Урок английского языка по теме «Languages of the world»

План урока английского языка

для учащихся на старшей ступени обучения по теме «Languages of the world»

Цель урока:

Развивать познавательную деятельность учащихся: внимание и память, мыслительную активность, творческое воображение и умение излагать свои мысли и применять знания, умения и навыки в пределах изученного материала

Тип урока: урок закрепления и применения знаний, умений и навыков.

Формы организации познавательной деятельности: индивидуальная, фронтальная, групповая.

Оснащение: интерактивная доска

Ход урока

- Hello, everybody! At the beginning of our lesson look at the board and read the proverbs.

As the man is, so is his language.

Who knows the language is at home everywhere.

Love understands all languages.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Language is the dress of thought. 

Learn a new language and get a new soul. (Czech Proverb)(слайд1)

- What shall we talk about today according to the proverbs? Of course, we shall talk about the languages of the world. But what is language?

Ps: Language is our way of communication.

Language is the method through which we share our ideas and thoughts with others.

Language is what separates us from animals and makes us human.

- Now I want you to listen to the song and then name all the languages in the right order.

(Russian, Spanish, Italian, German, French, English, Russian).

(звучит песня «Ах, карнавал» в исполнении ансамбля под управлением Стаса Намина)

- There are a lot of languages in the world and each language has a lot of interesting facts. Your home task was to choose any language you like and say an interesting fact about it.

(слайд2)

So you are welcome with your facts.

Japanese

Japanese is the 9-th most spoken language in the world but is not one of the 6 official UN languages.

Chinese

The Chinese writing system is over 3,000 years old.

Arabic

Arabic is the fifth most spoken language in the world

Arabic is at least 1,500 years old

French

The word  ”salut” means both “hello” and “goodbye”.

Italian

Italy didn’t actually have a national language until the 20th century and now Italian is the language of classical music.

Spanish

Spanish was the diplomatic language up to the 18th century and now it is the second most studied language in the world.

German

English and German share 60% of their vocabulary and the first printed book was written in German.

Greek

The word “alphabet” is actually formed of “alpha” and “beta”, the two first letters of the Greek alphabet.

Dutch

The Dutch Language actually exists for 75% out of borrowed words – a lot of those are French, English and Hebrew

Korean

North Korean is slowly becoming a separate language.

-Thank you for your interesting facts. But now let’s say “hello” in different languages.(слайд3)

1. BONJOUR – French

2. HOLA – Spanish

3. HALLO / GUTEN TAG – German

4. CIAO – Italian

5. OHAYO / KONNICHIWA / KONBAN WA- Japanese

 6. AHN-YOUNG-HA-SE-YO – Korean

7.  MARHABA – Arabic

8. NI HAU – Mandarin

9. Goede dag, Hallo -  Dutch 

10. Gia'sou  -  Greek 

- Now let’s divide into two groups and each group will choose the leader. Your first task will be to read the text and be ready to say:

- what you have already known,

- new information from the text

- what you would like to know more about

Languages of the world

It’s estimated that up to 7,000 different languages are spoken around the world. 90% of these languages are used by less than 100,000 people. Over a million people converse in 150-200 languages and 46 languages have just a single speaker!

Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. For example, English is related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of languages. These also include Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin.

2,200 of the world’s languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has a mere 260.

Nearly every language uses a similar grammatical structure, even though they may not be linked in vocabulary or origin. Communities which are usually isolated from each other because of mountainous geography may have developed multiple languages. Papua New Guinea for instance, boasts no less than 832 different languages!

The world's most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second language, according to figures from UNESCO (The United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.

The ease or difficulty of learning another language can depend on your mother tongue. In general, the closer the second language is to the learner's native tongue and culture in terms of vocabulary, sounds or sentence structure, the easier acquisition will be.

So, a Polish speaker will find it easier to learn another Slavic language like Czech than an Asian language such as Japanese, while linguistic similarities mean that a Japanese speaker would find it easier to learn Mandarin Chinese than Polish.

