English in Europe Conference












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            * English in Europe Conference
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            Over the weekend of March 22 and March 23, the Faculty of Arts at Charles University was h

            to the conference ‘English in business and commerce: Interactions and policies [ URL "http
            www.englishineurope.postgrad.shef.ac.uk/Conferences/Conference%20in%20Prague/programme/"] 
            conference was part of the English in Europe project, an academic project sponsored by The

            Trust and coordinated by the Centre for Linguistic Research at the University of Sheffield
            www.englishineurope.postgrad.shef.ac.uk"] , which aims to investigate the role of the Engl
            throughout Europe. The conference at the Faculty of Arts was the fifth and final conferenc

            which bought together academics from all the over the world. Previous conferences have bee
            Sheffield (UK), Zaragoza (Spain), Copenhagen (Denmark), and Thessaloniki (Greece). The con

            hosted with the support of the Czech Language Institute at the Czech Academy of Science.
            The conference started early on Saturday morning, and ran until Sunday afternoon. Although
            of this conference was business, the talks hosted touched on a diverse range of topics, fr

            research, to foreign language skills in native English-speaking countries, to the use of E
            European universities, to the role of English as a business lingua franca. Individual talk
            by question and answer sessions; however, these had to be kept brief as the conference had

            schedule to adhere to.
            The three keynote speakers were Nkonko Kamwangamalu, from Howard University in Washington 
            about the use of English in African Commonwealth countries; Rebecca Piekkari, from the Aal

            School of Business in Helsinki, who discussed language research in international business;
            from the University of Warwick, who talked on language use in the workplace.
            The conference also had a special Czech section, which focused on language use in the Czec

            Bermel and Luděk Knittl, both from the University of Sheffield, gave an interesting talk o
            presence of languages in the Czech heritage site of Hrubý Rohozec, a castle in the town of
            University's Vít Dovalil discussed the use of German and English in the Czech Republic; an

            and Martin Prošek of the Czech Language Institute talked about the influence of English on
            language. As neither an economics or a linguistics student, I felt a little out of my dept
            speakers would sometimes list theories and researchers I'd never encountered before but, o

            I attended were very interesting and I was able to follow most of the discussion.
            The full title of the main project is 'English in Europe: Opportunity or Threat?'. Some of
            I attended at the conference touched on this theme: as a lingua franca of business, higher

            tourism, and so on, English is able to unite large groups of people under a common languag
            time, its high position in these spheres may be off-putting for some, and can even have a 
            effect on local languages. Even for native English speaking countries, the dominance of En

            a negative effect, as populations don't have strong enough skills in foreign languages to 
            compete on international markets. I wasn't around to hear whether or not the conference de
            an opportunity or a threat in Europe, but it was very interesting nonetheless to hear argu

            English is harmful as well as useful as an international lingua franca in many important a
                                                                                                      
                                                Natalie James is an undergraduate history student at U
                                                Her interests include history, literature, politics, a
                                                student life at Charles University in Prague, and also