English has grown to become a dominant global lingua franca. It is used as international language in communication, science, business, aviation, entertainment, diplomacy and in different other ways. English has spread beyond the original English isles starting with the growth of British Empire. The language however gained a boost after the colonization of North American and the consequent rise of United States to the most influential nation in the world. Since the end of the World War II, the use of English in the world has been catapulted by the increased dominance of United States and Britain in world affairs especially in the International organizations like United Nations

We teach a skill, and a subject, just like any other skill and subject. we do serve as cultural informants to students as they try to get their bearings in a new country. They want to know what's going on and why, so they can make their own choices about how to fit it. This is a service, not imperialism.

Knowledge of English has become a basic requirement in different fields, occupation and professions like Medicine, computing and many others (Bishop and Philips, 2006). This use of English in education and economic areas can be traced to the era of industrial revolution in Britain and the consequent industrial revolution that led to a number of inventions. As a way of spreading the technological invention to the rest of the world, English was adopted as a means of communication and henceforth it has become an important part communication in the world. Today, more than one billion people can speak English at a basic level and the language has also become one of the six official languages in the United Nations (Crystal, 1997).
The rise of English has had positive impacts to the world. Most Linguisticians have advocated that multilingualism is a barrier to effective communication and hence undermine cultural integration. According to Archibugi (2005) multilingualism is an obstacle and barrier to democracy and hence it must be overcome to ensure advancement of the societies. This is encapsulated in the notion that development comes only when there is exchange of views, developments, and technology and this cannot be achieved when there is a language barrier. Archibugi (2005) shows that cosmopolitans mostly prefer to have a directly understandable language rather than having a myriad of colorful non accessible languages that benefits only those who understands them. In his line of argument, he posits that development in the world would not have reached its current height if there was no one language that could be used as a means of communication.
Richard Morgan, English Language Teaching Division, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
That said, there is no doubt that English is only in this position because of previous and, in economic terms, on-going imperialism from (for want of a better descriptor) the Western world. The question is - does it matter any more? If "global" English is breaking loose of its cultural and political moorings, and if it's to become a badge of international citizenship, ALONGSIDE whatever first language the citizen in question grew up with, who cares where it came from? I'd suggest that the only people who do care (and I have met a few of them) are those who feel that THEIR language, and not English, should be the dominant global linguistic force. And then of course, we're back to gooooooood old national/cultural chauvinism.

The truth is that English is a useful tool for international communication - potentially a tool for great good in the global future. It got that way through (extremely bloody) historical accident. Pride of place could just as easily have gone to Spanish, French, Arabic or Mandarin Chinese, depending on where history chose to veer off. But it didn't. That's where we are now. Perhaps a more useful term for describing the situation would be linguistic Darwinism - this term manages to encompass the brutal fashion in which English came to the fore, without getting into the (essentially pointless) historical recriminations of who did what to whom and how horrible they were. The term also allows us to focus our attention on a rather more important related issue - that of minority languages going extinct. Practical protection of these languages through sponsored development needs to be our priority, rather than soul searching about our promotion of a useful international medium of communication.