Fill in the Blanks English as Lingua Franca Online version Gap-fill activity by Oksana Koval 1 monolingualism speaking Franca Esperanto hand half learning importance announced Is English the world's Lingua ? A report from the British Council that by 2021 two billion people will start English around the world , and three billion people ? the planet ? will be it . However , report editor , David Graddoll , said that English will not become the and dominate global language learning as Arabic , Chinese and Spanish are set to rise in . He said the trend is towards " linguistic globalization " and multi - lingualism , not bilingualism , and definitely not . French , on the other , once considered a lingua franca , will see its status as a world language continue to go down .