Learn Chinese: America’s Key To The Far East
Posted on April 10, 2009
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China has more than 1.3 billion people. While English is still the most widely spoken language in the world it is hard to ignore the fact that learning Chinese is a key element for success in the future. Given the fact that China possesses the fastest growing economy in the world it is ignorant to believe that we only need communicate in English and expect the rest of the people in the world to follow us. By failing to foresee this need to learn Chinese we could be shortchanging ourselves and possibly risk getting left behind in terms of lost business opportunities.
As I mentioned before, the number of people learning Chinese in the United States is still far more less than those who learns French and Spanish. Bust the number of people who are learning Chinease is growing at a tremendous speed in Asian countries. Take Japan for expample, it ranks second behind English as the most studied language in schools. This could signal that Americans are still fail to understand the importance of Chinese languange, and cannot accept the idea to learn Chinese, in fact, Chinese can help them compete on the global economic stage. This has not gone unnoticed by the US government, the US government provided millions in funding for schools to increase the number of Chinese classes to be offered and listed Chinese as a critical language. They also increased the number of teachers to help increase the exposure in the US to learn Chinese.
As a result we are now starting to see a trickle down effect. In previous years we mainly saw Chinese families taking their children to learn Chinese as a way of maintaining their culture. Times are changing now, more and more parents which are not Chinese are enrolling their children to learn Chinese in classes. They believe this will open more doors and career opportunities for their children in the future. This could not be further from the truth as China is the United States biggest trading partner. Learning Chinese will help any budding business person or current business person to compete on the global economy. Chinese is not only spoken in China but is the business language used other Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
There are other benefits of learning Chinese other than pure economics. It can provide opportunities to study China, and you can learn Chinese culture. For the second reason, it helps you to build discipline and knowledge. Thirdly, it can help you to develop your creative and critical thinking skills.
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