English learning has increasingly fallen to be a mainstream after-hours activity in a host of countries worldwide, I guess. Just how big the magnitude of that is, I have no idea yet.
On a different note, for those people who leave for an English-speaking nation from an East Asian one, including China, in their teenage years which deem them premature, we can consider the situation life puts them in, which possibly is that "They end up, as the Indian writer Pavan Varma has called them, “linguistic half-castes,” functional in many tongues, without command of any."(See below for the quote.) Think, and think twice about that, my friend.
There is an article published in January 2010 by The NYT: Currents - Language as a Blunt Tool of the Digital Age. Below go some excerpts:
Globalization, in bringing cultures together, exerts its own pragmatic pressure. With English the escalator of globalized success, the language’s center of gravity is tilting away from English-speaking lands. A stripped-down English of catchphrases and trite idioms, light on richness, is becoming the true global language.
The English-learning boom in developing nations also corrodes their own languages. Their young increasingly learn enough English to do a global-economy job but not so much as to be articulate in it. Yet many give up on mastering their native languages. They end up, as the Indian writer Pavan Varma has called them, “linguistic half-castes,” functional in many tongues, without command of any.
In the language-as-protocol worldview, the best lyrics are the least lyrical, because the greatest number can follow them. The most successful headlines are not those with the freshest word choices but those whose well-worn expressions are frequently Googled. The most effective communication at work is not the bulky memo, but the bullet-riddled PowerPoint presentation, which people from varied nationalities can absorb in very little time.
