The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries

Questions:

1.      “British history has been a history of invasion.” Please illustrate this point.

2.      What are some general characteristics of Scotland? How did Scotland become part of the union of Great Britain?

3.      What do you know about the Head of the UK? Why is she said to reign but not to rule?

4.      What do you know about the British Parliament and the Prime Minister?

5.      How are the people in the UK divided into different classes? What are some of the main features in the division? Is the class system similar to that of the US?

6.      Please define "absolute decline and relative decline" in the UK economy. What are the reasons for the absolute decline and relative decline?

7.      What are the purposes of the British education system? How does the British education system reflect social class?

8.      What do you know about the present British education system? What is the Open University in Britain? What do you think of this system?

9.      What do you know about the first white colonists in America? Why did they go there?

10.  What are the purposes of the American education? What do you know about the educational system in the USA?

11.  What do you know about the American Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence?

12.  What do you know about the executive and legislative branches in the American Constitution? How does the system of “Checks and Balances” work?

13.  What do you know about the native people living in the icy land in Canada? (their origin, the life in the past and now....)

14.  Who are the first white settlers and the first British settlers in Canada? Why did they move there?

15.  What do you know about the discovery of Australia and New Zealand?

Why do historians of English tend to divide the stages of the language's development into Old, Middle and Early Modern English? What distinguishes these different forms of the language from each other?

How did Old English differ from Modern English? Can you explain this with reference to both grammar and vocabulary?

What factors caused Old English to develop into Middle English and in what ways did the language change?

What effect has religion had on the development of English over time?

Choose ten place names local to where you come from and, using an etymological dictionary, find out what these names mean and how they have developed over time. What do the place names you have chosen tell you about the settlement of these areas over time?

How and why did a standard form of English develop? When did this occur and what changes did the language undergo during the process of standardisation?

What were the initial causes of the global spread of English and how did these affect the linguistic development of the language?

What were the major external causes of the development of American English?

In what ways did the English language develop during the twentieth century? Try to consider linguistic development at more than one linguistic level.

Based on what you know about the development of English from its earliest inception, can you speculate on how the English language might develop in the future? What kinds of changes might we expect to see and what factors affect the extent to which you can make such predictions?