ABSTRACT
This article proposes a syllabus on modern English language, suitable for secondary schools, colleges and universities. The syllabus is based on a substantial body of factual knowledge, a training in critical and analytic skills, and involves pupils and students in discussing problems which are socially, politically and morally important. English language in the modern world is clearly an important topic, given its hundreds of millions of speakers, and the powerful social, political and technological factors which affect it. The number of speakers of English has increased enormously in the last 200 years, and the new pressures on English mean that traditional ways of studying English are no longer always adequate. These new pressures include: its huge number of speakers and world-wide geographical spread; mass literacy and the mass media; the use of English as an international language against a background of enormous linguistic diversity. The article provides some facts about English in the modern world, and then proposes a syllabus for studying English language in an intellectually exciting way.
