_____ 2/ _____ 3/ _____ 4/ _____ 5/ _____ 6/ _____ (23-28) CHOOSE THE WORD OR PHRASE THAT BEST FITS THE BLANK SPACE IN THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE

1/ _____ 2/ _____ 3/ _____ 4/ _____ 5/ _____ 6/ _____

(23-28) Choose the word or phrase that best fits the blank space in the following passage:

English has more than a century and a half been called a world language. The number of

people who speak it as their mother tongue has been estimated at (23)___________ three hundred

million and four hundred million. It is recognized as an official language in countries (24)

________ 1.5 billion people live. In China, the important attached to learning English is such that a

televised teaching course drew audiences of up to 100 million. (25) _________ This spread of

English throughout the world is relatively recent. In the late sixteen century, English was (26)

________ by just under five million people. The arrival of English in north America was the key

step in its world-wide expansion. The united States is a huge commercial market and this has

tended to (27) _________ the English language in many other nations. About eighty per cent of the

data stored on the world’s computer is believed to be in English and nowadays insufficient (28)

__________ of English can be a problem in business.