students to improve our English skill unlike before. We should use
opportunities available like the internet and library facilities where
all kinds of information, publications and books are available. We
must also take pains to think and write proper English. We should
learn to express ourselves in proper English and practice good writing.
Practice makes perfect, so goes the saying! But sad to say some do not
even read newspapers, beyond lecture notes and text books. How could
they improve then?
I always find time to correct simple mistakes I used to make, sometimes repeatedly. I find out that it helped me in my grammatical errors.
Simplifying it, useful communication requires shared knowledge. While this includes knowledge of language,
words and syntactic structures, meaningful communication is even more
focused on knowledge about a problem to be solved. However to deal with any language would be very difficult. So to solve this problem, a common language is used and that is English Language which is communicating people across the world and bringing people closer to each other.
