Effects of English Language on National Development

The importance of the relationship between language and society cannot be over emphasized in the overall development of any community. However, language has become so much part of our everyday life that we tend to take it for granted. The ordinary man hardly bothers to find out what contributions a language can make in the development of a nation. This paper stresses the importance of English language, as a world language, and a powerful factor for the promotion of unity, national consciousness and at the same time facilitating the mobilization of its resources for national development. The paper tries to examine English language as the language of education, its benefits as a second language and its impact on the development on the country. The aim is to show the extent to which the language has been able to project the cultural values of the people to the international world and how it has facilitated the development of both material and human resources. The result led to the conclusion that the use of English as a second language as well as the language of education provided a speedy access to modern development in science and technology.