Communicating in the American Workplace
| Many native speakers of English have a very bad attitude and a severe lack of patience when it comes to conversing on any level with those who speak with a heavy accent. I have repetitively heard some say “Why can’t they just go somewhere and learn English”. The truth of the matter is they have gone somewhere and learned English and it is not unusual to see statistics showing that oftentimes the non-native speaker scores higher on the standard grammar exam than the native speaker of English. |  |
Chinese course offers culture and language
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One out of every five people in the world lives in China. Now, PJC students have the opportunity to learn about the Chinese culture and language. Beginning Chinese I will focus primarily on the official Chinese language – Mandarin. English Professor Guangpeng Zeng, will teach the class this fall semester. Chinese I is a four credit hour class and meets the foreign language requirement. “Learning Chinese can enhance your career by working and/or traveling abroad and can open doors to new, interesting jobs such as a foreign language translator or a teacher of English as a second language in Chinese-speaking countries,” Zeng said. The Chinese language might intimidate some students, especially the reading and writing aspect. |
search for : Learning Chinese
Learning a second language will be well worth the effort
| I’d like to hear your thoughts on a situation my husband and I have been debating. This concerns our 2-year-old daughter. When it comes time for her to start kindergarten, we will have to make a decision whether to send her to the elementary school next door or drive her a few miles away to another school. Both schools are outstanding, however, the one farther away offers a Spanish immersion school. I am in favor of the Spanish immersion school because in this day Spanish is becoming more and more prominent. I am concerned that without knowing Spanish, she will have trouble getting the better jobs, because job seekers need to be bi-lingual. Here in California, more and more jobs require English and Spanish. |  |
search for : Spanish immersion school
Across cultures, English is the word
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“English is dominant in a way that no language has ever been before,” said John McWhorter, a linguist at the Manhattan Institute. “It is vastly unclear to me what actual mechanism could uproot English given conditions as they are.” As a new millennium begins, scholars say that about one-fourth of the world’s population can communicate to some degree in English. It is the common language in almost every endeavor, from science to air traffic control to the global jihad, where it is apparently the means of communication between speakers of Arabic and other languages. It has consolidated its dominance as the language of the Internet, where 80 percent of the world’s electronically stored information is in English, according to David Graddol, a linguist and researcher. |
search for : English
Library to retain English program
| The message to the Jones Library Board of Trustees last month was overwhelming, said board President Kathleen Wang: Save the English as a Second Language program. For the second year in a row, the trustees were looking to ax the program to help close a $68,000 budget gap. But Wang said about 75 people turned out to a budget hearing to say they wanted to keep the program. The trustees at their meeting last week listened. The trustees cut just $4,300 from the program’s $27,000 budget. That means the program will not be offered in the summer but will be the rest of the year. “We don’t have enough money for it all,” Wang said. | 
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search for : English as a Second Language
Essays allow Korean students to learn culture
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For Ki-Seong Lee, a seventh-grade student at Edison Middle School who experienced American culture for the first time a few months ago, it was what he saw while riding in a car. Drivers waiting patiently as children boarded a school bus or an elderly woman crossed the street. People waiting their turn at a four-way stop. In his native Korea, Ki-Seong sees many drivers who are impatient or disrespectful. He was impressed with the concern American drivers seem to show for safety, especially that of children. Ki-Seong wrote about his traffic culture shock for an essay contest sponsored by a statewide nonprofit organization for teachers of English as a Second Language and bilingual teachers. His essay won first place. |
search for : English as a Second Language, bilingual teachers
English is central to our shared experience
| A few years ago when the international terminal opened at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, I picked up an “English to English Dictionary” at the British Airways desk. I remembered what Winston Churchill said, “Great Britain and the United States are two countries separated by a common language.” That could probably be said of people in Massachusetts and Texas today. I’m all for learning as many languages as possible. (My own English-speaking grandchildren attend a Spanish preschool and are well on their way to being bilingual.) But if we have any hope at all of unifying our North Texas area, let alone our country, we’re going to have to communicate with each other in English – not because English is superior, but because, in a very real way, the English language has made us who we are. |  |
New options for growing Hispanic population
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As Cherokee County has continued to develop, it’s residents have diversified to include a steady rise in the Hispanic population. Based upon population estimates in 2005 from the U.S. Census Bureau, over 300 of the approximately 25,796 people in Cherokee County are Hispanic or Latino. The teacher of the ESL class is Isabelle King who previously worked as an interpreter for Even Start, a program that helped mothers earn their GED. Bull said that while working with the mothers, King learned that several Hispanic women expressed a desire to learn English. From those women and others in the community, the class took shape and has recently been available for the past couple of weeks. While a local organization provides an ESL class free of charge, the school system has yet to add such a class to their curriculumn. |
search for : ESL class, desire to learn English