Aufgabe 1 (NT 3) · Abitur NRW Englisch GK · Nachtermin 2022

Klausurteil A

Pamela Druckerman

Parlez-Vous Anglais? Yes, of Course.

The hundreds of thousands of Americans descending on Paris during this year’s tourist season are in for a shock: The city’s waiters, bakers and taxi drivers – and practically anyone else they encounter – will mostly speak to them in eager, serviceable and occasionally even near-perfect English.

5 It’s not just France. In recent years the number of Europeans who speak English – and speak it well – has soared. The EF English Proficiency Index, whose online test rates adults around the world, has found annual gains since it began in 2011. Of the 27 countries it ranks as highly or very highly proficient, 22 are in Europe. The French are still among Europe’s worst English speakers, but they are desperate to improve.

10 English has been Europe’s lingua franca since World War II, of course. But younger people in particular, from Stockholm to Slovenia, increasingly speak a nuanced English that can rival native speech. And it’s only getting better: About 80 percent of primary school students on the Continent study it (up from about 60 percent in 2004), and 94 percent of high school students take English, far more than all other foreign languages combined.

15 Europeans have long watched English-language TV shows and movies, but in bigger countries like Germany and France these were usually dubbed. Now, they all binge-watch Netflix in subtitled English, a virtual English-immersion course. […]

Never mind Brexit; earlier this year the Netherlands opened an all-English commercial court. Gone, it seems, are the regional conferences conducted in “Globish” – the stilted, simplified 20 version of English that used to be the norm. At the Paris co-working space where I rent a desk, my 20-something neighbors – a Colombian, a German, an Italian and a Frenchman – converse in nearly flawless English, a scene replicated in Copenhagen, Berlin and many other cities. All this sounds like good news for native English speakers, but it may also be a threat. […]

Universities in the United States should watch out. It won’t be long before Americans realize 25 that top European schools offer a fast-growing number of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, taught entirely in English, for a fraction of the price of many American schools, even if you add on overseas airfare. (In 2009, there were about 55 English B.A.’s offered in Continental Europe; by 2017, there were 2,900.) […]

America’s and Britain’s most elite schools still top the global rankings, but after that it’s 30 harder to justify the cost.

We’re a target. When the world speaks excellent English, English-speaking societies become easier to decode and manipulate. Before the 2016 American elections, the Kremlin recruited young Russians whose written English was so good that they mostly passed for Americans on social media.

35 But good ideas can spread faster, too. Scientific papers have long been published mostly in English; now social movements are Anglophone. This spring, a 16-year-old English-speaking Swede inspired kids around the world to protest climate change. (From Lisbon to Istanbul, their homemade signs were in English.)

Native English may cease to be the gold standard. Most people now learn English to 40 communicate with other nonnative speakers – and even many of their teachers aren’t native – so they acquire few expressions and idioms. The linguist Jennifer Jenkins describes a British TV interviewer asking a perplexed Italian opera singer whether his trip to England is “going swimmingly.” She writes that, at European Union conferences, nonnatives who can easily understand each other’s English switch on their translation headphones when 45 someone from Britain or Ireland takes the stage.

English will mutate. A recent Irish conference on “World Englishes” included sessions on “Egyptian English as a new English variety” and “English in the linguistic landscape of Kazakhstan.” The linguist Marianne Hundt of the University of Zurich says common errors like “we need to discuss about this” or “I want some advices” could enter native speech.

50 Natives are losing their competitive edge. A few jobs still require perfect English, but in the corporate world good English has become a basic requirement, not a personal selling point. “You just have the same skill as other people – it’s like using Excel,” says Kate Bell, of the EF English Proficiency Index.

Crucially, the ubiquity of English lulls us Anglophones into thinking that it’s O.K. to be 55 monolingual. It’s not. I’ve been at Amsterdam dinners where everyone is speaking brilliant English, but the minute I leave the table they switch back to Dutch. If all we know is English, we won’t know what the rest of the world is saying about us.

Annotations

6 · EF English Proficiency Index – index ranking countries based on their inhabitants’ results in an English language test

18 · commercial court – a court that deals with international business disputes

20 · co-working space – office space in which people working in different jobs can rent a desk

27 · overseas airfare – here: price for a plane ticket from the USA to Europe

27 · B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) – an academic degree

32 – 34 · Kremlin – here: the Russian government; reference to the claim that the Russian government was involved in the manipulation of the 2016 US Presidential Election

36 – 37 · 16-year-old English-speaking Swede – reference to the environmental activist Greta Thunberg

43 · to go swimmingly (informal) – to go very well

54 · ubiquity – the fact that someone or something seems to be everywhere

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

1. Describe how the worldwide spread of English has affected the English language itself and what this means for native speakers, according to the article.

(Comprehension) (12 Punkte)