Diane Mufson: Americans must speak more than just English
Huntington Herald Dispatch, WV - Mar 14, 2008
"While many recent immigrants speak a foreign language and have various
degrees of facility in English, the great majority of Americans are
monolingual; they communicate only in English." …

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages indicates that about a third of American students in grades 7 to 12 are taking foreign languages, but more than 95 percent study only Spanish, French, German, Italian or Latin." …

"The same article also noted that the Chinese have more than 200 million
students studying English, but fewer than 24,000 Americans are studying
the Chinese language. In everyday terms, this means that millions of
Chinese will understand our conversations but only a tiny fraction of
Americans will comprehend theirs."…

"In the 21st century, teaching foreign languages should be viewed as
just as important as math, computers, science and social studies.
Schools should be offering a variety of foreign languages to all
students from an early age.Our traditional way of teaching foreign languages to mainly
college-bound high school students is ineffective. Developing fluency
or even familiarity within another language also tends to …"