A Study Of The Effect Of Icelandic Language Protection Policy On Local English Promotion

English is one of the most popular languages throughout the world today.English and its culture are very prominent in western society. In Icelandic society,English is widely used, especially for adolescents. English is getting more and moreinto spoken language and written language in Iceland. As the language ofglobalization, and also has effects on Icelandic society and culture. Iceland is a smallcountry which strongly identifies itself with the Icelandic language，therefore thepressure applied to the Icelandic society to improve in English and consider it asecond language may generate an uncomfortable position of having to choosebetween maintaining preservation of the Icelandic language or increasing proficiencyin English for Icelanders. The vast majority of Icelandic speakers is about320,000,most of them live in Iceland. While97%of the population of Iceland considerIcelandic as their mother tongue, the language is in decline in some communitieswhen the foreign language are coming. In order to prevent the impact of foreignlanguage, Icelandic Language Council made Icelandic language protection policy toprotect their mother tongue. Research in these field are not many yet, but this essaywill attempt to assess the effect of Icelandic language protection policy on localEnglish promotion in Icelandic society.In this paper, the author first describes the status of languages used in Iceland,the history of local language preservation and explains the local language protectionpolicy from restrictions on foreign languages and protection of its mother language.Then the author describe the impact of English on Icelandic, it is interesting to knowexactly what the current situation of English in Iceland and how important English isto be considered by Icelandic society. After describing the basic situations above, the author concludes theshortcomings of the current English promotion. In addition, the author analyzed howthe language protection policy affects the English teaching activities there and whatare the positive and negative influences caused by this policy, which roughly includesthe scale of teaching, requirements for teachers, linguistic diversity, cultural diversityand the cooperation with Iceland to promote Icelandic to the world. To make the papermore persuasive, the author also uses the results from a questionnaire, whichinvestigates the studying motions, status and suggestions of the students in localEnglish Institute, and some e-mail interviews with the teachers there.After analyzing the impacts of local language protection policy on the Englishteaching and some experience from the French language promotion, the authorconcludes some suggestions to deal with the impacts, which includes:1. Respect andobey the local language protection policy;2. Increase the proportion of teachingculture;3. Icelandic and English coexist each other.