English is now the international language. Analyse and discuss the opportunities and threats this presents for non-English speaking countries.Currently, more and more people use English language in their daily lives, even people who come from non-English speaking backgrounds. English is considered to be an international language. The contention as to whether taking English as an international language will be helpful or harmful for non-English speaking countries has long been discussed. Past research has been conducted in a lot of fields on this issue. Some researchers hold the opinion that using English as an international language will not only benefit the English speaking countries, but also benefit the non-English speaking countries. In other words, it would benefit human society in many fields. However, some other researchers believe that using English as an international language will produce more problems for the world, especially for the non-English speaking countries. English is a part of globalization, which is a current trend in human society. Although the non-English countries may envisage some threats, in the case of globalization, the opportunities in the long term outweigh the threats presently. This paper will investigate the opportunities and challenges for non-English speaking countries in the trend of using English as a global language. This essay will focus particularly on culture, education and linguistics. All of these are faced with both opportunities and threats for the non-English speaking countries.
Culture is defined as "a particular state or stage of civilization, as in the case of certain nation period" (Macquarie Dictionary). Every nationality has their own culture, which includes language, customs, life habits and so on. Using English as an international language can help people from different cultural backgrounds understand each other with less misunderstanding (House, 1999), which is the most important aspect in cross-culture communication.