Week Four

MONGOLIANS LEARN TO SAY “PROGRESS” IN ENGLISH

And Into Thin Air

Week Four

Information about Mid-term Exam

April 7 (Week 7)Chapter 1 “English as a Universal Language”Chapter 1—“Mongolians Learn to Say

‘Progress’ in English” Chapter 2—“Into Thin Air” Vocabulary will cover all words in

listening quizzes.

Types of the Questions

1. Listening 30%2. Match (definition of words) 30%3. Grammar (21%)4. Translation (English Chinese) 19%

What matters today?

1. Listening practice2. Answers to Previous Test and Exercise3. Response to “MONGOLIANS LEARN TO

SAY “PROGRESS” IN ENGLISH”4. Preparation for Oral Presentation/Mid-

term I5. Homework

Listening practice (This Week)

Listening practice: BBC Learning Englishhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningen

glish/

Answers to Previous Test and Exercise

Breaking News Englishhttp://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/index.h

tml

Listen, Read, and Think…

answers

A new study has discovered that alcohol is a more dangerous drug than heroin and cocaine.

The report is from Britain’s Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. Its research classified drugs on the basis of the harm they do in our society.

Alcohol came top of the list, with heroin second and cocaine third.

answers

Researchers created nine categories of harm that drugs can do "from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships," and seven types of harm they do to others.

Experts in Britain are now calling for new laws to control alcohol.

Check the Answers

Don Shenker from the group Alcohol Concern said: “The government should now urgently ensure alcohol is made less affordable and invest in prevention and treatment services to deal with the rise in alcohol dependency that has occurred."

The research was led by a former government drugs advisor, Professor David Nutt.

answers

He has been calling for a change in the way Britain classifies drugs for many years.

He was fired in 2009 for his views and claimed the government was more interested in politics than scientific evidence.

Any laws that make alcohol a dangerous drug would cause harm to any government trying to win an election.

However, the current study is very extensive and strongly suggests he was right to call for a reclassification.

answers

Professor Nutt told Britain’s Guardian newspaper: "We need to rethink how we deal with drugs in the light of these new findings." One suggested change is that cigarettes are put in the same category as cocaine, because they cause as much harm to the individual and society.

Q & A“Mongolians Learn to Say

‘Progress’ in English” p.16-18

Listen and answer the following questions.

Features of Mongolia

Flag and Emblem

Deer stones in Mongolia

geography

religion

More than 90 percent of Mongolian citizens subscribed to some form of Buddhism, mostly Tibetan Buddhism with traditional Shamanism.

5% of Mongolia are MuslimMuslimMore than 4 percent of the population

practices Christianity….Roman Catholics Roman Catholics and members of the

Russian Orthodox Church together account for the remaining 1 percent

清帝國古蹟 /慶寧寺

Mosque in Ölgii

Russian Orthodox Church in Ulaanbaatar

From wikipedia官方語言為喀爾喀蒙古語，目前通行文字為以西里爾

字母 （ Cyrillic ，斯拉夫語系）拼音寫成的蒙古文。在蒙古，在 1990 年蘇聯瓦解之前，蒙古人被限定除

了俄文不準學習其他外語，因此老一輩人學習的外語多為俄語，隨著近年不少蒙古人到韓國打工，新一輩人開始學英語，日文及韓語

然而面對中國近年經濟成長力道強勁，學習漢語的蒙古人士正逐漸在增加。

除了官方語言外，另有 15% 人口說其他蒙古方言，少數民族使用突厥語族語言突厥語族語言。最大的少數民族是哈薩克族，多數是克烈與乃蠻部。

Official language

The official language of Mongolia is Khalkha Mongolian, and is spoken by 90% of the population.

The Russian language is the most frequently spoken foreign language in Mongolia, followed by English, though English has been gradually replacing Russian as the second language

KoreanKorean has gained popularity as tens of thousands of Mongolians work in South Korea.

Official language: Mongolian

蒙古族 -語言文字

http://www.godpp.gov.cn/wmzh/2007-09/19/content_11193325.htm

詞彙方面，有漢語借詞，也有一些突厥語、滿語、藏語、梵語、阿拉伯語、波斯語、希臘語、俄語和英語借詞。

What is not mentioned in the text…

在蒙古，韓國語能力考試應試生甚至比英語能力考試（ TOEFL）應試生還要多。自 1999 年首次引進韓國語能力考試以來，原本為年均 200 名左右的應試生到 2005 年增至 487 名， 2006 年為 584名， 2007 年更是達到了 925 名。本月 20 日舉行的上半年考試的應試生超過了去年應試生總數的一半，預計 2008 年的應試生總數將超過 1000 名。

Please underline the phrases or words in various colors and

check their meanings and usage .

In our text…

A

As she searched for the English words to name the razortooth fish swimming around her stomach on her faded blue-and-white T-shirt, ten-year-old Urantestseg hardly seemed hardly seemed to to embody an urgent new national policy.

