Everything has a name. All people, places and things have names. For example, Jenny is the name of a student from England. England is the name of her country. Cities and towns have names, too. Schools and office building also have names. All things have names. Names are important.

Names are different all over the world. In Jenny’s class, Jenny must learn the names of students from all over the world. This is very difficult because the names are different.

In the USA, most people have a first name, a middle name, and a last name. Parents choose the first and middle names for their baby. There are names for boys and names for girls. For example, John, Peter, Tom and Mike are all names for boys. Elizabeth, Betty, Susan, and Mary are all names for girls. The last name is the family name. Usually it is the father’s family name. In a family, the mother, the father, and the children usually have the same last name.

Names are different all over the world. They can be long or short, but they are always very important.

Researchers has investigated the impact of Covid-19 related social isolation (隔离) measures on 2,200 young kids between 8 and 36 months of age. Their findings provide insights into the effects of lockdown on language learning and screen time in the generation of youngsters growing up during this extraordinary period.

Shortly after lockdown began in early March 2020 across 13 countries, parents were asked to complete an online questionnaire containing questions on the child’s age, exposure to different languages, number of siblings (兄弟姐妹) and vocabulary development. Parents were then contacted again at the end of the lockdown (for that family or in that area, in general). They were asked about the activities they undertook with their child during lockdown, the amount of time their child had access to screens both during lockdown and before, as well as questions on how much screen time they had themselves and their attitudes towards children’s screen time. Parents were also asked to complete a standardized vocabulary checklist indicating the number of words their child understood and/or said at the beginning, and again, at the end of lockdown so that an increase in the number of words gained over lockdown could be calculated.

The studies find that, during lockdown, children who were read to more frequently were reported to have learned more words, relative to their peers who were read to less frequently. However, children with increased exposure to screens learned to say fewer words, relative to their peers with less screen time. Besides, while children were exposed to more screen time during lockdown than before, overall, children were reported to have gained more words than expected during lockdown, relative to pre-pandemic levels. The increase in screen time during lockdown was greater if lockdown was longer, and in families with fewer years of education, and where parents reported using screens for longer themselves.

“While this suggests that the relatively short isolation did not detrimentally impact language in young children, we should be cautious in assuming this would apply during normal times or to longer lockdowns, given the extraordinary circumstances children and their parents faced during this time,” says Associate Professor Natalia Kartushina, University of Oslo.

English has surely become the global language. Whenever we turn on the news to find out what’s happening in South Asia, or Africa, or anywhere, people are being interviewed and telling us about it in English.

If people look at the facts about the amazing reach of the English language, many would be surprised. English is used in over 90 countries as an official or semi-official language. English is the working language of many international institutes (研究所) as well as of most international research scientists. It is also the language that Indian parents and black parents wish their children to learn. It is believed that over one billion people worldwide are now learning English.

One of the most important causes of the spread of English around the world is that Europeans are willing to accept it as their language. English is spreading from northern Europe to the south and is now the second language in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark. If one visits any of them, it would seem that almost everyone there can talk in English.

Recently, a report said that at the beginning of 2001, English was the most widely known foreign language with 43% of Europeans saying they spoke it. The report also said that with over 89% of the population speaking English, Sweden now has the highest percentage of English speakers. What’s more, English is the language rated as most useful to know, and over 77% of Europeans who do not speak English as their first language consider it useful.