{{B}}English and English Community{{/B}}
1. There is no doubt that English is a useful language. The people who speak English today make up the largest speech community in the world with the exception of speakers of Chinese.
2. A speech community is similar to other kinds of communities. The people who make up the community share a common language. Often they live side by side, as they do in a neighborhood (街坊), 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 speak the same language no matter where they happen to live.
3. We may say that anyone who speaks English belongs to the English speech community. For convenience (方便), we may divide 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 purpose of education, commerce, and so on.
4. Learning a second language extends one's vision and expands the mind. The history and literature of a second language record the real and fictional (虚构的) lives of people and their culture; a knowledge of them adds to our ability to understand and to feel as they feel. Learning English as a second language provides another means of communication through which the window of the entire English speech community becomes a part of our heritage.