WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT "SPECIAL ENGLISH"?
By Nguyen Tri Tuan
Editor and Instructor in English
University of Technology

George Bernard Shaw, the British writer once said, "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." The statement has just enough truth in it to be funny. What Mr. Shaw meant was that Americans and Englishmen speak the same language but in such different ways that the language itself divides Americans from Englishmen as clearly as the ocean that lies between them.

This was an "inside" joke that Mr. Shaw made. Its humor is understood fully only by the "insiders"- that is, by Americans and Englishmen. It is funny for them because they know that Mr. Shaw was not serious. He was telling part of the truth-enough of it to be funny to the insiders-but not all of the truth.

It is true that Americans and Englishmen speak the English language in different ways. But it is also true that an American and an Englishman can talk together freely and easily. The differences in the way they speak are interesting but they are not important. Far from dividing them, the English language brings them closer together, permits them to communicate. So Americans and Englishmen can laugh at George Bernard Shaw's joke, knowing that a language which two people use together builds a bridge, not a wall, between them.

The world needs bridges of that kind. Radio, television, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and other wonders of modem science have made the world smaller. Quick communication is more necessary than ever before. New nations have been born, and with them the need for their people to communicate more with themselves and with the people of other nations.

Around the world today, more and more people are learning English as a means of communication. They come from every nation and every race, and they come from every walk of life. Among them are farmers and students, teachers and scientists, people who work in the government, technical people, artists-in fact, all sort of people.

English, second only to Chinese for the number of people who speak it, and second to no other for the number of people who are learning it, is a language that anyone, and everyone, can use to communicate. It is a global language. And it is a modem language, a language equal to the needs of today and tomorrow. Those are two of the reasons it is used so widely around the world.

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ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING COMPUTER
NETWORK TECHNOLOGY IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

By Huynh Thi Bich Ngoc,
M.A. in TESOL,
The University of Queensland, Australia

Over the past few years, together with magnificent technological advances, computer network technology is now exerting its influence on various aspects of life including government, business, economics, and undoubtedly, education as well. Under such a circumstance, there has been a significant increase of interest in using computers and it applications not only in Information Technology classrooms but also in the field of language teaching and learning. The role of computers in language instruction has become an important issue involving language teachers all over the world. In order to have a more thorough perspective on this issue, let us discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of using computer network technology in language teaching.

In terms of advantages, first of all, computer network technology tools such as the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms, and the Word Wide Web can be used to provide students with a strong motivation for learning the language. Since motivation is considered as playing a key role in the success of language learners (Gardner and Lambert, 1972), one of the language teachers’ responsibilities is to provide activities which the learners will find intrinsically motivating. Encouraging the students to use the Internet in their learning, meanwhile, is a motivational push to students who are bored with the traditional classroom teaching method in which they have information spoon-fed to them. The Internet can help language teachers generate motivation in the students as stated by Chun & Brandl, 1992, “the interactive and multimedia capabilities of the Internet make it a motivating learning tool”. E-mail and Internet chat rooms are interactive and allow students to communicate quickly and easily with their classmates, their teacher, and even with native speakers of the target language through “keypal projects” (Robb, 1996), or collaborative projects. Besides, with an abundance of interactive activities on the Internet and the World Wide Web, our students can now play games and learn the language at the same time. This kind of learning experience was impossible before the development of the computer network technology.
 

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THE STRUCTURAL USES OF “IT”

By Nguyen Tuan Kiet
MAL Program
La Trobe University, Australia

In English, both spoken and written, it is usual to use personal pronouns (I, you, we, they, he, she, it) when the context is already understood, or could easily be understood by reading the sentences that follow. For example, one does not normally use the word ‘she’ to refer to somebody if the person reading or hearing the sentence does not know who his or her partner is referring to. It is because a pronoun is defined as “a word which may replace a noun or noun phrase.” (Richards, J., Platt, J. & Platt, H. 1997). In the most straightforward cases, he is used for males, she is for females, and it for entities which are neither male nor female (Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. K., Bauer, L, et al, 2002).

If asked what part of speech the word it is, almost all of the foreign learners of English and even many native speakers would say it is simply a personal pronoun. In reality, especially in speaking English, this word is used in different ways. The British joke below demonstrates the many varied uses of it.

Early one morning a prisoner, who was accused of taking drugs, spoke to his guard:

“Morning Sir. It’s a nice day for it, isn’t it?”
The guard replied, “You’re not getting it. You’re in prison.”

The prisoner used it three times. The second it is a pronoun in the normal sense because it stands for ‘whatever you want to do” (e.g. swimming, resting, shopping, etc.). In the guard’s statement You’re not getting it, there is one it. This it is spoken more strongly than it number 2 of the prisoner, but it is also a pronoun. Its meaning is for drugs or having drugs.

Obviously, the connotations, means, understandings, and general usage of it are endless and in some ways, very confusing. This wondrous word can allude to enthusiasm, awe, excitement, surprise, candor, need, sadness and a host of other feelings and/or emotions. In addition to these, dependant on the facial expression, syntax, tone of voice and body language, it can be humorous, explicit, sarcastic, derogatory, informative, descriptive, explicative, explanatory and even linguistically challenging.

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