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Well, English can be darn confusing, even for native speakers. English is also taught in a "formal" manner, which is completely different from how English speakers actually speak and/or write English. Growing up in California, I took Spanish as it seemed the most logical foreign language for me to learn. Most Spanish-speaking students took Spanish, too, which I thought was silly until I realized the Spanish we are taught at American institutions is actually the Spanish from Spain, which is different from the Spanish in Mexico, or Columbia. Native Spanish speakers could easily point out those who learned Spanish from a textbook from those who learned it from real-life interactions.
I knew people who taught English in foreign countries. Essentially, they taught American English to those who already had a decent understanding of English to begin with.
I am not sure about the top U.S. universities, but there are some that do require a foreign language. However, it is more common for a particular major to require it, not the entire school. One school I was looking at required two years of foreign language or proof of proficiency for a BS in Biology, and all BA in Biology programs that I was aware of also required two semesters of foreign language in lieu of the extra biology courses required for the BS.
STEM students wishing to continue on into graduate school used to need proficiency in a foreign language-most often Latin- as required by admissions, but that has since been dropped.
English is the standard language in STEM. So, there's no need to learn a foreign language if you already know English.
I have no idea how different Spanish in Spain differs from Spanish in Mexico. But I suppose you won't encounter a real language barrier when you travel to the U.K.
I was amazed when I visited China how few people spoke English. Not that we expected citizens to be bi-lingual, but from traveling to other parts of the world, it was surprising. When my daughter taught there she told us that she would go for days without hearing English from anyone other then her roommate or her few ex-pat friends. The school where she taught gave lip service to teaching English, but they really just wanted bragging rights that they had a native English speaker.
Where did she go? In Shanghai, there are tons of Americans and you can hear English often.
Bilingual Chinese rarely speak English with other Chinese in China, which makes perfect sense. You have to ask them to know who knows English and who doesn't.
Chinese educators have no idea how to teach English. In the past decades, "strict" English requirement for admission was adopted but less than 1% students turned out to be proficient in English.
So they decided to give up. English proficiency is unattainable.
There are around 20 million university students in China. 1% of that would be 200,000 who are proficient in English. Now ask yourself the following: how many American students are proficient in Chinese?
English is the standard language in STEM. So, there's no need to learn a foreign language if you already know English.
I have no idea how different Spanish in Spain differs from Spanish in Mexico. But I suppose you won't encounter a real language barrier when you travel to the U.K.
English has only recently been accepted as the lingua franca in STEM, yet many researchers still publish papers in their native tongue. As for China, their ratio for English:Chinese language in STEM is roughly one-to-one, which is extremely low. Not to mention in China something around 72%, if I remember correctly, of physical science papers are published in Chinese.
Spanish and Mexicans can understand each other, sure. But when the Spaniards brought their language to Mexico, a little bit of Mayan got mixed in as well as other Native language. There is some difference in syntax, vocabulary, suffixes and prefixes, and Mexicans still use words that are now considered "archaic" in Spain.
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