Great Leap Forward: English For Everyone in China

The latest Newsweek issue (Aug. 20-27, 2007) did a special report on global education. One of the stories was about the English fever in China and other Southeast Asia countries. According to the report, some 170 million people are studying English in China alone. That's more than half of the U.S. population. In comparison, 40 million people worldwide are studying Mandarin.

Here is an excerpt:

"And the consulting group McKinsey warned China in 2005 that fewer than 10 percent of its college graduates were suitable for employment at multinationals—primarily because they couldn't speak English. "Any nation that ignores English learning does so at its peril," says James Oladejo, an expert in language acquisition at Taiwan's National Kaohsiung Normal University."

For the full article, click the link: English For Everyone.

(Note: "Any one who ignores this Newsweek report does so at his peril," says Lingual Bee, an expert in language exaggeration at Mainland's National Abnormal University.)