June 24, 2004 - Language Map of the United States

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Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: June 24, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a map of mother tongues in America.

RS: Last week, we told you about americanrhetoric.com, a collection of well-known American speeches. Well, there's something brand new on the Web. It's a way to find out which languages are spoken in any American neighborhood, and by how many people.

AA: The Modern Language Association created the map with information from the last U.S. population count, the Census of 2000. The executive director of this scholarly association, Rosemary Feal, says the map is for educators, marketers, public officials -- really, anyone interested.

FEAL: "We started off with a paper map -- it sounds quaint -- on a table, sort of putting Post-it's, you know, here's a concentration of Arabic speakers and here's the Portuguese speakers. And we soon realized that it had to be interactive and we thought, well, why not put it on the Web and let everyone take advantage of it."

RS: "Now how is this different from just the census data? Doesn't the local government take in the census data and analyze it and use it? How would this be any different?"

FEAL: "Well, first of all, ours allows anyone to have access and to play around with it, whereas if the particular community has the census data, it's probably buried in some report that addresses the demographics."

"Sure we all have the numbers available to us, but it's another thing to plug in your Zip [postal] code and to see those 300 speakers of Polish and the 80 speakers of Vietnamese in a tabular fashion, or to look at the language map and see the colors jumping out at you where the density of certain speakers might be high."

AA: "What are the top five languages that you've got?"

FEAL: "The top languages spoken at home in the United States after English [are] Spanish, Chinese, French, German and Tagalog. Now that German is very interesting, because we know there was a great influx of Germans in previous immigration waves. But it's fascinating to see how many speakers of German there still are in the United States."

RS: "And how did that break down, over 18 and under 18?"

FEAL: "For example German, if you look at the states where it's most spoken, like California, there's over 135,000 adults who speak German in California, but only around 11,000 children between five and seventeen. In New York, 85,000 speakers over age 18 and only 7,000 under. So you can see that it's coming out to less than 10 percent (who are under 18)."

AA: "So what are some of the up and coming languages in this country?"

FEAL: "Some of the up and coming languages include Asian languages such as Vietnamese. Tagalog, one of the languages spoken in the Philippines, is certainly on the increase. Spanish, of course, continues to grow, as do some of the less commonly taught languages from countries where we continue to receive large numbers of immigrants. Russian has been on the increase, for example."

AA: "Now do you think your map, I'm curious, when you think about the people with the official English movement, who want to make English the official language across the country -- it is now in some states, but they want to make it national -- do you think they're going to find more ammunition from your site? Or do you think this is going to reassure them? Or what's the state of English from your map?"

FEAL: "This will show those who favor an English-only movement two things. Number one, that the great majority of people living in the United States speak English at home. Number two, that the great majority of those who speak a language other than English at home speak English very well or well -- seventy-seven percent. That's reassuring.

"When immigrants come to the United States, they want to learn English. They know that English is the key to education and to success in American society, and immigrant families are eager for their children to learn English. What we hope this map will show is that we have great linguistic resources in the United States, in addition to English, and we should be preserving those while we're learning English. The conference that I'm at here right now in the Washington area on languages and national need talks precisely about the wasted resource that we throw away when we don't encourage the next generation to keep the mother tongue while they're learning English."

RS: Rosemary Feal of the Modern Language Association spoke to us from the National Language Conference, held this week near Baltimore, Maryland. The new MLA Language Map lists the top thirty languages spoken in the United States.

AA: The map is at mla.org. You can click on the link at our site, voanews.com/wordmaster. And if you'd like to speak up, write to us at word@voanews.com. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

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June 17, 2004 - Americanrhetoric.com

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Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: June 17, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a Web site that offers an interesting look at United States life and history, through examples of how Americans use rhetoric, the language of persuasion.

RS: Michael Eidenmuller is an assistant professor of rhetoric and public address at the University of Texas at Tyler. He says an average of five-thousand Internet users a day visit his site, americanrhetoric.com.

AA: What he calls the "heart" of the site is a huge database of political and religious speeches from the last two centuries. These come in text form. Many also have audio and in some cases video.

RS: And there's lots more at americanrhetoric.com, which Professor Eidenmuller originally created for his students.

EIDENMULLER: "You'll find quizzes, various exercises in rhetoric to kind of get the student acquainted with how we, in America anyway, conceptualize the discipline of rhetoric. And, gosh, you'll find an area dedicated to 9-11 [the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001], beginning with the radio reports of police units observing what it is they're seeing as in the Pentagon situation, for example, when the plane crashed into the Pentagon.

