Paper 4 Section A
The world currently has a little more than 7,000 languages. English is the lingua franca out of them all. The dominance and power of this language are what keep it the ‘world’s favorite’ language at the moment. As we advance, however, the future lingua franca or dominant language might not be English. The main reason for this is because of the ‘language divide’ that has been brought up in digital media and technology. Holly Young, publish an article called, ‘The digital language divide’ and explained the topic at hand. Young mentions that this issue has become a problem as language options are limited on a certain website, Google and Wikipedia, and it doesn’t allow users to communicate through different languages.
At the present, the English language is very prominent in the world. In the provided text it says ‘350 million’ people know the English language plus another ‘100 million’ from India. Power is what makes English still present today. As David Crystal, a famous linguist, says that based on the power of historical events, such as the industrial revolution, English has been used throughout all of it and has been shown as the more ‘powerful’ language. However the text provided also says that the World Economic Forum has data that shows ‘about 1.5 billion’ people speak English around the world but, out of those ‘1.5 billion’ ‘fewer than 400 million’ use it as their first language. This shows how many people across the world are learning the English language but, since it isn’t their first language they might want to use technology with their first language.
In addition, the most important issue that is being raised currently is the ‘language divide’ amongst technology. As said before more people are wanting to use their first language when communicating on the internet. Languages like French, German, Spanish, and Chinese have all been in the top ten languages used on the internet. Holly Young, mentions in their article that 30% of English's share of cyberspace on the internet has shrunk. This leads to the ‘language divide’ as websites and apps have limited options of languages to choose from. For instance, Daniel Prado, a researcher on linguistic diversity, says that Google has ‘30 European languages’ but only ‘one African language and no indigenous American or Pacific languages.’ With these limitations on different languages, people who don't have English as their first language are getting frustrated and don’t end up using English.
In the future this issue is bound to change as more technology and new translation technology is being created. Computer scientists and professors, such as Wonkyum Lee and Christopher Manning who were mentioned in the text provided, are both learning about new ways to have computer services expand the limited languages on websites. Computer translation technology is going to quite possibly put English out of the spot of being the ‘world’s favorite’ language. With this new technology, people will be able to converse with each other in their languages yet still understand each other. Twitter will not be the only app or website that expresses different languages and behaviors. As more people who speak Chinese, German, and Japanese will be able to expand their communication on Twitter without just using ‘hashtags’ or ‘URLs’.
As of right now, English is still the lingua franca amongst all countries around the world. It has the most power and dominance, which according to David Crystal is what will keep English at the top. However, the known inventions of computer translators that will expand the limitations on languages used on the internet will cause a change to this issue.
Hi Virginia! Your blog was good!
ReplyDeleteAO1: You have a clear understanding of meaning and context. Throughout the entirety of your blog you referred back to the article that you read, this proves to your audience that you know what you are talking about. “...text it says ‘350 million’ people know the English language plus another ‘100 million’ from India.” Here you are not using elongated quotes with no meaning. You are providing short relevant quotes from the text and are continuing your paragraph with a reference to “As David Crystal, a famous linguist,” which is very beneficial. The only thing that I suggest in this is elaborating more after you connect the two pieces. Yes, you tie them together at the end of your paragraph, however, I would speak more in your own words elaborating on the evidence from the text that you used and the broadening knowledge that you provide. I give you 6 marks.
AO2: While your structure is clear, I feel that your paragraphs could have been shorter. Every time you said “however” you could have made the one paragraph into two, that would have been easier for the audience's eye. Make a point in one paragraph and when you go to make another, create a new paragraph. With that, the readers will not get bored or lost in your paragraphs. However, the evidence you provide was good and relevant, while I would have added more of it. In the future, it would be beneficial to use more evidence from the text that you read. Yes, it is important to remember concepts that were not mentioned in the text, it is very important to add evidence from which you read and a comma to tie them together. I would give you 2 marks.
A04: You expressed a perfect amount of other knowledge, while I think that you should have elaborated on them more, the concepts and methods and approaches to relate to the text were good. In almost every paragraph you spoke about a theory, if you were to tie it to textual evidence then that would be beneficial for your sake. I would give you 6 marks.
14/25 marks! Good Job!
HI Virginia!
ReplyDeleteI found your intro paragraph to be formatted very well, as it summarized the main point that you had and the main points from the text. You even touch on your further research in your introduction which is great. You show the various points that you will be writing about in your paper.
You continue to use short statistical quotes, which prove to be very beneficial within your explanations. You even connect back some of these points to linguist David Crystal. Within this paragraph you generalize the ‘world’, which is great in some sense, but I would also connect back to China as an individual country.
In the next paragraph you continue to write about the technological advances and you do so by paraphrasing the text and using short quotes. Again, this has made your communication much stronger with the audience, so you are not overwhelming the audience with long quotes.
Finally, I felt that your conclusion tied right back into your introduction. You ended by writing about the ‘Lingua Franca’, and this tied your entire response together.
AO1: 8/10
AO2: 4/5
AO4: 8/10
Hi Virginia
ReplyDeleteAO1- 8 marks. You had a detailed understanding of text and used multiple pieces to support your claims. Such as, “1.5 billion” people speak English and “400 million” who don’t speak English as their primary language. However, the only thing I would include is more detail and more in depth on specific points used by the author. Other than that, you did very well.
AO2- 3 marks. All of your paragraphs flowed together very well and had good relevant information. While reading, it was very easy to follow along. My only recommendation is to shorten them down a little and have a basic idea in each paragraph which can then make you gain more points and therefore more details.
AO4- 8 marks. You had a detailed understanding of linguistic issues, concepts, methods and approaches represented in the text. You tied theories into each paragraph which was very good and relate exactly to the text. Each paragraph you had various details and evidence to back your points which is very good!
Your total would be 19/25 great job!