The average English person in the average English town will grow up with English as the language of their home and of their education. Only rarely will he or she come into serious contact. with a foreign language. In other words most English people spend their lives in a state of monolingualism. However, such monolingualism is a minority phenomenon in terms of the total world population; bi- or multilingualism is found in most countries in the world. There are an estimated 394 languages in Nigeria (Hansford, 1976) an~ 760 languages in Papua New Guinea (Wurm, 1979). This does not mean that all speakers of these languages are multilingual, but it is probable that such a concentrated variety of languages in a relatively small area will lead to multilingualism, especially with increased mobility. Similarly, Fishman and Hofmann (1966) estimate that in America in 1960 there were some 18 352 351 speakers of the 23 major non-English mother-tongue groups and Spolsky (1972) considers there were a futher 40 or 50 smaller languages or language groups. In England it is estimated that in 1978 in London alone there were over 100 languages spoken by school-age children