Outlining

Why the great United States of America are lame?

Whatever happened to educated American High School students?

Sprechen Sie eine Sprache?

Do you speak another language?

What have multilingual and American in common? - Nothing?

Another language than English?

How competitive are American High school students w/o learning another language?

Languages way too late?

Why?

How come that Americans are known for their stupidity? - Would learning another language and being interested in other cultures help?

Intro:
a,attention getting device

"If you speak two languages, then you are bilingual. Speak one? You must be American." Almost everybody knows this joke. But what is true about this joke?

b,preview of main points

*history( 1940's, 1970's, analysis, world languages, world power)
* present ( what happened to predictions?)
*future ( How necessary are the for the future?)

c, transition to thesis statement/main question or point of the paper

Thesis: American high school students are way behind in comparison to students from different countries..



Body:

I, History, Present, Future TIMELINE

- topic sentence about one side of the issue

+ PAST

* 1940, 90% = French, Spanish, Latin

* What kind of a problem does it create for Americans that @ the end of the century this still remains/

+ PRESENT

* The 2000 issue (maybe the last as a solution for the problem with Latin)

* China

*touch base on europe to mention how serious those issues are

- research and quotations from sources to prove the topic sentence is correct

+ Main points from "Lost in America" (past and present)

+Future: "Campaign urges America to learn foreign languages"

Transition sentence to the next paragraph:

Talk a little bit about the issues, while explaining in the first paragraph what is goiing on in america and what the main issues are. because then you can write something like one of the main issues bla bla bla is That American High Schoolers learn languages way too late. Ta-ram-ta-ram!

II, Starting to learn another language at the age of High School is way too late!

- topic sentence about one side of the issue

Show don't tell that Americans learn a language way too late; gibe facts; what is going on around the world.

* The average American teenager learns his/her first language at the age of 15. so when they go to high school.

* scientists mention that children can learn languages @ a very early age

- research and quotations from sources to prove the topic sentence is correct

* "Bringing up Baby Bilingual"

Transition sentence to next paragraph because it is talking about Europe. Maybe something like: By the time American High school students start to learn their first second language, the average student in Austria learns his/her third or forth second language.

III, Europe the role model?! (norway, sweden, austria, germany...?)

When do they start to learn the languages? Why is it so important to them to learn another language? English as language of opportunity?

- topic sentence about the other side of the issue

*By the time the average American High Schooler learns his/her first second language an european 2/3

- research and quotations from sources to prove the topic sentence is correct

IV, Positvie side aobut - What could people argue about me?

- topic sentence about the other side of the issue

Is the problem really that serious

how about the fact how much money was spent on education

- research and quotations from sources to prove the topic sentence is correct

V, Solutions

- topic sentence stating your position on the issue

* change in school system

* language villages?

- reasons and research that say why you chose this standpoint

Conclusion:

a,

Re-state thesis

b,

Review main Points

c,

Use an attention-getting device to send the reader off in a thought-provoking manner

Facts that are good but so far don't fit anywhere right now:

* it seems that english is the world language: arrogance

*American school system right now doesn't really give the student any room to learn more languages.

Annotation # 5

Our gloabal success depends on language<>

Nowadays the Internet erods geographical boundaries and our world shrinks, the ability to speak another language is no longer a plus on the resume, it is a necessity. Many U.S. companies also understand that a multilingual workforce is the only way they can compete abroad, so they send employees to language schools. English still seems to as the "language of opportunity" which may explain why some of Americans thinksit is not important to learn another language than English.President Bush"s bipartisan commisssion reported that if we want to be globally competent, we need to start by having more college students study abroad. The Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program's goal is 1 million students studying abroad by 2017.

Annotation #5

Sutdents taking strides in froeign languages

More college students are studying foreign languages than ever before. In 2002 over 53% of the total language enrollments was Spanish. Enrollments in general have increased, including German and French. And 148 less commonly taught languages were being sutdies in 2002, compared with 137 in 1998, an 8% increase. Students recognize the importance of learning other languages as we become a more global society. In all, 1.4 million students took a foreign language course last fall at U.S. colleges and universities, the highest number ever recorded and a 17.9% increase since 1998. In comparison, ungraduate enrollment increased 7.5% in that period.

Annotation #3

Bringing up a child billingual

Jayme Simoes' mother is American and his father is from Portugal. He was born in Portugal and lived there for his first year of his life and became fluent in Portuguese. But after that they moved back to the United States of America and English dominated his daily life. For three years he had lost almost his whole Portuguese.But after only spending somes summers in Portugal with his grandparents, he regained it again. Now married and proud father of Marcus, Simoes is raising his child billingual.

At least 10 million school-aged live in homes where family members speak a language other than English, the Departments of Education reports. But raising a child billingual is not that easy as it sounds, you must have specific ideas about what you want your child to be able to do in both languages. You aslso should avoid mixing languages, so children will hear each tongue in pure form. Some families decide to speak English at home and the other language everywhere else.

Annotation #2

As globalization goes on it seems more and more that we have one common language. The spread throughout the globe is also known as " unique in the history of world". English has nowadays more non-native speakers than native ones.

Facts about English
*Out of five people worldwide speaks English to some level of competence.
*More than two-thirds of the world's scientists read in English

Another Annotation

I have been teaching for twenty-two years and there has not been a year, where parents have not requested to have their children learn a second language in Middle school. We have bombs for Iraq, but we don’t have money for education. I remember when I started the class sizes were down to 25, nowadays I have 40 to 45 students sitting in my class. I think I don’t have to explain that this is a big distraction for some of the kids. If you looked at the class sizes in Europe it seems that you are on a whole different planet. Culture plays a big part. Europeans are anxious to learn another language. It is so easy for them to travel around and speak another language. For us Americans it is quite hard, all we have really close is Canada and Mexico. That’s why I really recommend the trips that we organize for kids. It is so important to go to a country where the language is spoken. That is the only way you really get better at languages. Besides to the low class sizes in Europe the behavior of students is another factor that makes the difference. It seems to me that we have to deal here with so much behavior issues that seem not to exist in the good old Europe. Well and another thing that does not exist in Europe is after-school-activities. Sports here are a big part of a teenager’s life here. I have at least two to five students per trimester who give me excuses that they weren’t able to do their homework or to study because they had a game the day before. Motivation and the attitude to education are way lower here in the United States. Politicians do a lot of “lip-service”. They say that Education is more important than Sports but look at it. We all know it is not true. Americans are not really forced to learn another language. The media is mostly in English. Pop culture is mostly in English. Remember when we banned German as a world language after WWII. Man, that was a mistake! There is no such thing as permanent Allies only permanent interest.

Annotation #1

LOST IN AMERICA

If you speak two languages, then you are bilingual. Speak one? You
must be American. Globalization has brought a lot of changes and
trends to America. But through all those chance
that globalization has brought to America the average classroom has lagged
behind. In the late 1940's, more than 90 percent of kids who studied a
foreign language learned French, Spanish, or Latin. At the end of the century,
that figure remained the same. At least two decades after politcal
scientists that China would be the next world's power, only a little more than
1,300 public high school students studied Chinese. Instead of learning
Arabic languanges, 175,000 students have learned Latin instead. In 2000 two
thirds of American students never studied a second language.