DEFINING THE CONCEPT OF “STANDARD ENGLISH” AND ITS RELEVANCE TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD (Essay Sample)

DEFINING THE CONCEPT OF “STANDARD ENGLISH” AND ITS RELEVANCE TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD
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Cultural diversity presents different features such as beliefs, ideas, customs, and values. Language is a vital part of the culture that communicates these cultural characteristics. Through language, we can learn about the culture of the person speaking it. Still, the world is linguistically diverse: currently, approximately seven thousand languages are being spoken around the globe (Katzner, 2002). Besides, the ongoing technological evolution seems to be changing the world into a multicultural global village. The change is consistent with human beings' development from being citizens of a particular country to being global citizens but not abandoning their cultural identities. The shift is also constant with the global curriculum expansion meant to counter the challenges and find possible multicultural education options. Education policymakers are determined to find out the basis for reform. Several international university instructors are revising their course lists to confront this, refining their instructional skills to suit intercultural communication, besides endeavouring to re-define English as a global and a multicultural language (Colarusso, 2010, p. 432). The integration of the world and multicultural curriculums obliges English teachers to re-examine English relevance in the culturally diverse world.
Many students are now enrolling as international students in colleges, and this calls for both learners and instructors to overcome the drawbacks that accompany linguistic diversity in a learning environment. Students' enrolment in international universities continues to create more multicultural English language classrooms (Colarusso, 2010). Over the years, the English language has facilitated intercultural communication among different people from different cultures. Standard English (SE) is a core language in education, and due to language diversity, it can only be described by the role it plays in the education sector. In a multicultural world, Standard English is paramount to English language teaching. Based on the fact that the students are from diversified cultures, they have different knowledge of English. Some are native speakers while others are non-native speakers hence aspects such as pronunciation, grammar, and spellings may differ from one student to another.