This is an interview of Elmehdy Mohamed Lemine, a Mauritanian graduate in Linguistics student at Cady Ayyad University in Marrakech, Morocco.
Interviewer: First, to what extent do you believe that English is important?
Elmehdy: English has achieved its importance by imposing itself over the world as the language of technology, business, and sciences.
Interviewer: As a Mauritanian student, when do you Mauritanians start learning English?
Elmehdyt: Mauritanian students typically start having English as a subject at the beginning of secondary school. Before that, they learn Arabic and French and learn the other subjects by using them.
Interviewer: Would you mind including English language in the elementary school and up?
Elmehdy: Never, I even extremely support and call for including the English languge in the whole educational system. We need to refresh our educational system and push it ahead. Many Mauritanian students now, from many majors and domains, are suffering from the lack of French research and documents. 80 percent of research now is conducted in English. We need to overcome this problematic issue, and that can not happen unless we update our system and include the language of the now. Interview: Dou you think that Mauritanians now aim to learn English? Elmehdy: Certainly, ten years before, there was a very small number of centers and institutes for teaching English, unlike French which widely spread around the country. Now, the English centers and institutes rapidly and increasingly spread everywhere. English is the storm that put away the other languages.