Education Week – Walt Gardner
“The U.S. is tongue tied at a time when the need for learning foreign languages has never been greater (“America’s Lacking Language Skills,” The Atlantic, May 10). Less than one percent of adults in the U.S. are proficient in a foreign language that they studied in a classroom. Of students in K-12, fewer students are studying what are called strategic languages, let alone becoming proficient in them. I can understand up to a point the reluctance of students to study, for example, Mandarin, Arabic or Farsi. According to the Foreign Service Institute, which trains American diplomats, it takes the average native English speaker 1,320 hours to become proficient…Yet the payoff can be huge. Corporations and government agencies are desperate to find qualified speakers. They pay them accordingly…if I were still in school I would choose to learn Mandarin because of the potential career benefits. The time and effort required to speak it would be well worthwhile in the new global economy.”(more)