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 1earn 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.
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