Реферат "How English will improve my future"

HOW ENGLISH WILL IMPROVE MY FUTURE

     First of all, let us introduce ourselves.

     Our names are Darya Kondyurina and Lera Basyrova. We are fourteen-year-old  schoolgirls from the city of Yekaterinburg, Russia. But even at our age, we realize that we should think about our future. We know how important it is to do our best at school. Everybody wants to get a good education and become a highly-qualified specialist. We are not an exception. We started seriously thinking about our future because it's time to make a decision. If you know what you want to become in the future, you must understand what subjects are the most important for you. What we know for sure is that English in our list of the most important subjects will definitely take the top position! You may ask us why English?  

      Today, in fact over 250 million people are learning English. That is more than the population of the USA!  Over one billion people speak English. That is almost one fifth of the world's population. For over 400 million it's their first language.   For the other 600 million it's a second language or a foreign language. Impressive, isn't it?  Now English is spoken practically all over the world, it has become the world's most important language in politics, science, trade and cultural relations.

One in two Europeans can speak English quite well and have a proper conversation. The number is and it will be increasing from year to year.  English has become the most popular foreign language in Russia. Nowadays, a lot of people study foreign languages in every possible way. I think that it is self-explanatory. The proverb says «A new language — a new world».

     For many years Russian people have lived behind the so-called «iron curtain». Only few people could go abroad and see how people lived there. It is clear to me now, why only few people were really interested in learning foreign languages those days. The students of the former Soviet Union did not realize what they would need a foreign language for. Therefore, one could study a foreign language at school or at university but wouldn't practically be able to use his knowledge anywhere. We don't mean those rare exceptions which happened in the Soviet times. We are lucky we were born in a new country!  Thank God, the country we are living in now has changed! So have its people! The «iron curtain» has been destroyed. We, the Russians, may go anywhere. Knowledge of English can give us a lot of opportunities that we have not even thought of. For example, we can understand people from different countries and communicate with them. While communicating with people, we can discover a lot of unknown things. So, English plays an important role in our life not only because that it can help to communicate with people from other countries but also because it can help to know more about other cultures, traditions and habits. You can become a good specialist and find a good job with high salary either in your country or abroad. Everything will depend on you.

   On the other hand, we know and like such English and American writers as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll and others. If we know English well, we’ll be able to read English and American writers in the original. We can see a lot of advertisements, signboards, and names in the streets. They are often in English. If you know English, you can read and understand them. Now we buy a lot of clothes from other countries If you know English well, you can read something about the size of this or that thing. It is clear for you what it is made of. There are a lot of films in foreign languages. If you know English, you can understand films without any help.                                                                        

We are learning three foreign languages at the moment: English, German, French. We are quite sure that foreign languages will definitely improve our future and help us find a good job no matter what profession we will choose.

Our English helps me even now. We have been attending dancing school for many years. We take part in various dancing competitions including the international ones. We shouldn’t boast but we feel really happy and proud of ourselves when we can speak English to our peers from foreign countries.  Besides, you feel better and more confident when you understand people speaking their native language. When you understand foreigners you will never get frightened when you are lost or when you are in trouble, will you?  How nice when you can explain what happened to you and how it happened! What is the most important - speaking a foreign language you show your respect both to the country and the people living there.  

     In conclusion we would like everyone to understand that English can and will improve your future! You should believe in it as we did!  Remember, Russian is more difficult to learn than English! We wish we had more time, just more time! We promise to work hard and do our best to let our dreams come true!  We can keep our promises!