13 Major Advantages and Disadvantages of English Language

As kids who grew up in India, we have all went through this phase of our childhood, where everyone around us (parents, teachers, and relatives) advised us to learn English.

But apart from being one of the “most widely spoken languages of the world”, have you ever wondered what are the advantages and disadvantages of English language? If you have, then you are at the right place.

Because in this article, we are going to explore each and every one of the major advantages and disadvantages of learning English, in detail. So sit back, relax and give this article a read until the very end!

If You’re a Student, I highly recommend YOU to check this article(Why English is important for Students)?

Top 10 Advantages of Learning English Language

English is the international language of choice; there are major advantages of learning English. Some of them include.

1. Gives you access to more job opportunities

This is undoubted, the biggest advantage of learning English as a second language. If you are looking to excel in this current competitive job environment of India, then English is something you just cannot compromise on.  By learning English, you are going to open the gates to the huge flood of opportunities in various industries.

For example, if you have the ability to effectively communicate with native English speakers, then you can work abroad and have a better lifestyle or you can even stay in India and work online with international clients at international rates and earn a lot more than the majority of people who work offline for India employers.

Read our in-depth article on: Why English is Important for Career Growth

2. Allows you to travel more easily

If you are one of those travel enthusiasts who is looking to spend some time traveling abroad, then knowing the bare minimum of English is going to make your vacation time much more stress-free.

As I have already mentioned before, English is a global language. Irrespective of wherever you wish to travel, you just cannot survive even for a day without speaking or understanding English. Even if you go to a country where English is not widely spoken, most of the things there, like signs, ticketing machines and maps have some form of English written on them too.

For an instance, if you visit a country like Japan, and try to communicate some of the basic things like asking for directions or the price of a room at a hotel, there is a much higher chance of a random person understanding you, when you communicate in English than in any of the Indian languages like Hindi or Tamil.

Read Also: Best Foreign Language to Learn after English

3. Improves your understanding of the world

English is a broad language. From those informative videos on YouTube to those classic literatures ready to be read on Google books and kindle, you can gain access to every one of them by learning English.

By consuming the English content available out there, you can not just develop a much better understanding of the world but also accelerate your personal growth.

4. You get to make new connections

Google translate is good. But it will take decades for AI and other kinds of technology to communicate with you the same as any person directly speaking to you would.

Because of this rise of social media over the past couple of decades, the world now is more connected than ever before. And there are numerous opportunities to find people and virtually meet people who have a lot in common with you on apps like Twitter, Linked-In, and discord. But the language often ends up being too big of a barrier.

Learning English, to a huge extent will get this language barrier out of your way, as a huge majority of the people online from different parts of the world understand at least a few sentences of English.

Not just online, even when you go to visit a foreign country, you can get to know a person there much better when you communicate directly instead of speaking through a separate human/AI translator.

Read Also: Why Learning English Language is Important in India

5. Provides you Access to a wide range of Entertainment

Hollywood is by far, the biggest entertainment industry in the world. From action, comedy, to horror and mystery, Hollywood has a wide range of movies. And if you have run out of the Bollywood movie catalog, then this is going to be a heaven for you.

Yes, you can surely watch the dubbed version, but there are a huge bunch of high-quality movies that haven’t been dubbed yet. And anyway, watching a movie in its original version is a different experience altogether. Isn’t it?

Not just Hollywood, you can also understand and enjoy movies, TV shows, and Animes of many other different languages through the help of subtitles that are available in English. So, if you are a movie freak looking to explore, then it’s about time you started taking your English classes.

6. Improves memory

Learning any language that isn’t native to you, takes a lot of “remembering” especially if it’s a foreign language; in which case, you don’t usually have a lot of people around you who speak it on a daily basis.

If you are determined enough, you can surely learn it, but you have to put a lot of pressure and effort on the retaining power of your mind by constantly revising the words you have previously learnt before. This will surely have a huge positive impact on your memory and the ability to remember things.

Read Also: 13 Incredible Benefits of Learning a Second Language

7. English has a huge impact on e-commerce

During this pandemic, there has been a huge rise in the usage of e-commerce. And English is the backbone of this e-commerce industry especially,

If you want to expand your business and ship your product overseas, then you surely have to spend some money to employ someone who could communicate with your consumers or learn English yourself.

8. Better understanding of computer and technology

“English leads to Digital Literacy”. Almost all major apps have their user interface in English. Although a few Indian apps like PayTm have started providing an option of switching from English to various Indian languages, we are still far away from having technology that is completely accessible through Indian languages.

And if you are planning to learn coding, then you just cannot succeed without knowing English. As all of the widely used programming languages like java, python and swift, are available in an “English-like language”.

So, without knowing English, you are going to have a very tough time while learning to code.

9. Through English, You can learn other foreign languages

If you are one of those people who dream of pursuing higher studies in European countries like Germany or France, then you should know that a huge part of the curriculum in those countries is in their native languages.

So in order for you to do well in the universities there, you must be able to understand and speak the native European languages like German, French, Norwegian, etc.

English will play a huge role in helping you achieve that as a lot of words and syntaxes of English are very similar to almost all of the other European languages and it will be a lot easier for you to learn those languages through English, than through an Indian language.

If you have not checked Pros and Cons of Learning a Foreign language, You should check this well researched article.

5 Disadvantages of Learning English Language

1. English is a very difficult language to learn

The difficulty is probably the biggest disadvantage of learning English. English has a huge vocabulary and learning it involves a lot of memorizing as there are many words that sound the same but their spellings and meanings are completely different.

And it could be very difficult for someone living in India to differentiate between these words.

Not just that, while learning English, you’ll come across a certain thing called “Conjugating verbs”. These could end up being an absolute nightmare for a non-native speaker trying to learn English.

This factor could be really demotivating, and it is probably a reason, a lot of people even during school, hate to learn or even give up on English grammar. But if you spend a bit of time and effort, there is no reason for you to not master it.

2. Courses to learn English Are Expensive

You can find hundreds of courses that will help you learn English in every big city across the country, but almost all of them tend to be a bit expensive. Even the ones on online platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, and Coursera are also too expensive for most of the average middle-class Indians to afford.

This is a huge disadvantage for learners not just in India but also in other developing and under-developed countries. But Not to worry, If you are really focused and want to improve your English communication skills you could check the bellow articles. 

Top 10 YouTube Channels to Learn English at Home

3. Language Extinction

A native language/mother-tongue can provide people with a sense of authenticity and it plays a huge role in how people express themselves and their beliefs.

Although English, as a language hugely empowers people, there have always been concerns of it becoming a threat to many of the local native languages as a lot of people across the globe have started to concentrate only on the advantages of English and have abandoned their native tongues.

With the Indian Genz generation growing up in a completely English environment, many remote languages could go extinct.

Conclusion

It takes a lot of time and effort to learn a new language. But English is not just “any other language”. It is basically “the unofficial language of the world”. And English has a lot more advantages than disadvantages.

If you are looking to have a successful career in any industry, your fluency in English is something you just cannot compromise on. Although English is a language which is a bit difficult to learn, once you manage to master it, it is surely going to be worth the effort.