You just don’t have to Kill Trees to get your point across.
What’s on the Agenda for this week?
·Coursebook Footprint
·First Advertisment……
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Summer is here and some are gone and some are staying around for a while. That’s always the way it is. Some leave happy and some leave sad. Whatever situation you are in, go with peace and love in your hearts and love your students unconditionally. Oh yeah, My Mantra (one of many), try not to kill too many trees.
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Coursebook Footprint
What footprint does our coursebook leave? I am printing with permission of a posting by Robert Haines.
"How big do I want my coursebook footprint to be?"
Let's run with the analogy, shall we...
The extent to which a language learning course is comprised of a linear syllabus, interspersed by easily quantifiable tests, all based on the contents of coursebook pages, in whatever order, determines the coursebook footprint we leave behind as we move through our educational ecosphere.
Grammar McNuggets, traditionally extracted from published coursebooks, leave a deep footprint (not to mention their *carbon footprint*), less desirable to sustainable learning communities that thrive on conversation-driven, emergent grammar, an organic compound with a substantially lower coursebook footprint (and considerably less CO2 output). We can reduce the risk of severe failure in the cycle of 'agricultural' (i.e., organic) learning that has sustained communities for centuries when we decrease our reliance on the industrial model of education so prevalent among current 'best' practices.
While technology has a role to play in safeguarding our learning environment for future for language learners, it will ultimately come down to the grassroots efforts of teachers and students, individually and collectively, drawing upon naturally occurring resources such as conversation stemming from curiosity about ourselves and the world around us.
We can reduce our dependency on 'foreign' resources by keeping language learning local as we consider the global implications of our actions.
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Wanna FREE Cat…..
This comes to us from Sarah who has this wonderful cat to give away for free. Her words, exactly…
"No cat is ordinary". Boots is simply sweet for a wild wadi boy cat. Boots is also,regal and gentle and loves to play chase the mouse...LOL! Surprise, surprise.
He is spayed, dewormed, shot and clean...a perfect Tom now! more LOL. (My comment: Guys don’t do that to other Guys. It’s always the women that spay males. It’s the Guys code.” Leave each other alone)
If you have any other questions, please e-mail Sara- his kind and very generous keeper.
You don’t have to kill the trees to see the Forest.
Environmental English #9-English Attack/E-Mail English Classes
You just don’t have to Kill Trees to get your point across.
First thing to do…. is immediately forward this e-mail to your personal e-mail. It seems in their infinite wisdom… the IT department has decided to block all blogs, wikis, videos, audio and a whole host of other educational material from the school Internet connection. Well, some can be accessed after 5pm so I guess the only option is for you to stay past 5pm to get a look at the material. I’m sure they have their reasons.
Remember…. Environmental English can also be seen in a blog form at www.environmentalenglish.blogspot.com
What’s on the Agenda for this week?
·English Attack
·E-Mail English Classes
·Communicative Language Teaching Lesson
·How much do you really teach?
·Noodler’s Delight
·Free 10 Day Online Workshop
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English Attack
I know you are wondering, “Gee Thelma Liz. What’s all this English Attack about?”
This is a great website for the students.What makes this site so great is the creator/owner of the site came from the Gaming Industry to create the site.What does this mean to the students and teacher? It means that it’s going to be a lot cooler and more visually pleasing than most sites. Plus, he takes a different approach to learning.
You do have to join the site to participate but once you do get on the site, it is really cool to surf around and see what’s there. If you’re expecting 2500 downloads of Grammar exercises that you can print out for your students 20 at a time, well, you will be severely disappointed.
Stuff like Video Boosters, Games and Photo Vocabs should keep students busy for a long time to come.
There is a great interview with the co-founder, Frédéric Tibout on a great site, Edukwest
English Attack is a French site (in English). Edikwest comes out of Germany and it has lots more interesting interviews with different people to go along with this one. It’s a site well worth a visit.
Here is a site that offers FREE E-Mail English classes. It offers a lot of other stuff but we will get to that a little later.
Think if you could get all your student’s e-mails and send out a bi-weekly English class. They could do the lesson or view the material at home. Well, here is a site that offers just that. The link is at the top of the page and says, “Start your FREE email English course now!” Sign up for the e-mail course and see what they have to offer. Obviously, it is not for lower level students who struggle just to bring their books to class.
Now for the other cool stuff on this site. Of course these cost about $9.95 each. “Oh No…. I have to spend money. You mean everybody doesn’t work for free. Geeze Louise. I thought everybody liked to eat noodles.”