POLICE OFFICER: " ... it was an American Airlines plane headed eastbound over the pike, possibly toward the Pentagon."

DISPATCHER: "Ten-four. Cruiser 50 direct?"

OFFICER: "Fifty, 10-4."

SECOND OFFICER: "Thirty-six, I'm en route. I see the smoke."

AA: We asked Michael Eidenmuller what are some of the most popular speeches on his site.

EIDENMULLER: "By far the single most popular speech, as measured by the number of hits it gets per day, is Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' [delivered at a big demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.]"

MARTIN LUTHER KING: " ... freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"

AA: "Now we've just recently lost a man who was known as the Great Communicator, President Ronald Reagan."

EIDENMULLER: "Right."

AA: "Has there been an influx of people to your site, downloading his speeches?

EIDENMULLER: "Yes, the site activity has over the last week and a half has approximately doubled, and the vast majority of the increased can be accounted for by people accessing Reagan's great speeches."

RONALD REAGAN (January 28, 1986): "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss."

RS: "What is there in the style of Ronald Reagan, what does his rhetoric style tell us about the life and times?"

EIDENMULLER: "Much has been made about the tone of Ronald Reagan's delivery. He tended to convey rather sophisticated policy ideas in a neighborly way, quote unquote. But I think that he took presidential rhetoric in terms of style in a slightly different direction. He really greatly preferred telling stories that would capture both the emotional tone as well as some of the substance of the ideas that he was trying to communicate. And this was a kind of populist rhetoric that really hadn't caught on at least to the extent that it did under Reagan's direction."

RS: "What can students of English as a foreign language learn from this Web site, learn from listening to great speeches?"

EIDENMULLER: "Several things. I think that American rhetoric for foreign, students foreign to English as a first language anyway, it's useful for closing the gap, I think, between the formal study of American English grammar and syntax and perhaps the idiomatic expression of American language.

And by the way, a significant minority of American Rhetoric audiences, two things, emanate from outside the United States. The greatest single percentage of these come from Communist China, interestingly enough. So it's useful for closing the gap between what you study formally and then how things actually play out rhetorically. I think it serves students, it teaches them to appreciate the role of public rhetoric in American-style democracy certainly.

"There is an argument that says America, like Rome, is largely an idea. And if one accepts that argument at some level, it's an easy move from there to say that ideas are always and only expressed persuasively through rhetoric. And so an appreciation and understanding of the great rhetoric that has been produced in this country would help the student to understand the history of the ideas, really the way this country is made as an idea."

AA: And you can find thousands of examples of everything from speeches to movie clips at americanrhetoric.com. It's creator is Michael Eidenmuller, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Tyler, who says he regularly gets visitors from some 200 countries.

RS: We've posted a link at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster, where you can also find archives of our segments. And our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

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June 10, 2004 - Getting a Job, Part 2: The Interview

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Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: June 10, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- surviving a job interview!

RS: Here's the first bit of advice from human resources consultant Sharon Armstrong: It's not just words you have to think about, but also how you express them. Avoid, she says, a flat monotone voice that people sometimes get when they are nervous.

ARMSTRONG: "It loses something. And I think that it can add so much if you show your excitement and your eagerness to work for that company."

AA: Next: Be prepared for a common approach known as behavioral-based interviewing.

ARMSTRONG: "And that is where past performance will indicate future performance. So good interviewers will ask you very detailed questions where they'll put you on the spot and they'll want to know specifically your role in what you did for a particular project.

"And so the key to giving a good answer to a behavioral interview question is to do what I call a STAR, S-T-A-R. The S and the T stand for explaining a situation or a task that you were given, the A is the action you took and the R is the results."

RS: "So what you're saying is that you need to be prepared before you walk in the door."

ARMSTRONG: "Go through some mock interviews, if you can have friends ask you questions. Practice in the mirror, answering questions. Go in with three or four things you really want to stress about yourself. And then you can bring those out no matter what the question is asked."

RS: "How do you follow up after the interview?"

ARMSTRONG: "Please send a thank you letter. I'm begging you. And you can do it by e-mail. And in that thank you letter you do a couple of things. You make sure that you express sincere appreciation for the time that they spent interviewing you. You have an opportunity to re-emphasize some of your strongest qualities. You have another chance to make that case as to how your skills match their needs.

"If there was something that you wish you had said a little more about, again an opportunity to do it here. Now that sounds like a lot to cover, but you do it very briefly, in a short couple of paragraphs and get it out right away."

RS: "Keep it short, keep it simple?"

ARMSTRONG: "Absolutely. Again, they're business people; they don't have a lot of time. Just getting it is going to make a big difference. I talk to recruiters all the time. They never get thank you letters. It's such a simple business etiquette that people just don't take the time to do it."

