English Next by David Graddol, an update on and a continuation of his first book, The Future of English? (1997) is sub-titled ‘Why global English may mean the end of English as a Foreign Language’. The purpose of English Next is ‘to describe this new phenomenon and explain the context in which it has emerged. It also identifies some of the challenges that will be created over the next few years for everyone involved in the global education business’ (p. 11). English Next is an interesting balance between the futuristic nature of its content and the objective illumination of data from the daily output of international news stories, monitored by GEN—The Global English Newsletter. The book is divided into three parts: ‘A world of transition’ (5 sections), ‘Education’ (2 sections), and ‘Conclusions and policy implications’. Part One examines five issues: demography, economy, technology, society and languages. Demographic trends indicate that the world population will grow to 10 billion by the end of this century from 500 million only a few hundred years ago. Since most of the growth is in the developing world, which also has the youngest people, the balance of power will shift to places where the populations are younger and where global English is being introduced at an earlier age in school. Further, as a result of increasing mobility, other languages like Mandarin, Spanish, and Arabic are developing as world languages while English is developing as a lingua franca in most places. Economic patterns are also indicators that will have an effect on language. The rise of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and in particular China's success and ‘huge investment in English’ (p. 33) together with its promotion of Mandarin signifies the growth of global English as well as that of other languages. The growth of BPO's (Business Process Outsourcing) and KPO's (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) in the developing world, moreover, will result in a redistribution of wealth and poverty, so that there will come a time, say about 2050, when it is conceivable that all economies might be more or less on the same level. Graddol uses the ‘S’ curve, used by innovation diffusion scholars (slow to take off, rapid increase, then a slow-down) to predict the speed of adoption of global English, which would slow down by 2050.