Dutch is said to be the easiest language for native English speakers to pick up, while research shows that for those native English speakers who already know another language, the five most difficult languages to get your head around are Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Around 75% of the world's population don’t speak a word of English and a grasp of a different language improves your abilities to use your first language and explore other cultures more successfully.

According to research, on average, people who use languages in their jobs earn around 8% more! Many scientists also believe that knowledge of another language can boost your brainpower. A study of monolingual and bilingual speakers suggests speaking two languages can help slow down the brain's decline with age. And to quote Nelson Mandela, "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."

There are about 7000 foreign languages in the world but English is the world’s top tongue.

It has become the “new Latin”, the lingua franca of the XXth century and its importance is growing up all the time. It’s really a global language. The English language is now the first language of about 400 mln people, the native language of 12 nations and the official or semi official language of thirty three more nations.

Almost one and a quarter billion people across the world use English as a second foreign language. These days it’s the international language of politics, business, science. transport, advertising, the media and computers. For example, about 75 per cent of websites are in English, 60% of the world’s radio stations broadcast in English and more than half of the world’s periodicals are printed in English. Even in Germany almost 90 per cent of research scientists use English as their working English every day.

There are some other languages that are gaining in popularity. First of all it’s Chinese with its billion native speakers. The number of people who speak Arabic, Spanish, Chinese or Portuguese in different countries is increasing too. Some languages like Urdu or Hindi are growing much faster than English. Even in the USA the fastest growing language is Spanish.

Not all languages are so successful, however. In fact about twenty languages disappear every year. Perhaps the Internet can help to save some languages from dying out with chat sites and messenger programs for communication in any language people know.

Nevertheless English will remain the world’s language for international communication. Its role in personal development will be very important. 

-There are a lot of different languages in the world. Now let’s answer the questions about languages. Take any card you like, read the question and answer it.(слайд4)

1) What is the approximate number of languages spoken in the world?

(There are approximately 7000 languages spoken in the world),

2) Which is the oldest written language in the world?

(The oldest written language in the world is Egyptian)

3) What languages are considered to be the most difficult in the world?

(the North American Indian, Tabassaran, Chinese).

4) Which language has the largest vocabulary?

(English)

5) Which of the languages are recognized nowadays as international languages or languages of wider communication?

(English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Arabic).

6) Which of the languages are the official languages of the United Nations?

(English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic).

7) Which of the languages is the official language of international aviation?

(English)

8) Which of the languages is the first language of pop music?

(English)

9) What languages are the most international world’s radio and TV programmer broadcast in? (English, Russian, French, German, Arabic, Chinese).

10) Which of the languages is often used as the language of business, government, education in the developed countries? (English)

11) What languages are the official languages of the European international organization?

(English and French)

- Let’s watch a video film about the languages of the world. Your task will be to name the official language of the country.

(video film “Guess the country quiz – Europe” учащиеся называют страну и государственный язык этой страны)

Portugal – Portuguese

Spain – Spanish

France – French

Italy – Italian

Switzerland – German/French/Italian

Austria – German

Czech Republic – Czech

Germany – German

Denmark – Danish

The Netherlands – Dutch

Belgium – French/Dutch

The United Kingdom – English/Welsh/Gaelic/Scots

Ireland – Gaelic/English

Iceland – Icelandic

Norway – Norwegian

Sweden – Swedish

Finland – Finnish

- Look at the screen and find five adjectives which describe the English language.

(popular, famous, universal, leading, world) (слайд5)

- Now I want you to imagine a situation that the world has adopted a universal language, English for example. People will speak only English. Will it be good or not? One group will make up five statements ” for” it and another group will be “against” of it. (слайд6)

- What can we say about our country? What are the main languages in Kazakhstan? Are there any holidays devoted to languages in our country? What are they?(слайд7)

September22 – the Day of Languages in Kazakhstan

September 26 – European Day of languages

February21 – the International Day of the Native Language

- Now I want each group to create your own emblem of Trinity of Languages. Then say the main idea. (учащиеся в группах рисуют эмблему триединства языков и затем защищают свою эмблему)

-What conclusion can we make? (Pupils’ answers)

-Thank you for the lesson. I think today’s lesson has proved the idea that people can’t live without foreign languages.