Week Four

1. MONGOLIANS LEARN TO SAY “PROGRESS” IN ENGLISH And Into Thin Air Week Four

2. 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.

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

4. What matters today? • Listening practice • Answers to Previous Test and Exercise • Response to “MONGOLIANS LEARN TO SAY “PROGRESS” IN ENGLISH” • Preparation for Oral Presentation/Mid-term I • Homework

5. Listening practice: BBC Learning English http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ Listening practice (This Week)

6. Answers to Previous Test and Exercise • Breaking News English • http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/index.html • Listen, Read, and Think…

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. Q & A “Mongolians Learn to Say ‘Progress’ in English” p.16-18

13. Listen and answer the following questions.

14. Features of Mongolia

15. Flag and Emblem

16. Deer stones in Mongolia

17. geography

18. religion • More than 90 percent of Mongolian citizens subscribed to some form of Buddhism, mostly Tibetan Buddhism with traditional Shamanism. • 5% of Mongolia are Muslim • More than 4 percent of the population practices Christianity…. • Roman Catholics and members of the Russian Orthodox Church together account for the remaining 1 percent

19. 清帝國古蹟/慶寧寺

20. Mosque in Ölgii

21. Russian Orthodox Church in Ulaanbaatar

22. 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。最大的少數民族是哈薩克族，多數是克烈與乃蠻部。

23. 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 • Korean has gained popularity as tens of thousands of Mongolians work in South Korea.

24. Official language: Mongolian

25. 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。

26. 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。

27. Please underline the phrases or words in various colors and check their meanings and usage . In our text…

28. 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 to embody an urgent new national policy.

29. B • Father shark, mother shark, sister shark,” she recited carefully. Stumped bya smaller, worried-looking fish, she paused and frowned. Then she cried out: “Lunch!”

30. 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.

31. shanties

32. 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.”

33. 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.

34. 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.

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

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

37. 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 split along ethnic lines.

38. 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.

39. 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 English since World War II.

40. L • The 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.

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

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

43. 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 venture now faces competition on all sides.

44. 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 shortcut 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 . . .”

45. Q • Increased international tourism and a growing number of resident foreigners explain some moves, 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 . . .

46. R • So far, Beijing has adopted a laissez-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 here.

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

48. 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 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.

49. U • Tsagaan spins an optimistic vision of Mongolia’s bilingual future. • “If we combine our academic knowledge with the English language, we can do outsourcing here, just like in Bangalore,” he said.

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