AA: These days, Sharon Armstrong says interviewers ask tougher questions than they used to.

ARMSTRONG: "It's no longer 'what do you see yourself doing in five years?' Those are old questions. They're asking questions that are going to get at more specific things. For example: 'Give me a specific example of a time when a co-worker criticized your work in front of others. How did you respond? How has that event shaped the way you communicate with others?' They're trying to get at your communication skills.

"'Give me a specific example of a time when you sold your supervisor on an idea or concept. How did you proceed? What was the result?' That's your assertiveness. So be ready for these kinds of questions, and if you have this experience in your background, just be able to communicate it effectively. You don't have to use the proper language all the time, just get across your results and your accomplishments."

RS: "And you probably shouldn't be afraid to say 'well, I don't understand that question.'"

ARMSTRONG: "Absolutely. And don't feel like you have to answer immediately. Take a moment. Pausing is a comfortable -- if you're comfortable with it, it will seem comfortable. But if you sometimes launch into an answer right away, you might head down a road you don't want to go. Say 'what an interesting question. May I think about that for a moment?' No one would say 'no, you can't.'

AA: "What kind of answer would you give to that first one?"

ARMSTRONG: "'Give me a specific example of a time when a co-worker criticized your work in front others? How did you respond? How has that event shaped the way you communicate with others?' I think it's a hard question and you've got to be careful that you're answering it honestly but effectively. They don't want to know that you flew off the handle and you have a very negative response.

"They're going to want to know that you have some teamwork skills and you tried to engage that person and question them a little more about what they found negative perhaps about your idea, and how they might add to it and make it more workable."

AA: "What if that's not the truth. What if the last time someone criticized you, you -- as you say -- flew off the handle, got angry?"

ARMSTRONG: "I would say that honestly, say that 'I've learned from that and I don't do it anymore.' The secret is to take a weakness and make it into a positive. So say 'I used to have a very bad habit of not being able to handle that well, but I recognized that that wasn't getting me anywhere in the business world.'"

RS: And finally, at the end, Sharon Armstrong says be sure to ask some of your own questions, questions like: "What are some of the objectives you would like accomplished in this job?" "What would you like to have done within the next two or three months?"

ARMSTRONG: "Remember that you are assessing the company as much as they are assessing you, and if you fail to ask questions at the end of the interview, they might interpret that as you not being interested."

AA: Sharon Armstrong runs a consulting business in Washington called Human Resources 9-1-1, a name that plays off the emergency telephone number in America.

RS: You can find today's program at our Web site -- voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

MUSIC: "Get a Job"/The Silhouettes

(First broadcast in July 2002)

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HEALTH REPORT – Molecule in Soy May Reduce Risk of Colon Cancer

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Broadcast: June 2, 2004

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Foods made from soybeans are increasingly popular, and not just because of the taste. Studies have found that soy can be good for the health in different ways. Now, research in the United States shows that a molecule in soy may help prevent colon cancer. The Journal of Nutrition published the study by researchers at Georgia Tech, Emory University and the Karmanos Cancer Institute.

Al Merrill of Georgia Tech says that soy is known to suppress cancer. He says that some of this effect may be from a group of molecules. These are called sphingolipids. Plants and animals have many different kinds.

Earlier research led by Professor Merrill showed that such molecules in milk can suppress the formation of growths. But he says this is the first study to show that similar molecules in plants can also suppress cancer.

The study found that a molecule known as soy GlcCer reduced the formation and growth of tumor cells in mice. Some of the mice were born with a gene that leads to colon cancer. Others were given a chemical that causes the disease.

The soy GlcCer passed through the stomach and intestines. But Professor Merrill says it stayed strong enough to suppress cancerous cells in the colon, part of the large intestine. The next step is to see if the molecule works the same way in humans.

Interest in soy has led to many more food and health products that contain it. These are especially popular with older women. Their bodies no longer produce the female hormone estrogen. They worry about their risk of breast cancer.

Soy contains two substances that are similar to estrogen. However, experts say one of these might increase the risk of breast cancer in some women. They say more research is needed on the different chemicals in soy and the safety of taking them in large amounts.

Earlier this year, scientists reported that soy may help men prevent prostate cancer. But some men apparently are concerned about the estrogen-like effect of soy. So, in a different study, scientists had men eat much larger amounts of soy than they would normally get in food.

There were a few side effects reported, including breast enlargement. But researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said none of these effects were serious.

This VOA Special English Health Report was written by Jerilyn Watson.

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