B

Father shark, mother shark, sister shark,” she recited carefully. Stumped byStumped by a smaller, worried-looking fish, she paused and frowned. Then she cried out: “Lunch!”

C

Even in the settlement of dirt tracks, plank shanties, and the circular felt yurts of herdsmen, the sounds of English can be heard from the youngest of students, part of a nationwide drive to make it the primary foreign language learned in Mongolia.

shanties

D

“We are looking at Singapore as a model,” Tsakhia Elbegdorj, Mongolia’s prime minister, said in an interview, his own American English honed at graduate school at Harvard University.

“We see English not only as a way of communicating, but as a way of opening windows on the wider world.”

E

Camel herders may not yet refer to each others as “dude,” but Mongolia, thousands of kilometers from the nearest English-speaking nation, is a reflection of the steady march of English as a world language.

F

Fueled by the Internet, the growing dominance of U.S. culture, and the financial realities of globalization, English is now taking hold in Asia, and elsewhere, just as it has done in many European countries.

G

In Korea, six “English villages” are being established where paying students can have their passports stamped for intensive weeks of for intensive weeks of English-language immersionEnglish-language immersion, taught by native speakers imported from all over the English-speaking world.

H

The most ambitious, an $85 million English town near Seoul, will have Western architecturearchitecture, signs, and a resident population of English-speaking foreigners.

I

In Iraq, where Arabic and Kurdish are to be the official language, there is a growing movement to add English, a neutral link for a nation a neutral link for a nation split along ethnic linessplit along ethnic lines.

J

In Iraqi Kurdistan, there is an explosion in English-languages studies, fueled partly by an affinity for Britain and the United States, and partly by the knowledge that neighboring Turkey may soon join the European Union, where English is emerging as the dominant language.

K

In Chile, the government has embarked on a national program of teaching English in all elementary and high schools.

The goal is to make that nation of 15 million people bilingual in English within a generation.

The models are the Netherlands and the Nordic nations, which have achieved virtual bilingualism in bilingualism in English since World War II.

L

The rush toward rush toward English in Mongolia has not been without its bumps.

After taking office after the elections here in June, Elbegdorj shocked Mongolians by announcing that it would become a bilingual nation, with English as the second language.

M

For Mongolians still debating whether to jettisonjettison the Cyrillic alphabet imposed by Stalin in 1941, this was too much, too fast.

N

Later, on his bilingual English-Mongolian website, the prime minister fine-tunedfine-tuned his program, drawing up a national curriculumcurriculum designed to make English replace Russian next September as the primary foreign language taught here.

O

Still, as fast as Elbegdorj wants the Mongolian government to proceed, the state is merely catching up with the private sector.

“This building is three times the size of our old building,” Doloonjin Orgilmaa, director general of Santis Educational Services, said, showing a visitor around her three-story English school, which opened in November near Mongolia’s Sports Palace.

The first private English school when it started in 1999, this Mongolian-American joint joint venture venture now faces competition on all sides.

P

With schools easing the way, English is penetrating Ulan Bator through the electronic media and at Mongolian International University, all classes are in English . . .”

If there is a shortcutshortcut to development it is English,” Munh-Orgil Tsend, Mongolia’s foreign minister, said in an interview, speaking American English, also honed at Harvard.

“Parents understand that, kids understand that . . .”

Q

Increased international tourism and a growing number of resident foreigners explain some explain some movesmoves, like the two English-language newspapers here and the growing numbers of bilingual store signs and restaurant menus. . . .

Foreign arrivals are up across the board, with the exception of Russians, who experienced a 9.5 percent drop.

Their decrease reflects a wider decline here of Russian influence and the Russian language. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian was universally taught here and was required for admission to university in Mongolia . . .

R

So far, Beijing has adopted a has adopted a laissez-faire stance tolaissez-faire stance to Mongolia’s flirtation with English, even though China is now the leading source of foreign investment, trade, and tourism.

Such a stance is easy to maintain, because Chinese language studies are also undergoing a boom undergoing a boom here.

S

A trading people famed for straddling the east-west Silk straddling the east-west Silk RoadRoad, Mongolians have long been linguists, often learning multiple languages.

T

After attempting during the 1990s to retrain about half of Mongolia’s 1,400 Russian language teachers to teach English, Mongolia now is embarking on a program is embarking on a program to attract hundreds of qualified teachers from around the world to teach here.

“I need 2,000 English teachers,” said Puntsag Tsagaan, Mongolia’s minister of education, culture, and science.

A graduate of a Soviet university, he laboriously explained in English that Mongolia hoped to attract English teachers, not only from Britain and North America, but also from India, Singapore, and Malaysia.

U

Tsagaan spins an optimistic vision spins an optimistic vision of of Mongolia’s bilingual future.

“If we combine our academic knowledge with the English language, we can do outsourcing outsourcing here, just like in Bangalore,” he said.

Homework

Reading P.31-33E2 (p.29-30)E3 (p.34)E4 (p.35-36)