Dealing with English Fever

Stephen Krashen
In: Selected Papers from the Twelfth International Symposium on English Teaching. English Teachers' Association/ROC, Taipei. (2003)
Taipei: Crane Publishing Company. pp. 100-108.

There is no question that English is crucial in today's world, but the usual approaches to EFL, often based on popular folk-theories of language acquisition, are inefficient. Based on what is known about how language is acquired, age differences, literacy development and bilingual education, a different and less strenuous approach is recommended, featuring comprehensible input-based methodology, recreational reading, and a strong education in the primary language. This program need not begin in early childhood, and is intended to provide the EFL student with the tools to continue to improve in English after formal instruction has ended.

English fever = the overwhelming desire to (1) acquire English, (2) ensure that one's children acquire English, as a second or foreign language.

ENGLISH: THE WORLD'S SECOND LANGUAGE

There is a good reason why so many people suffer from English fever. English has become the world's second language, the world's lingua franca. In fact, it is safe to say that it is difficult in today's world to be active and successful in international business, politics, scholarship, or science without considerable competence in English.

Possibly the best overall indication of the dominance of English is the internet. As of 2001, 45% of the 500 million web users were native English speakers (Statue of the Internet Report, US Internet Council and International Technology and Trade Associates, Ltd., 2001; also reported in Krebs, 2001). Nevertheless over 75% of websites linked to secure servers in 1999 were in English (Press, 2000).

Without question, English has become the language of science. In 1997, 95% of the articles cited in the Science Citation Index were written in English, up from 83% in 1977 (Garfield, 1998). This increase is not due to more work being done by scholars in English-speaking countries; the contributions of scholars from non-English speaking countries are substantial and increasing. It is due to more scholars from non-English speaking countries publishing in English. In 1977, 6% of all published papers were in German. This dropped to 1.5% by 1997, but during the same time period the number of scientific papers published by German scholars rose from about 24,000 to about 50,000 (Garfield, 1998).