·TOEFL Test Package-220 different tests
·English Test Package-2031 Tests
·Listening exercises
·Grammar through Stories
·More than you could use in a year or so
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Communicative Approach
Everyone thinks they know what the Communicative Approach is all about. Do we really? Most people think (with a Cheech and Chong accent),”Cool Man. We just kind of like you know sit around and rap about stuff, Man.”
I remember our Leader saying at the end of the first meeting that he favored the Communicative Teaching Approach. That’s what The Man wants and that’s what The Man should get. Ask and you shall receive, You’re driving the bus, It’s your gig, You’re the Head Dude In Charge (HDIC) and all the other clichés I can’t come up with at the moment.
You are either working for The Man or you are working against The Man. If you are working for The Man, Great. If you are working against The Man, well, that’s just not nice. When we were little and playing in the Sand Box we were told to play nicewith the other kids. If you don’t play nice with the other kids it goes from being a Sand Box to being a Cat Box. I really don’t want to play in a Cat Box. Do you? Speaking of Boxes, enough of the Soap Box and let’s get on to a Communicative Approach lesson plan.
Here is a lesson plan outline from this Doctor Mora from San Diego State University.She can’t put stitches on a cut but she is a Doctor all the same.
A LESSON OUTLINE FOR THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
Jill Kerper Mora, Ed.D.
San Diego State University
These are the steps to follow in planning a lesson using the communicative or natural approach to second-language teaching:
1. Presentation of a situation or context through a brief dialogue or several mini-dialogues, preceded by a motivational activity relating the dialogue to learners’ experiences and interest. This includes a discussion of the function and situation: People, roles, setting, topic and the level of formality or informality the function and situation demand.
2. Brainstorming or discussion to establish the vocabulary and expressions to be used to accomplish the communicative intent. Includes a framework or means of structuring a conversation or exchange to achieve the purpose of the speakers.
3. Questions and answers based on the dialogue topic and situation: Inverted, wh- questions, yes/no, either/or and open-ended questions.
4. Study of the basic communicative expressions in the dialogue or one of the structures that exemplifies the function, using pictures, real objects, or dramatization to clarify the meaning.
5. Learner discovery of generalizations or rules underlying the functional expression or structure, with model examples on the chalkboard, underlining the important features, using arrows or referents where feasible.
6. Oral recognition and interpretative activities including oral production proceeding from guided to freer communication activities.
7. Reading and/or copying of the dialogues with variations for reading/writing practice.
8. Oral evaluation of learning with guided use of language and questions/answers, e.g. "How would you ask your friend to ________________? And how would you ask me to _______________?"
9. Homework and extension activities such as learners’ creation of new dialogues around the same situation.
10. To complete the lesson cycle, provide opportunities to apply the language learned the day before in novel situations for the same or a related purpose.
There you have it. In a nutshell…. Do we do this with our lessons as requested? We can try to follow this example. I’m sure it’s much easier if your students are at least motivated enough to even bring their books to class.
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How much do we really teach?
How long is our teaching day? I feel it is from the time we get out of our car or off the bus until we get back in our car or back on the bus.“Blootty Ale!” Students want to speak English with you. They are begging (longing) for every opportunity to do so.We are in a position to give them practice in authentic language usage, which goes a long way toward their overall improvement. That is why we are here, isn’t it? This extra oomph can only help. Some students will do nothing in class but open up outside the class. This does not mean you corner them and tell them, “Be my friend and I will teach you English.”You just can’t chase students around the campus and do grammar exercises with them when they have run out of breath. But, it IS Ok to talk to the students. There is no need to tell them, “Don’t talk to me outside of class. This is MY time.” That’s not why they come to the School.
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Noodler’s Delight
Sausage Noodle One-Dish Meal Recipe
Sausage Noodle One-Dish Meal is a delicious side dish recipe that you would love to prepare on every party. Try this sausage dish; I am sure you will have a huge fan following for this Sausage Noodle One-Dish Meal recipe!
1 pound bulk beef sausage
1 cup (or more) milk
1 pound American cheese, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
16 ounces egg noodles, cooked, drained
How to make Sausage Noodle One-Dish Meal
Brown the sausage in a skillet, stirring until crumbly; drain.
Return the sausage to the skillet over low heat.
Add the milk and American cheese and heat until cheese melts, stirring frequently.
Stir in the salt, pepper and noodles.
Yummy yummy yummy.
