_____ 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.