Before, I sought m future as an Engineer, I was confident I would have no trouble communicating with my colleagues in English – mostly because Engineering involves understanding concepts and quantitative skills. But recently (in about 6months), I changed my mind and wanted to become a management consultant, which is much more on the business side. While I was confident that I could learn all the necessary skills by attending a business school, I was worried that my English proficiency would get in the way because of the nature of the business field which involves a lot of speaking and communication skills.
Even after living in the US for about 11 years now, in some situations, I had hard time comprehending the language -- for example, when I am watching a movie. This had me underestimate my English proficiency as a whole before discussing Gloria Anzaldua’s work in class. Now, I know that it’s because I am not proficient in THAT particular “type” of English spoken in the movie.
With the realization that there are many different types of English spoken depending on the situation, it relieves me greatly, because it means that I just need to LEARN the languages.
It’s not a huge barrier of the whole English language (that I’ve been dealing with ever since 11 years ago) anymore but only another style of language to be familiar with.
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I feel like this is a realization for even proficient English speakers that were born here. Very interesting that we all have common barriers when it comes to languages.
ReplyDeleteYour blog makes me comfortable in that you can be familiar with some type of language in terms of different situations continually. I desperately hope to go up to your English level where I can learn some other types of English on top of mine freely.
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