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Free Online Training from WikiEducator
From eL4C38
Open Education Resources (OER) is becoming much more pervasive in tertiary education. Developing content which can be shared within one institution, or across continents represents a powerful paradigm shiftin the distribution methods of learning content and courseware from traditional publishing models to those which are open and collaborative in nature. Major initiatives from leading institutions to provide open courseware further support the growth of this segment of online learning.
WE extend an open invitation to all educators around the world to join us on WikiEducator
to receive a free basic Wiki editing skills online training in exchange for one Open Education Resource (free lesson plan, student guide, teacher handout or other lesson) developed on the Wiki.
Join the upcoming L4C38 free 10-day online workshop scheduled to begin on May 26, 2010.
Thank you.
You don’t have to kill the trees to see the Forest.
“A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in February, 1995 with early input from SDSU/Pacific Bell Fellow Tom March, the Educational Technology staff at San Diego Unified School District, and waves of participants each summer at the Teach the Teachers Consortium.
Since those beginning days, tens of thousands of teachers have embraced WebQuests as a way to make good use of the Internet while engaging their students in the kinds of thinking that the 21st century requires. The model has spread around the world, with special enthusiasm in Brazil, Spain, China, Australia and Holland.”
Go to the website and check them out. They are pretty cool to set up. It’s not as much exotic fun and making photocopies out of Grammar books but fun all the same. Sometimes you just have to settle for second best.
I like them because they give the students something to actually do instead of regurgitating information that has been spoon fed to them. They have think for a change. Oh yeah! They have to be thinking English too.
The students have
oIntroduction
oTask
oProcess
oEvaluation
oConclusion
The teachers get to decide just what goes in each section. As I said before, it’s a lot less fun than making copies of a Grammar book and it’s a LOT MORE involved.
Here is one about proper eating called EatingUnder The Rainbow
Granted, it’s only for 3rd graders, but I think the language might be appropriate for lower level learners.
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Speaking & Reading in One
I have put together a little lesson about Nasreddin (Johara) and added a Voxopop (Online recording tool) at the end for students to answer the questions. Check it out.
The students read the story and then make a recording with the answers.
Demo of Sixth Sense
This idea is really great. You can have an interactive teaching system that can be used on any surface as you walk around and it will cost about the same as a good mobile phone. Watch the video and you can see the possibilities. It will save all that lugging around of projectors and computers.
Do you ever get so bogged down with the realities of everyday life that you have lost your Groove and to paraphrase a former President of the US, Bill Clinoccio, “We’re in a kind of a Funk?” You can’t chalk it up to Culture Shock. You’re just having a real bad time of it all.
You have got to Get Your Groove On. Easier said than done. Remember a time when you were on a contract and you were having a really good time? You were doing all kinds of really cool stuff and both you and your students were having an excellent teaching and learning experience. Think back to that time. It was probably “Dam the torpedoes, Full Speed ahead.” That’s what you have to do now. Go for Broke and all the other motivational clichés you can dream up.Does it work? Of course it does. I’ll give you an example.
I previously worked in Kazakhstan for $300/Month for a Translators Institute (College). I got there and ask about a Curriculum-None… Syllabus-None… Books-None… I did have classes of young eager Russian and Kazak students who were raring to go. That was a Plus.Did I forget to mention that the chalkboard wouldn’t accept the chalk they provided? I did have a cool flat a couple of blocks from the school and another half block to my favorite adult beverage establishment. Oh yeah! Let’s not forget I had a final exam at 3pm and I needed copies of the test. Their answer, “You can get your copies at 5pm.” That was the best job I have ever had(next to my current job that is). I was completely FREE with no boundries on what I wanted to do with the classes. NONE.
While there I
oGot mugged and spent 8 days in the hospital (that is another story)
oSaw one of the muggers go to prison after a year dealing with Courts, DA’s and other strange stuff.
oI was constantly worried about getting killed by the muggers friends to shut me up.
oI did three Radio shows a week. Sat & Sun. morning and Tuesday night. I worked with three of my students. We had a great time. They chose the music and I did the rest. Two of them were on-air for the shows. I was a little weired out when they chose Tom Jones for the music on one of the shows but I would not interfere with their choice of music.
oRan an online newspaper about the city.It was nothing mind shaking. Just stuff I saw and what I thought about the whole experience.
oHad two girlfriends, Russian and Georgian. They kept me alive and out of trouble.
oPlayed Blues Harmonica in this club with this brilliant Russian Classical Pianist that liked Blues and Jazz. This guy went on tours and won competitions.
oNo AC in the summer and sometimes in winter the weather would get down to -35 Degrees C. No hot water for three winter months.
