After my recent post on the Globish book I found some more evidence on why English will stay the number 1 language in the years to come. A study by the British Council suggests that there are up to 2 billion English learners worldwide. Now that’s a number compared to “just” 1 billion native Mandarin speakers. Add the ~500 million native English speakers to that and you have roughly a third of the world population speaking English. So, time to start practicing your English skills, folks! There are many free good websites to learning English out there. Just search for terms like ESL or ESOL (English as a Second Language), EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ELL (English Language Learners/Learning). You’ll find tons of material out there. And if you are too lazy, here’s one good list of ESL resources from Anthony Halderman to get you started. Happy learning!

Image credit: British Council.