Wall Street Journal Article on Correcting Business Students' English---My Idea, Take them to Bars

How Students From Abroad Learn to Talk the Talk


"Now, North Carolina is rolling out a program called Honing Executive English Language Skills, or Heels (a catchy acronym to Tar Heels fans). It requires all of its foreign M.B.A. students -- more than a quarter of the class -- to take an oral and written test when they arrive on campus. The students are rated on a nine-point scale based on their accent, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and other factors. To boost their scores, students can pay a fee to take special classes taught by linguists that focus on speaking English in a business context...



"In the HEELS classes at North Carolina, students are grouped by their native regions, such as Western Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Africa or Latin America, because they tend to share similar problems with accent and pronunciation. The program also addresses nonverbal communication and body language, which may vary from culture to culture. The classes attempt to change behavior that might be misinterpreted by U.S. managers, co-workers or clients. "For example, a U.S. recruiter would expect direct eye contact and a firm handshake," says Mindy Storrie, interim director of Kenan-Flagler's career management center, "but that isn't a universal norm in other countries' business dealings."...


"In addition to the English classes, North Carolina offers courses for international M.B.A. students on American culture -- from sports and entertainment to the origin of slang expressions -- and on U.S. business communication, including practice exercises for impromptu speeches, team presentations, boardroom pitches and employee performance reviews...


"While North Carolina's courses are among the most comprehensive, other schools are also expanding programs to help foreign students prepare for careers in the U.S. The University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business, where nearly half of the M.B.A. class is international, offers an English-language and U.S.-culture program that includes language instruction and trips to museums, theaters and sports events."


Here's my take. These foreign business students are, in a sense, trying to create models of what an American business co-worker is inside their heads. Once they do that, they can imitate that model and thus build rapport. The problem, from my perspective is that they are trying to model "half" a person. That is to say, they are trying to build a model of people by only looking at one side.

This idea was triggered by the last quoted paragraph: talking about taking them to museums, theaters, and sports events. This struck me is not a very effective way to achieve the desired goal. Better would be to take them to bars and allow them to see something of the "other side" of Americans.

One could argue that bars are themselves a somewhat artificial venue, but the point is, it is difficult to inject foreign business students into America in a real way. One key element of a bar is---it is publicly accessible. I would send in two-person teams consisting of one foreign business student at one American "expert" in bars. The job of the American would be: first of all, to keep the person safe; secondly, try to prevent too much emotional damage; and third, provide an opportunity for real exposure to Americans completely outside a business context.

It has to be one foreign student at a time or else they will circle the wagons.

Mossberg Says Amazon ebook Delivers Books---Short on Software

This is referencing a Mossberg article in the Wall Street Journal of the past couple of weeks. Probably around November 19 when two other articles on the subject appeared in WSJ, but I can't find the specific Mossberg reference.

Here is the essence of the matter. Mossberg checked out the new Amazon e-book called Kindle, or something, and found its access to books and periodicals was pretty decent. In addition, he found that reading it was like reading a piece of paper. (It uses the same technology as Sony e-book which apparently is for rent from the company that created it.)

On the other hand, Mossberg hand the product because the software was inadequate. My point is, what does this mean? Sony has already done a fairly good job on the software, I would set the solution of that problem is really quite trivial.

In other words, the demise of the book is in fact at hand.

Yes, there have been false alarms, but the technology is finally ready. Books may persist for a while in the form of novels were perhaps treatises on philosophy, that sort of thing. But in terms of sources of information, the book is clearly on its way out.

The implications are interesting. Of course, there will be "books" of information on various subjects that will be downloaded to e-books. unlike current paper books however, these books will be linked via the Internet to other sources of relevant information. So the entire concept of a book will to a significant extent, become much more fuzzy. A new group of words will develop to describe these new types of "books." "Books", will probably be much more of a collaboration in the near future than they are now. Getting credit for one's ideas and words will still be important, and authorship labels will still accompany the various pieces of text that will conglomerate to become a "book." But I don't think any one person will be controlling the boundaries of "books" anymore. Rather, I imagine that there would be multiple editors, each defining his or her version of the "book."

In addition, new editions of the books can be created virtually at any time and the frequency of new additions would be unrestrained by anything. Reminds me of some of the people who publish regularly on the Internet, who include a time of day with the article as well as a date. cat in the near future, there will in many cases be more than one addition of a book within a single day simply because an author has found new information and added it.