In short… I was vibrant, alive and always involved in something from the time I got up until I went to sleep. In the end, the remnant of the local KGB told the school not to renew my contract. Nothing Illegal. I was just having too much fun. So, you ask if I had my Groove On. Oh yea! It was definitely ON.
And, this is what you have to do where you are now. Get Your Groove On. You don’t have to be a squiggly little English teacher holed up waiting or the sun to come up so you can get your validation from your work. Yes, work is cool and you can definitely Groove while there but your total picture has to change. It’s a complete systems approach. Take care of the You in your life and the work will follow.
Of course you say, Students cheat on Tests yak yak yak, but consider this. At this place in Kazakhstan, the Vice Rector (Vice Chancellor) got up in front of the whole student body before the State Exams and told the students to get their cheat sheets made. They (Management) would get the examiners drunk and take care of the rest. How sweet is that?
If I can throw in one more Cliché. “Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’ all small stuff”
You don't have to Kill Trees to feel Macho or Feminine.
You just don’t have to Kill Trees to get your point across.
I have decided to enlarge Environmental English a little to get more bang for the buck. Wait… It’s Free. All you have to remember is do or investigate all the ideas and you can start loading up on Gold Stars.
In this edition:
oDoodle English
oBelieve It or Not (Writing Explanation)
oVoxopop.com
oNoodlers Delight- Aardvark Stroganoff
oTeachergary.com has hits from nine different countries
Here is a guy from China that gives online classes/sessions on using Doodles to teach English. It’s quite interesting how he does it. His students are a lower level than ours but the concept is still valid. Watch one of his session recordings.
I know you are asking yourself, “Gee whiz Betty Lou. How can we do this?” It’s very simple and here’s how.
oGet about 12 Erasers and cut them in half. Now you have 24. Fuzzy math
oHave the students draw a box around the best doodle on their desks
oThey then have to erase the rest of the desk
oHave each row pick out the best doodle on their row
oAnd so on and so on until you have the best one in the class
oEach time you go up a level the students have to erase the boxed doodle
oFinally you have the class winner of the best doodle in the class
oThe students then have to write a story about the best doodle
It’s too late. The desks are clean of all writing. Tom Sawyer strikes again.
Of course this may lower final exam grades by a few points but remember The Desks are Clean. I’m not sure why the desk on the Girls side of the class is not cleaner. I guess it’s their natural artistic nature.
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Believe It or Not (Writing Explanation)
This certainly explains a lot of things.
Try this. . .
Believe it or not you can read it.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt..
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Voxopop-Online Speaking Exercise
I know you are thinking, “Gee whiz, Bobby Joe. How am I going to get my students to talk online?”
Here is a site that allows you to make a recording and allow members to react or whatever to that recording by making a voice recording on the Internet. Yes, they do have to actually go to the website and do something in English. And no they, don’t get to get their friends to fill in the blanks on 23 pages of photocopies, do their part in killing Trees and releasing Bleach into the water table. They just have to plan their answer and make the recording.
Here is the page I have set up for www.teachergary.com for the 16 weekly lessons where the students have to make a recording for some conversation questions.
It does work better if your students have evolved beyond the photocopy and understand that simply having the right answers is not learning. The problem with the “Right Answer” method of learning is students Graduate and have no actual knowledge. But, they do have the right answers and that all that is important to them. This cannot be allowed to happen anywhere. It is our job as teachers to wean them off of antiquated and destructive learning methods.
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Noodlers Delight-
Aardvark Stroganoff Recipe
Serve this tuna stroganoff recipe over rice or noodles.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup sour cream
dash pepper
1 can (7 ounces) Aardvark Meat, strained and fluffed
1 can (4 ounces) mushrooms, drained
Hot cooked noodles or rice
Preparation:
Melt butter in skillet; sauté onion until tender. Combine soup, sour cream and pepper; add to onion. Add Aardvark and mushrooms; heat through. Serve Aardvark stroganoff over hot cooked noodles or rice.
Makes 4 servings.
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Teachergary.com has hits from nine countries and some change (other)
oUS
oOman
oBrazil
oGermany
oItaly
oRussia
oMexico
oMaldives
oOthers
Go ahead. Get your site up. It’s not Rocket Science. Heck, it’s not even as complicated and complex as Long Division. Get involved with the rest of the world. They are out there waiting for you.
