Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/English, the language that is currently being learnt by the approximate number of 2 million people all over the world, has undoubtedly gained similar importance as Latin in the Middle Ages. As it has become the international code of communication both in computing and business, no wonder that more and more people commence learning it, usually not as a means of reading Shakespeare's works in the original but simply by necessity, such as enhancing their career opportunities or doing deals with foreign investors. The world seems to have chosen its universal language, but has it made a good choice, at least as far as the degree of difficulty in learning it is concerned?