Language policy depends very much on the composition of the nation: India has over 20 official languages, Switzerland has four. Germany has only one plus special rights for some indigenous minority languages. Language policy is a mixture both of historical development, political and social conditions and will. What is contraproductive in language policy is to enforce one language over others: this always creates resistance and often violent conflict. E.g. in South Tyrol the Italian government tried to impose Italian instead of German in the 30s and 40s. This had very detrimental effects. After equal language rights were introduced in the province, the situation improved considerably. Hope this helps.

Thank you @Dagmar Hellman

This situation cannot be implemented to all countries especially my country, where the nation is formed of homogeneous layers.

40 years ago in many parts of the world, a limited proportion of learners learned a foreign language as part of their state school education. Today virtually every child on earth has English lessons as part of their school curriculum. Isn't the global spread of English as a core curriculum subject in state education systems, one very clear example of language-(in education)- policy spreading very rapidly across countries? Why has this happened so fast and so universally? A result of changes in both global and national contexts over past decades.

Well, Martin, yes. English has now probably the role that Latin had in Europe centuries ago (or Sanskrit in Asia for that matter). But: when I learnt English (and French and Latin) more than 40 years ago, I learnt it properly, complete with grammar and pronunciation. And I did not have the opportunity to fly round the world like young people today. Yet today's youth speaks a sort of English that makes my teeth fur over, and they do not know other languages either....

Language policies (or any kind of policies, really) are always contextualized. In contrast to what we usually think, policy implementation is messy and multilayered (see the onion metaphor from Ricento & Hornberger and Hornberger & Johnson; see the research from Stephen Ball and colleagues). Policy implementation (or rather 'enactment' Ball et al. would call it) comes with a lot of interpretation by many people. A lot of so-called 'policy actors', i.e. policy makers, teachers, parents ... interpret a policy from their own viewpoint, which is influenced by adn based on their own experiences and believes - what Spolsky (2004) calls 'ideologies'.

English is probably such a dominant foreign or even second language to many people around the globe because of its status: people consider it an interesting language, people want to be part of a larger community and English is the main vehicle for communication within that international community. The use of English thus is not necessarily part of a governmental language policy, but worked its way all the way from the bottom to the top.

Marieke, I agree with you.

Ashkan, I do not claim statistical accuracy, but 40 years of teaching may give me some impression of the standard of the second (or third) language in my own country, and believe me, it has often become deplorable. Maybe people took more effort to learn a language when travel to the respective country was not so easy. But I stand by my argument: my students today (in contrast to a decade ago) are weak on grammar and pronunciation, and often they do not take the trouble to make an effort to improve....

Btw, my children are bilingual, and they speak and write much better than I....

@ Ashkan, that's exactly what I meant with "they want to belong to the international community" - not (primarily) because they think English is interesting to study in terms of linguistics of literature.

'anti-Western ideology'. Maybe that is the reason....???

Ok. Thanks

Ashkan Latifi My experience oddly confirms both your observation, and in a slightly parallel way, Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam's. I have had Iranian students who started out with some weaknesses in their English but because of motivation, interest, and a good work ethic, finished strong; others were strong to begin with. In contrast, I have had domestic students, whose native and only language is English, speak and write worse than many international students. I don't know about teeth furring over, but many a time I have cringed at the first page of an essay and delayed the inevitable by shunting it to the bottom of the pile. 😖

Dear Karl, yes, I have that same experience with my students. But in some ways, I put it down to age: when we were young 'everything was better'???!! With English, the problem is, I think, that grammar is no longer taught. I have a very bright Ph.D. student from Scotland doing Indian languages with me, and she finds it inordinately difficult to get to grips with them because by her own statement, 'she was never taught grammar at school'. The same, I am afraid, applies to German. So many of my admittedly bright students write in a way (both English and German), that really makes my teeth fur over....

Btw, I am firmly convinced that, if you do not know your own language properly, you will not be able to acquire another one to an acceptable level.

I think every nation has its own language policy, so it needs further research on whether the multilanguage layers could be implemented or not. Indonesia is a multilanguage country. But the language policy is Bahasa Indonesia is used in a national formal meeting. Meanwhile, English can be a second language used in international meetings.