| English is the most widely read and spoken language in the world, it has become, as David Crystal puts it, a global language, which not any other languages in human history can ever compete. Worldwide, over 1.4 billion people live in countries where English enjoys official status; one fifth of the world population speaks English with varying degrees of competence; over 70% of the world's scientists read English; about 85% (75% according to some other data source) of the world's mail is written in English; and 80% of all information in the world's electronic retrieval system is stored in English. The prominent position of English as it enjoys now can never be denied of its connection to its constantly being the language of the strongest countries in the world. The rise of English must be firstly attributed to the British Empire's worldwide colonialism from the 17th century to the 18th century, most notably in the American Continent. Britain's colonial expansion took the language from its island birthplace to settlements around the world, thus establishing the pre-conditions for the global use of English. In the following centuries, English's influence was maintained, as Great Britain was the most industrialized country with the most prosperous overseas trade. Although in the twentieth century, especially after World War II, Britain suffered a gradual decline due to its heavy loss in the war,English spread fastest and rose to the world language status. This is indispensable with the ascent of the US after World War II to be an economic superpower, namely with its leading economy and information technology. Epitomizing the information age, the Internet has opened a new era of mass communication in human history by providing a new form of communication, which transfers information in a way that is much less expensive but more effective than traditional ones. Differing from the old communication means such as radio, broadcasting etc., which communicate in a one-to-many paradigm, the Internet can communicate in one-to-many, many-to-one, one-to-one or many-to-many paradigms. These new communication paradigms mean that anybody with a computer and access to the Internet, no matter where he is, can play an equal role on the Internet, either in retrieving or publishing information. Also, the open architecture of the Internet allows constant self-improvements and new peripheral devices and technologies to be incorporated as to explore newer services. Because of this nature and other reasons, Internet has been quickly expanding in the world and its users have been increasing exponentially. And it is safe to say that the Internet has penetrated into the fabric of our society, transforming its all aspects ranging from our everyday life to economy, politics, medicine and education etc. Because computers and information technology has been historically and currently English-biased, English has been the de facto "lingua franca" on the Internet. Based on the historical relationship between English language and the Internet, this attempts to explore new developments of the former brought about by the development and expansion of the latter. The subject is to be approached from the following three aspects: first, the relation between the expansion of the Internet and the global spread of English; secondly, the linguistic consequences of the expansion of the Internet on English; thirdly, the potential benefits and challenges of the Internet in terms of teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Through keen observation and careful investigation, we have come to such a conclusion: firstly, Internet has played an important role in accelerating English's global spread and consolidating its world influence. The soaring popularity of computers and the Internet, to some extent, is tantamount to the spread of the influence of English language. Furthermore, which is of greater importance, the nature of Internet communication plus the scale and intensity of English use on the Internet worldw...
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