Immigrant language schools

Zhuangzi   Sun Oct 02, 2005 6:24 pm GMT
I was recently on a panel discussion on Mandarin TV here in Vancouver. The subject was immigration. I made the point that language is key to work place success for immigrants.

My counterparts was a Chinese immigration lawyer who said that that is an unrealistic expectation. He felt that the mainstream employers use the requirements that immigrants speak good English and be able to interact effectively with locals as a means of putting down the immigrants. According to him it takes 40 years to learn to speak English well.

My experience is that those who do not apply themselves very early to getting their English up to speed, soon lose interest and never really try. I also feel that anyone who lives in an English speaking city like Vancouver and attends a government sponsored language course will probably never learn to speak properly. Only those who independently seek out the language through TV, books, newspapers and local contacts as well as committed self-study, will ever progress. In other words the schools are a substitute for the autonomous learning process that is the only road to effective fluency. Any comments?
Guest   Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:57 pm GMT
You must be right!
Gjones2   Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:39 am GMT
Zhuangzi, I'm not familiar with the government language schools, but I suspect that you're right that mastery is going to require going beyond them. Also I agree with you about the importance of trying to learn the language. There are some jobs in which persons can get along with little knowledge, but obviously knowing the language well is a big advantage in others, especially most of the good ones.

The lawyer seems to be implying that there's not much point in trying to get better, because you're going to be discriminated against anyway. In my opinion this is the worst thing you can say to an immigrant or to anybody else in the society who is starting out relatively poor. Companies need competent employees. There may be some instances of unfair discrimination, but there will be many more in which the abilities of the applicant are going to matter.

Negative prophecies about what people can achieve tend to be self-fulfilling. Discouraged persons stop trying (some are looking for an excuse to stop anyway) and, not surprisingly, they end up not doing very well. Forty years later they find themselves at about where they were before.

People vary greatly, and some individuals may lack the ability, temperament, or motivation to do well in some areas. They shouldn't be discouraged beforehand, though. They should find out for themselves what they are good at, how hard they are willing to work, and what they like to do, then adjust their career path to suit their own particular situation.