You just don’t have to Kill Trees to get your point across.
Teach 1000
Here is a guy who plans to teach 1000 Online Classes in a year. This site and challenge shows what can actually be done if one has the inclination to get involved and actually do something instead of just talk about it.
What are the possibilities for the University if teachers had this kind of commitment to teaching students? The possibilities are endless and the opportunity for student progress is staggering. We all need to stagger every once in a while. This guy is teaching without killing trees and he should get a Gold Star for Professional Development. We all know how valuable those Gold Stars will be come Vacation Time.
1) I must have at least 1 student in every class that I do.
2) All classes must be either on EduFire, WiZiQ, or any other online platform.
3) Each class must be at least 30 minutes long.
4) I cannot have the same student for more than 5 classes in a row.
5) Each class must be on a different topic, but can be in the same subject. For example, I can teach a world history course, but I have to have a different topic in each lesson.
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We Can Do This!
This about a site called Ask Mister Duncan and it’s on Youtube.com
He’s a pretty strange person and someone you would not let your sister marry if you loved her. But, his channel on YouTube is pretty entertaining and it’s something the students would enjoy.
Could the teachers, etc. from the University do this? Sure they could. It would take a team of people dedicated people putting the channel together just for the crack of it. It’s a great learning experience and it doesn’t need a committee or any other format to water down and gain control of the creative process. It’s a matter of getting it to a format or platform that the students use or would use if the opportunity presented itself.
As you can see from Teachergary.com there are many formats, platforms and ways to use videos to educate the students. It’s up to us to take advantage of the technology and find ways to get information to the students without overburdening them with mounds of photocopies so we don’t have to actually teach and/or relate to them while in the classroom.
You don't have to kill trees to get your point across.
Welcome to Environmental English –Let’s Create Something. In this Newsletter we will go into some places where you can host your work for FREE. That is the magic word for English Teachers. FREE. It has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? FREE! FREE! FREE! Ummmmmmmmmm. FREE (With Homer Simpson’s voice)
We’re going to look at three places to put your STUFF. It’s Free and they are pretty easy to set up. It does take time but it can be done.
WIKIs are probably the easiest and best places to go. You can leave the site name on their server or you can purchase a domain name from www.godaddy.com fairly cheaply and away you go.
A Wiki is basically WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) It’s kind of like dong a word document but a lot cooler. I know you are saying to yourself, “What could be cooler than being a Word Drone.” But, Scouts…. It’s possible. Most people have been lured, hoodwinked and horn swaggled into thinking that if it’s not Microsoft it’s not any good. Duh! The opposite is true.
Think about it….. You have been told for eons “It has to be Windows. Everybody is using Windows.” Well, those people telling you this garbage get $65 an hour to repair this tripe. You have been notified and warned so don’t come crying to me when your computing life comes to a stop.
A Wiki works in two ways.
1. Make a site everyone can edit
2. Make a site that only you can edit (locked)
It’s up to you.
First look at this video on how to make a site that can be edited.
Wikis are easy to use. I have given you three examples of places to go. You can put videos, audios, links to exercises and the list goes on and on.
By putting up a site for your students to use and assuming they will use it….. you don’t have to give them mountains of copies from Murphy’s and thus avoid the act of actually teaching in class and letting the students hide behind photocopies.
“Ours is not to reason and compare. Ours is to create. We must create our own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
Redundant languages blamed for adding to climate change, terrorism and cultural division
CAMBRIDGE, UK (EnglishClub.com) Tuesday April 1, 2008 — The United Nations is to hold its first debate on language redundancy amid warnings that the problem is “a major contributor” to climate change, a “massive threat” to international security and the cause of “rifts and divisions” within society.
Steiner
Andrew Steiner, UNEP head:
“French causing damage”
Next week’s meeting is the result of an improbable coalition of interests, and follows sustained pressure from the US Administration, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.
“We’re reacting to two very sobering reports about the impact on climate change of the huge number of languages in use worldwide,” Andrew Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Program, told Reuters news service. At the same time Whitehouse spokesman Gordon Stanzel revealed serious translation challenges for the CIA caused by “an abundance of languages.” Pointing to the fact that terrorists typically use non-English languages amongst themselves, he suggested that only by making English the world’s “unique” language could security be assured. Asked why the world’s “unique” language should be English and not, say, Chinese or Spanish, he replied that English was already so dominant, especially on the Internet, that it was obviously the best language to choose and would cause the least disruption.
