This I think is rather an exemplary comment from an English speaker, for those of us, campaigning relentlessly on the state of English language in government schools and colleges.

After residing in the UK for the last four years now and studying for both my A-level and now at university, my impression is in line with Robert's. I have seen so many Chinese speaking students as well as people of from other places come here to study without any previous knowledge of English, but they are now excelling at British universities and other educational institutes. In fact, if you go to LSE or Imperial College nowadays, you will see more Chinese faces then English faces to be honest. These lead me to think that learning a new language is just another part of your education and surely it can't be the supreme objective of education, like what the English medium schools in Bangladesh and our 'know how' English speakers make it. It's more important that our policy makers concentrate on making education more accessible to the majority of the people of Bangladesh whose mother tongue is Bengali so as to enable them to understand and appreciate the subject contents, by translating higher education materials into Bengali.

Talking about the UK, just want to say how hilarious things are getting here under the New Labour. They have started this stupid programme on the immigrants about their ability to speak English and knowing English cultures to qualify for citizenship. Of course you need to be able to communicate in English if you are living in the UK anyway, but knowing English-ness or British-ness seems rather a bizarre idea. I have always wondered how many of my English mates know the things those poor immigrants are asked in the Home office in their nationality tests!

Come on people in BD, let's not whinge about English anymore. We have other things to worry about!