English is one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. This is partly because it was the language of the British Empire.The empire once controlled so much of the world when it was said【M1】______that the Sun never set on the British Empire. England, the birthplace of English, takes on most of the island【M2】______of Great Britain. It is one of the four land that form the United【M3】______Kingdom. The English that people speak there today is quitediffered from the English that was spoken long ago. If you were【M4】______read a book by Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the early writers of【M5】______English, someone would have to explain it to you what many【M6】______words mean. England has product many famous writers since Chaucer.【M7】______They include such poets as John Milton and Percy Bysshe Shelley and such novelists as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. England is also known for its theater. That art has remained important since the time of playwright William Shakespeare some 400 years ago. England’s Oxford and Cambridge are two of the oldest universitiesin the world. The country’ s contributions of classical and folk【M8】______music, as well as to rock and roll, are also important. It’s not hard【M9】______to imagine what rock would be like if there hadn’t been English performers such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and DavidBowie. The English also discovered two of the world’ s most【M10】______popular sports: football(known as "soccer" in the United States)and cricket. 【M2】