Claire+S’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Title of Speech= Multilingual Education in the United States

=Text of Speech=

For those of you who haven’t completely blocked in out of your mind, or who have tried to and failed, you remember the DBQ question on our AP History test regarding United States foreign policy from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. You remember barfing your mental laundry list of ching in some sort of semi-comprehensive succession into the test booklet, beginning with the refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and to become a member of the League of Nations, and continuing toward America’s new Cold War position as a provider and policeman on the new world stage. Regardless of how you arrived there, you likely reached, as one theme of your essay, an overarching conclusion: for the most part, the United States, despite significant geographical isolation, is no longer an isolationist nation.

And while stricter security and immigration policies have developed following incidents such as Watergate and September 11th, this general trend still holds true today, or is amplified because of incidents like 9/11. Either way, it can’t be denied that America is a nation that is heavily involved in the affairs of the rest of the world, politically, militarily, and economically. A massive number or worldwide corporations are based in the U.S., notably Pepsi and Coca-Cola and Google, and a large portion of corporations in the United States are based abroad. So, clearly we are a worldwide presence, but it is the nature of that presence that is concerning.

Why is it that when I type “ugly American” into Google, one of those little white boxes pops up at the top of my search results to give me an official definition that reads as follows: “an American who behaves offensively abroad?” Why doesn’t this happen when I type in “ugly Englishman” or “ugly Finn,” or “ugly Canadian?”

In the context of this situation, let me present you with some facts: There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. Nearly three quarters of the world’s population is proficient in two or more languages. 56% of Europeans speak two or more, as do 35% of Canadians. One-third of all of the corporations in the United States are either owned or based abroad, and yet this dual language proficiency extends to only 17% of Americans, a massive portion of whom are immigrants or their children who acquire the second language at home.

The result of this discrepancy is this: The majority of Europeans have two languages to aid in communication abroad. The far greater majority of Americans are equipped, instead, only with two “volume settings” to make themselves understood when traveling in other countries, whether for leisure, business, or other reasons. Is it any wonder that the stereotype persists of the American standing and waving his hands in a foreign subway station and demanding assistance in English with increasing volume, or that Canadians are frequently known to stitch Canadian flags onto all of their belongings, just to avoid being mistaken for Americans abroad?

However, instead of the acknowledgement of this issue, it seems to have become a trend for Americans to flaunt their geographical, cultural, and linguistic ignorance, and little effort has been made to promote the study of foreign language in public schools before high school.

And why wouldn’t we promote it? It’s proven that study of foreign language increases your understanding of your own language. Because conjugation rules in English aren’t readily apparent, nor are spelling and pronunciation rules, those who learn English as a first language pay little attention to the laws and adopted patterns that govern these, especially the rules that apply to the conjugation of verbs. Studying in depth a more systematic and consistent language like Finnish, or Russian, or Spanish, forces English-speaking students to recognize patterns and subsequently apply these formerly invisible rules to English, which inevitably heightens comprehension and competence with use of the language.We know from experience which words are right, but knowing why a certain form of a word is correct in a given place allows for a deeper understanding of the language and a skill for pattern recognition and memory that carries over into other subjects, including math and sciences.

It’s been proven again and again that multilingualism helps fine tune the auditory nervous system and helps juggle linguistic input in ways that enhance attention, inhibition, memory, and efficient encoding of sound, and it also aids in geographic knowledge, a category in which American students are severely lacking.

And, with American education and test scores hovering significantly behind those of many other nations, these benefits, which aid significantly in other academic subjects can’t be ignored. Additionally, language education in school promotes tolerance, flexibility, confidence and creativity from an early age and sets up students to be global assets in an increasingly global society. Bilingualism expands business and career opportunities and allows for the creation, maintenance, and proofreading of websites created in other languages, and it is proven, for obvious reasons, that people prefer to buy and conduct online transactions in their native language.

It’s clear that linguistic isolationism hurts Americans and the American education system in more ways than one, and so, in the America I grow up in, I hope to see a society that puts a greater investment into multilingual education at an early age, and emphasizes the importance of being a globally cognizant and competent citizen, and teaches that the need to understand other cultures and languages is a greater imperative than ever.

Teaching foreign language to students at an early age will allow them to learn more naturally, before they lose the ability to make the sounds characteristic of the language. There is no reason why it should not be treated as a core subject along with math, sciences, and English. And while this will mean spending more money on our public schools, creating bilingual or multilingual citizens is essential to solidifying the United States’ place in the global marketplace and political arena.

=Cite Your Sources= Northwestern University site A few other people www.mla.org/flreport