Accomodating ESL speakers

Dave Crocker dhc at dcrocker.net
Mon Jul 7 17:39:38 CEST 2003


avri,

a> do is indeed a significant part of the problem in my opinion.  Those of
a> us
a> who can command the language to do what we want it to do (well I
a> don't always succeed) and those of us who can play the process game,
a> often think that everyone can do what we can do.  It is not the case.


If we are going to try to be sensitive to IETF participants who speak
English as a second language, we might want to start with the way we
conduct our meetings, before worrying about our appeals processes.

As a community of individuals, we are grotesquely insensitive to these
participants. We speak much too fast, and often in incomplete sentences.
We use idioms all the time. We get impatient when someone requests that
we repeat ourselves.

And then, of course, there is the dominant "American" style of
interactions, which can most kindly be described as wildly different
from what is normal in most other countries, especially for formal
situations like a standards meeting.

At any rate, one of the major benefits of good presentation slides is
their benefit to non-native english speakers.

I suspect that the real-time jabber transcriptions can be equally useful
for them.

In general, our Internet Drafts requirements are quite loose, with
respect to language.  This seems helpful for non-native english
speakers.  However, as John K. notes, it is not unreasonable to find
someone to help with the language, just as it is good to find help for
ancillary technical matters that pertain to the content.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>



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