POST 1:READING FOR INFORMATION

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Many people love learning languages or would like to learn a language and use their language skills in a job. In today's global economy the demand for language skills continues to grow as governments, businesses and organisations build relationships with foreign interests.

Learning a language is beneficial in employment for two reasons; 1) it offers those in established careers the chance to progress either through gaining promotions or international travel and experience, and 2) it opens doors to new careers and employment opportunities.

This article will look at the range of jobs learning a language can offer.

International Organisations

International organisations such as the United Nations, World Trade Organisation, the Red Cross, and Amnesty International will always need people with language skills for a range of functions from administrative work to management. Most will need a cross section of language skills plus many speakers in the main international languages such as English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

The Foreign Service

National governments demand huge numbers of foreign language speakers for their Foreign Service departments. Working for the Foreign Service could mean living and working abroad in an embassy, liaising with counterparts in other countries, listening to intelligence reports in foreign languages and translating them and conducting research in foreign languages.The Foreign Service is usually a challenge to get into; however, it is well known that language skills help bolster applicants' profiles.

Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industries

Speaking a foreign language makes you a good candidate for positions within the tourism and hospitality industries.
Many companies send staff to man local offices abroad, which means speakers of the native languages are required. In addition, the international nature of such companies usually means they have a global presence and that staff with language skills are critical to their day to day operations and future expansion.
Even at home, where hotels, leisure complexes, restaurants receive large numbers of foreign visitors, speakers of foreign languages are needed to offer good customer service.

Translation & Interpreting

Once language skills have reached a good level, translating and interpreting become an option.
Translators deal with written materials and typically translate texts from a source language into their own native language. Translators usually need qualifications or accreditation, but once this is achieved it is easy to register with a number of translation agencies that pass on work to freelancers. After some time many translators become specialised in certain fields such as software, law or social sciences.
Similarly, interpreters, who deal with spoken language, also need qualifications and most importantly experience. Interpreters can also register with agencies that use them for interpreting projects. Interpreters work in two ways:1) Simultaneous - the interpreter translates in real time such as in conferences.2) Consecutive - the interpreter listens to a section of speech, waits for the speaker to pause, then translates such as in business meetings.

Teaching

Many speakers of foreign languages go into teaching. Teaching not only offers the chance to pass on knowledge of a language, but also to constantly practice it.
Teachers can work at a variety of different institutions such as private language schools, government schools or adult education colleges. Languages are taught to a range of age groups from kindergarten to adults. Once teachers have developed their skills they may also gain more qualifications and/or specialise in areas such as Business French or Spanish and law.
The above examples of jobs are but a few of the possibilities available to speakers of foreign languages. The variety points to the fact that learning a language opens up many doors in relation to employment and careers development. So if you would like to advance in your career or considering a new line of work, why not consider learning a language?

© Kwintessential Ltd

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/foreign-languages.htmlial.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/foreign-languages.html

Salam and Hello everyone!(^^)

How are you today? I hope all of you will be always in pink of health.
Okey, today I would like to share with you an article about learning foreign language. I chose this article because I want to get information about my interest which is learning foreign language. I love to learn foreign language because for me it is very fun and interesting. In addition, while I am learning the foreign language, I also can learn about its culture. Learning culture is very fun because I can know another country culture and it will widen my knowledge. Therefore, as stated in the article, there are several advantages of learning foreign language that I’m sure we can get it if we learn foreign language.

Here I would like to share with you some tips on how to learn foreign language.

Firstly, to learn foreign language you need to have deep interest and high motivation to do it, because it can help you in sticking with your decision, and put more efforts to learn foreign language because, it is not easy to learn foreign language. Moreover, if the foreign language that you want to learn has its own alphabet, for instance, Japanese Language that has alphabet called Katagana, Hiragana and Kanji. Thus, you must learn and memorize the entire alphabet in order to ensure that you can read the language. All these difficulties you can face, if you have deep interest and high motivation because, as an English proverb had mentioned, no pain no gain.

Next, the right methods are needed in order to learn foreign language effectively. The first method is, you can start by searching the information about the language from books or the easiest and fastest way nowadays by using the internet. In the internet, there is lots of website on how to learn foreign language. For example, http://www.spanish.speak7.com/, and http://www.frenchassistant.com/. Other than that, you can also learn foreign language by watching foreign dramas that you like. For instance, if you want to learn Mandarin Language you can watch Chinese drama. Same goes to Korean Language; where you can watch the Korea’s television programmes at KBS World Channel 303 at ASTRO. Besides that, listening to the foreign language’s song is also another method to learn foreign language. For example, if you want to learn Hindi Language, you can listen to Hindi songs such as Original Soundtrack (OST) from the Hindi movies. All these methods above would expose you to the language better and widely.

Lastly, when you already have the two steps above, then you must have an initiative to use the foreign language that you want to learn. It could be done by practicing and applying it regularly in your daily life. As people said, practices make perfect. You can start to apply it by calling your family members or things around you in the language that you are learning. After your vocabulary becomes much better, you can start to converse in that language with simple phrase and later on using complete sentences. This is important in order to ensure that you can acquire the foreign language well in the end of the day.

So let’s we learn foreign language!(^^)

*These tips are taken from my essay entitled 'How to Learn Foreign Language' for my SKBE 1033 course based from my experience learned foreign language which was Japanese Language when I was in secondary school.Now, I am learning Korean Language and using the same methods as I mentioned above :)

Wish me luck!(^^)