THE Bush administration of United States promotes its new initiative to keep the US competitive by encouraging innovation through tax breaks for corporate research spending. However, some US experts worry that the administration's current push doesn't do anything to address the US's globalization Achilles' heel: Americans' lack of foreign language skills, reports USA Today.
"Like it or not, knowledge of the world is no longer a luxury," says Michael Levine, executive director for education at the Asia Society of US. "Other countries are moving ahead with their educational systems, and it's certainly a competitive advantage for them." For example, in China more than 200 million students study English. In the US, just 24,000 American kids are studying Chinese. Less than 1 per cent of today's American high school students are studying the languages likely to be among the most important to the US's future: Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Japanese and Russian, according to the US Education Department.
Foreign language study in the US traditionally has been introduced as an elective at the middle and secondary school levels. But nowadays parents increasingly are demanding foreign language study for their children in preschool. The government also encourages people to learn new languages. The administration unveiled a US$114 million programme aimed at increasing the number of Americans fluent in such critical languages. The initiative is motivated largely by national security concerns but is expected to have spillover benefits.
According to the Bureau of International Information Programmes (BIIP), US Department of State, gone are the days when many American students suffered a regimen of dull classroom work followed by long hours locked up in "language labs" listening to language tapes. Nowadays, innovative school curriculums, entertaining and affordable interactive computer training programmes, more opportunities to travel and a broader global outlook have motivated people to learn new languages.
Jane Morse, a staff writer of Washington File, the product of BIIP, said, "Children are taught new languages using songs, rhymes, games and television shows. Affordable computer programmes allow students to learn new languages at their own pace.
"On many of the language-training compact discs, students can record their own voices and compare their pronunciation to that of native speakers. The programmes include photos, drills, quizzes and interactive games that make learning a language engaging and enjoyable."
