Program Puts Accent on English : County’s Foreign-Born Workers Improve Language Skills
A woman who fled Hungary at age 21 and a man who bailed out of Iran after the revolution that toppled the shah sat opposite each other across the long conference table.
With them were a woman from the Philippines and a man born in Nanjing, mainland China, and educated on the island of Taiwan.
All were Orange County employees, gathered at 7:30 a.m. for one of the twice-weekly, hourlong sessions aimed at conquering a wily and persistent foe: the English language.
The county’s Environmental Management Agency began the program last January with the specific goal of improving the pronunciation of its foreign-born workers. Since then, nearly 48 county employees have taken the 12-week course.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” said Aniko Sherry, the woman who left Hungary by herself 15 years ago for what she describes as “very private” reasons. “In business, they don’t take anyone seriously who has an accent.”
Even though the staff member may know the subject inside out, Sherry said, business people involved in big-money developments in the county and seeking permits from the EMA want to speak to “someone who is very sure of herself and doesn’t sound like she just got off the boat.”
So Sherry and her colleagues gather in an EMA conference room on Tuesday and Thursday mornings to hear teacher Nancy Hiser say things such as “good volume, good loudness” or “that’s a tough one, the ‘f’ to the ‘th,’ ” when a student’s tongue has trouble with the word “fifth.”
Betty Shaffer, executive assistant to the EMA director, came up with the idea of the program and successfully pitched it to her boss, Murray I. Storm, who retired as director earlier this month.
The county’s affirmative-action program lures foreign-born students seeking jobs, Shaffer said. But many who would be civil engineers at home are only aides in their county jobs because of problems with English. Supervisors have reported that their employees who completed the program have shown marked improvement, and one employee overcame his doubts about his language ability sufficiently to seek and win a promotion, Shaffer said.
The program is designed to improve students’ communications with their bosses, colleagues and the public, Shaffer said, and to boost their self-confidence.
There are cultural problems to overcome, as well.
“I come into the class and talk about workplace norms,” Shaffer said. “Many (students) come from places where the individual doesn’t have responsibility, the supervisor does. And the tradition is not to ask questions of the supervisor. In an egalitarian society here, we don’t have those problems.”
Indeed, Hamid Bahadori, who left Iran after the revolution, said callers who complain about traffic problems hold him, not his boss, responsible for doing something. And if they aren’t satisfied with his answer, he said, some lash out at his nationality.
Double Standard
“If they call to the office and complain about traffic, an American says, ‘We can’t do anything about it,’ or, ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ (callers) think well, we’re worthless, and hang up.
“But if I say the same thing, they say, ‘You’re a (expletive) foreigner.’ ”
Classmate Albert Chu, who works for the county Health Care Agency, added that some callers who hear an accent “feel threatened. They think you’re taking their friend’s job.”
And Florencia Foronda, a Filipina, told of a previous job where a caller refused to talk to her, saying, “I don’t want to talk to a Mexican.”
The 12-week course costs the county about $530 per participant, which includes tape recorders loaned to students, and tapes and books used in the class, at home and in the car.
Nuances a Problem
Hiser is a licensed speech pathologist and a partner in Speech Communication Associates, an Irvine company that conducts programs for private firms.
Her county students are “all functional on the job,” Hiser said. “They have good language skills, they’ve studied in their native countries, they come here and study.” But the nuances of English remain a problem.
The Chinese language generally has no plural forms and no past tense, Hiser said, leaving listeners to understand the meaning from the context of the conversation. But hearing English without plurals or past tense “drives Americans to distraction,” she said.
Chu, 51, who received a sociology degree from a college in Taiwan and an advanced sociology degree from the University of Oregon, said he studied some English before emigrating but “it was mostly grammar.’
He said his teachers were native Chinese and their English “pronunciation is far off.”
Although some of the students said they preferred in-person encounters to telephone conversations because of worries about their pronunciation, in practice they proved their command of the customary sign-offs.
“Merry Christmas,” Sherry said, ending one phone talk.
And Bahadori ended his with “Have a good day.”
