問題詳情

71-75)For some, an international language is equated with a language that has a large number of native speakers. Inthis sense, Mandarin, English, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic, the five most widely spoken mother tongues in theworld today, might be considered as international languages. However, unless such languages are spoken by alarge number of native speakers of other languages, the language cannot serve as a language of widercommunication. It is in this sense, as a language of wider communication, that English is the internationallanguage par excellence. And in many instances, it is a language of wider communication both among individualsfrom different countries and between individuals from one country. In this way, English is an internationallanguage in both a global and a local sense. Crystal (1997) maintains that a language achieves global status whenit develops a special role that is recognized in every country and that this special status can be achieved either bymaking it an official language of the country or by a country giving special priority to the language by requiringstudy of it as a foreign language. Today there are over seventy countries where English has held or continues tohold special status, with many other countries giving English the special priority referred to by Crystal whereEnglish is a required foreign language.A variety of difficulties exist in getting an accurate count of the current number of English users. First, there isno single source of statistical information on totals of English language users of all countries in the world soestimates have to be made from a variety of sources. Second, how fluent an individual must be to be considered as“a user of English” is open to interpretation. Finally, there are many varieties of the language, ranging frompidgins and creoles to various varieties of Standard English, and whether or not to include pidgin and creolespeakers in estimates of English users is a subject of debate. Whereas the exact number of users of English isdifficult to determine, it is clear that the number of individuals who have some familiarity with the language isvast and growing. However, the number of speakers is not the defining characteristic of an international language.Other features need to be taken into account as well.
71. What is the purpose of this passage?
(A) To introduce English as an international language and how it has spread to become one.
(B) To describe English as an international language considering number of users and official recognition.
(C) To compare the varieties of English such as pidgins and creoles and Standard English.
(D) To examine the features of an international language defined by Crystal and others.

參考答案

答案：B
難度：適中0.489362
統計：A(5),B(23),C(2),D(12),E(0)

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