Post by Chris_Wendt on Feb 12, 2014 14:39:41 GMT -5
I could have posted this thread under Academics, but on second thought it will be okay here.
Working for a U.S.-based global corporation, going and coming to work each day on the LIRR and NYC Subways, I constantly (meaning more than once each day) encounter people who fluently speak more than one language. I will go out on a limb and venture that most of these people who are not native English speakers are NOT bilingual, but are multilingual, fluent in more than two languages. One of my co-workers who is from Barcelona, Spain speaks six languages. He considers himself conversant in all six, which include Spanish, English, French, Turkish, Arabic, and Swedish. However, he is quick to point out that his fluency is "acceptable" (for more formal conversation) in only four (Spanish, English, Swedish and Turkish). Most (actually all) of the native English speakers (Americans) I know who speak another language are at best casual conversationalists in their other language. It would even be a stretch to consider most of them as having "an other language", as opposed to their remembering a bunch of "survival" phrases from High School Spanish class, or being capable of directing a recent immigrant looking lost on a subway platform.
Anecdotes are not my stock in trade, however, and what prompted my writing this today were two news stories coming out barely hours apart, each concerning a U.S. auto maker's sales results in China for January, 2014. The first headlined Ford's 53% sales increase over January, 2013, and the second announced GM's all-time record sales of 348,061 vehicles in January, an increase of 12% year-over-year in China. By comparison, Ford's much higher percentage gain represented only 94,466 wholesale vehicles, of which 72,598 were passenger cars. However, Ford Focus was the top selling nameplate in the passenger vehicle market in China in 2013, so GM should not be too comfortable in its top slot, volume-wise.
What's the connection to language fluency, or to education?
My company does business in China, and everyone in my company who is involved with China must be fluent (more than tourist-conversational) in Mandarin. This is the case with every American job in any company that relates to business in or with China. But it is not only business with or within China. The same goes for doing business, and being employed in a position responsible for doing business in every major world market, including, Russia (Russian), Brazil (Portuguese), Latin America & Spain (Spanish), Japan (Japanese), Korea (Korean), or Israel (Hebrew) and the Middle East (Arabic). Most readers should recognize the importance of the Global Economy and the Global Market to future employment opportunities. Collectively, American education should be doing significantly more to inspire and develop "acceptable" formal reading and speaking skills in languages other than English, and specifically with the outcome for our students of becoming more than just casually bilingual. Schools need to carefully assess their language course offerings for relevance (utility) to more than just occasional vacations to their family's place of origin. Academically, language is one area in desperate need of rigor in American schools, although my sense is that Wantagh does okay, but not to imply that we shouldn't do better in the future.
I also think that language education is fertile ground for cooperative course offerings among small groups of school districts, at the same time a good candidate for deploying educational technology for instance, to to facilitate a highly qualified teacher teaching Arabic or Hebrew to three or four classrooms located in three or four schools in three or four districts around the County, simultaneously during ninth period. I mean, if it wouldn't take too much time away from teaching to some central government assessment.
Change-up...low and away.
Chris Wendt
Working for a U.S.-based global corporation, going and coming to work each day on the LIRR and NYC Subways, I constantly (meaning more than once each day) encounter people who fluently speak more than one language. I will go out on a limb and venture that most of these people who are not native English speakers are NOT bilingual, but are multilingual, fluent in more than two languages. One of my co-workers who is from Barcelona, Spain speaks six languages. He considers himself conversant in all six, which include Spanish, English, French, Turkish, Arabic, and Swedish. However, he is quick to point out that his fluency is "acceptable" (for more formal conversation) in only four (Spanish, English, Swedish and Turkish). Most (actually all) of the native English speakers (Americans) I know who speak another language are at best casual conversationalists in their other language. It would even be a stretch to consider most of them as having "an other language", as opposed to their remembering a bunch of "survival" phrases from High School Spanish class, or being capable of directing a recent immigrant looking lost on a subway platform.
Anecdotes are not my stock in trade, however, and what prompted my writing this today were two news stories coming out barely hours apart, each concerning a U.S. auto maker's sales results in China for January, 2014. The first headlined Ford's 53% sales increase over January, 2013, and the second announced GM's all-time record sales of 348,061 vehicles in January, an increase of 12% year-over-year in China. By comparison, Ford's much higher percentage gain represented only 94,466 wholesale vehicles, of which 72,598 were passenger cars. However, Ford Focus was the top selling nameplate in the passenger vehicle market in China in 2013, so GM should not be too comfortable in its top slot, volume-wise.
What's the connection to language fluency, or to education?
My company does business in China, and everyone in my company who is involved with China must be fluent (more than tourist-conversational) in Mandarin. This is the case with every American job in any company that relates to business in or with China. But it is not only business with or within China. The same goes for doing business, and being employed in a position responsible for doing business in every major world market, including, Russia (Russian), Brazil (Portuguese), Latin America & Spain (Spanish), Japan (Japanese), Korea (Korean), or Israel (Hebrew) and the Middle East (Arabic). Most readers should recognize the importance of the Global Economy and the Global Market to future employment opportunities. Collectively, American education should be doing significantly more to inspire and develop "acceptable" formal reading and speaking skills in languages other than English, and specifically with the outcome for our students of becoming more than just casually bilingual. Schools need to carefully assess their language course offerings for relevance (utility) to more than just occasional vacations to their family's place of origin. Academically, language is one area in desperate need of rigor in American schools, although my sense is that Wantagh does okay, but not to imply that we shouldn't do better in the future.
I also think that language education is fertile ground for cooperative course offerings among small groups of school districts, at the same time a good candidate for deploying educational technology for instance, to to facilitate a highly qualified teacher teaching Arabic or Hebrew to three or four classrooms located in three or four schools in three or four districts around the County, simultaneously during ninth period. I mean, if it wouldn't take too much time away from teaching to some central government assessment.
Change-up...low and away.
Chris Wendt