
Welcome to
ENGLISH AROUND THE WORLDThis is an activity for you to realise the importance of English as an international language. You will see the varieties of English all over the world as well as the many places where you can speak it in order to make yourself understood. I'm sure you'll be amazed to learn how useful it can be whenever you decide to travel anywhere... Just have a look at the map and then have a guess at how many people can be speaking English right now!
==== countries where English is the first and often the only language of most people
==== countries where besides English as a native language there is at least one other significant native tongue
==== countries where English is not native, only official
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First of all, search the Internet for the answers to the following questions:
1- In which European countries is English an official language?
2- What is a "lingua franca"?
3- How many types or varieties of English can you find all over the world? Name them. (For example, British English)
4- Look at the following vocabulary. Can you find the corresponding American English words for them?
biscuits trousers underground torch lift football rubbish pavement5- What is "Spanglish"? Can you give an example?
6- Find the approximate number of people who can speak or understand English in the world.
THE BIG QUESTION!!!!And now imagine you are going to travel around the world, but only stopping in countries where English is spoken.
-Can you think of an itinerary starting from London?
-You can travel by car, plane or boat and there must be 6 countries at least.
-Give the following information about each country:
a) official language(s)
b) currency
c) population
d) capital city
e) typical food
-Which variety of English is spoken in each?
-What interesting places can we visit there? Do you know them?
-Name a famous person (an actor, a singer, a politician, a sportsperson...) who was born in the country and write a short biography of them.
This is it, now GO FOR IT!
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Here's a list of links you can use for your search:
http://lazarus.elte.hu/~guszlev/gb/english.htm
http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/esc.html
video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tft5IluKca4
accents http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/research/gsound/Eng/Database/Phonetics/Englishes/Home/HomeMainFrameHolder.htm
http://hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.mansioningles.com/
http://www.britemb.cl/100qts/100qts_idioma_56.html
http://www.britannica.com/
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For the evaluation, you can do the activity either in writing or a Powerpoint presentation. The following points will be taken into account:
- accuracy (20%)
- use of good English (grammar, vocabulary, connectors) (40%)
- clarity of ideas (10%)
- design of final work (10%)
- management of information (15%)
- originality (5%)