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Date Posted: 12:12:57 05/09/07 Wed
Author: Ernane Oliveira
Subject: Task Two

Use of language in foreigner contexts

If you want to learn a second language ina satisfactory level, you need to learn as much as you can of the culture of the country. It will help you to see how native speakers behave and think while they use the language. So, learning a new idiom is not simple a fact of studing grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. It is really true. However, what about using English in foreigner contexts, when neither one of the speaker is a native one? Statistics show that in a few years, China is going to be the first country in population to speak english. There are two main reasons why learning the cultural aspects of a language is not so important as learning to use the language in context.

First, even though the cultural aspects of a language, for example, how to phone people, how to invite than to parties, the turn-taking protocol in specific situations like business, schools, are important, they are irrelavant for non-native speaker who are using English in a foreigner context. Supose you are a Brazilian student and you're going to live in India for a few months, for example, what you know about AMERICAN CULTURE will not help there. So there would no sense to try an american behaviour, to indians, even though their official language is english. You will need, instead to learn about Indian Culture, to try avoid mistakes in extra-verbal communication, etc. In summary, a single knowledge of culture can not suffice in all enviromental.

Second, because of globalization many people, institutions and corporations all over the world have chosen english as a functional language. For example, in many europeans contries, as Germany, France, Spain, there are classes spoken in english for foreigner student. So, if you are a non-native english speaker, you can benefit from those courses, and you will be surprised how similar their english can be to yours, except, of course, for the influence of their native language on accent. So, chances are that they are not using idiomatic expressions, slangs, neologisms. Other feature is that their vocabulary choices relay heavily on the latin/greek branches, so their english are so how more easily assimilate by native speakers of indo-europeans languages.

Therefore, is you're want to use english as a functional language in foreigner contexts, you should focus on aspects like clean pronunciation, fluency, and try to be open-minded, flexible to the environment, and learn as much as you can about culture in general, history, in other words, acquire a broader world knowledge. Those aspects of culture can be more helpful than investing too much time and effort in learning every detail abour a country you're not going to live.

Ernane

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