The current plan is to begin phasing out all non-English languages, which are seen as redundant and “unnecessary” due to the overwhelming dominance of English in the world community.
Issues for debate According to UN officials, unnecessary languages require enormous amounts of paper for translations, resulting in huge losses of forested areas, and these losses have become “a major factor” contributing to climate change. Furthermore, the eventual burning of this paper in incinerators has a direct effect upon global warming by boosting atmospheric temperatures “to an alarming degree”.
On the security front, a plethora of obscure and redundant languages are used by terrorists to hamper security efforts, as they require time-consuming translation, and as a result these languages constitute a “massive threat” to Washington’s war on terror.
And from a socio-cultural point of view, a multitude of unnecessary languages hampers international communication, with the inevitable misunderstandings resulting in “rifts and divisions within the global village”.
Camden Language Research Facility
CLRF headed by Dr. Wong. Fears
of multiple-personality disorder
Latest research Studies indicate that second-language learning is one of the most stressful ordeals a student can face, and is known to cause a wide range of medical and psychological disorders, the treatment of which is a huge drain on health resources. In one study, it was found that learning a second language can facilitate the development of multiple-personality disorder. Dr. Adrian Wong of the Camden Language Research Facility notes that “this has been seen for example when teachers assign ’second-language names’ from a foreign culture to learners in role-play exercises.”
It has been theorized that the human brain is adapted to the learning of a single language only, as for tens of thousands of years this was all that human development required. Dr. Wong suggests that the unnatural imposition of a second language on the human brain can lead to a serious disruption of its development, and added: “We can only speculate as to the extent of the damage done. I submit that second-language learning and teaching should be prohibited until more is known about the effects of this activity on the human brain.”
“Lingua Non Gratae” to be phased out
Under the plan, languages will be phased out according to a schedule based partly on a language’s number of speakers (Table 1). Languages spoken by fewer than one million people, such as Welsh or Maltese, will be deemed lingua non gratae by 2014. Languages with fewer than 25 million speakers (for example, Greek or Hmong) will be LNG in 2021, and below 50 million (say Romanian or Kurdish) in 2028. For languages, like Thai or Turkish, with fewer than 100 million speakers the date will be 2035. Next will come languages with up to 250 million speakers, in 2042, and a billion speakers in 2049. For technical reasons, French and Mandarin will be subject to an accelerated withdrawal process setting them outside the normal schedule. Citing the historical place of French as a language of diplomacy, Steiner said: “French in particular is causing enormous damage environmentally. By clinging to a past notion of French as a universal language, and trying to prop up its language through institutions like l’Académie française, France is thwarting the process of natural selection and adding disproportionately to the problems of global warming.”
Further issues By 2049, when all languages other than English will have been phased out, the only language that will have international sanction will be English. All other languages will be grouped under the heading of “Non-E” (non-English), and it will be an offence to use, teach or publish Non-E. Officials explain that a distinction will be made similar to that made between drug users and drug dealers. People found “using” Non-E (that is, speaking, listening to, reading or writing it) will be weaned off Non-E in rehabilitation camps. Anyone “dealing in” Non-E (for example, teaching or publishing it) will be subject to more serious penalties, including a mandatory prison sentence with no right of appeal. Lawyers are already working on the legal implications for such a framework, and a new department will be set up within Interpol to coordinate police activity internationally.
“Any language school owners in currently English-speaking countries who imagine that the new laws will benefit their business do not understand the concept,” said Steiner. Since one of the motives for stamping out redundant languages is environmental, planners have already foreseen the environmental dangers inherent in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people travelling abroad for the sake of improving their English. They propose two measures to avoid such problems: the use of terms like “ESL” (English as a Second Language) will be replaced by EOL (English as the Only Language); and it will become illegal to travel abroad to learn EOL. Steiner says the bonanza will go to the “EOL” schools in what are currently non-English speaking countries. Among UN plans are massive retraining schemes for teachers in such countries.
Ironically, one of the last issues that will have to be resolved is the thorny question of which variety of English to use. Interpreting the doctrine of language redundancy strictly, there is no room for more than one variety of English. Washington is likely to argue that American English is the modern, more vibrant variety that should be kept. The Australian and Canadian governments are thought to be commissioning studies intended to show why their varieties should prevail. But the most likely outcome is for all parties to accept the British argument that British English is not only a purer form of English, but the original language itself and thus not a variety at all. However, the Language Redundancy Panel, which will be steering the new plans through to fruition, will have ample time to resolve the issue and will not need to make a decision until the start of the second phase in 2021.
