English and English Community

There is no denying that English is a useful language. The people who speak English today make up the ___1___ speech

community in the world with the exception of speakers of Chinese. Originally they were small tribes of people from northern Europe who ___2___ in England. Their languages became more and more ___3___ to each other. Finally, the language

had enough uniformity to be used by all speakers in England. The people were united into a speech community through

their shared languages.

Speech community is similar to other kinds of ___4___. The people who make up the community share common language. Often they live side by side, as they do in a neighborhood, a village, or a city. More often they form a whole country. National boundaries, however, are not always the same as the boundaries of a speech community. A speech community is any group of people who ___5___ the same language no matter where they happen to live.

We may say that anyone who speaks English ___6___ to the English speech community. For convenience, we may classify the speakers into two groups: one in which the speakers use English as their native language, the other in which the

speakers learn English as a second language for the ___7___ of education, commerce, and so on.

English serves as an alternative language in several areas of public activity for most nations in the world which employ it as an ___8___ second language. English has been adopted as the language of air traffic, commerce, as well as international

diplomacy. Moreover, English is the ___9___ of the majority of published materials in the world so that education has come

to rely ___10___ on an understanding of English.

A. international

B. native

C. speak

D. belongs

E. purpose

F. language

G. communities

H. settled

I. similar

J. same

K. heavily

L. largest