Need help with my writing homework on The Arguments For And Against English Medium Education. Write a 1250 word paper answering;

Need help with my writing homework on The Arguments For And Against English Medium Education. Write a 1250 word paper answering; A Nigerian scholar presents his views about learning English. for many people, it is not a wish to learn English because of the advantages it brings, but rather there is a need to learn English which means that learning is not actually a choice (Bamgbose, 2009, p. 648).

Robert Phillipson (1992) critically views the learning of English under the influence of economic advancement and social mobility and associates it with linguistic imperialism which allows England and The United States to maintain their economic and political interests and spread their ideological and cultural values throughout the world. According to Widdowson, English is an international language and native speakers feel proud that it is used as an international means of communication but realize that it is not their possession and that many others also own it (Widdowson, 1994, p. 385).

Braj Kachru (1992) acknowledges the international importance of the English language and categorizes different countries in inner, outer and expanding circles according to the level of English usage in his influential model, it includes not only the countries which have British colonial heritage of learning English as their second languages such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and India but also includes countries which had no colonial history and still learn English as a first or second language.

In Malaysia, at the time of its independence, only the elite class was given education through the medium of English to maintain power and prosperity and the rest of the population was educated through their local language in order to maintain the status quo. Later, it was found necessary to introduce English education to all classes to aid economic development. Science and Maths were introduced in English to meet the upcoming technological developments. The teachers and parents of children at the primary level had to struggle to cope with such changes as their own medium was Malaya and they did not have sufficient knowledge of English.