English (was Re: A few hums)

[Cyrus Shaoul]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 20:30:03 +0200
Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch at muada.com> wrote:

IvB> But I can't imagine being involved in one of the areas of interest of 
IvB> the IETF and not at least reading a lot of English.

True, but I think that reading and writing is much easier to learn from
hearing and speaking. As hard to believe as it may seem, some people at
IETF meetings are fluent readers and writers of English (even authors of
Internet Drafts that contain no errors of English grammar or usage), but
can't speak or understand spoken English well at all.

IvB> Do you mean that there are also people who don't feel frustrated and 
IvB> left out during wg meetings, not counting the inner circle with 25 IETF 
IvB> meetings down their belts?

Touche. Perhaps there are different degrees of frustration. Perhaps
everybody would benefit, including native English speaking IETF first-timers,
if awareness of this problem could be raised.

IvB> Did they tell you why they feel this way?

The overlapping parts of their comments were that some speakers spoke
too quickly, some answered questions at native-speed to oblivious
non-native English speaking questioners, some speakers rushed through
their slides so fast that they could only read one or two lines because
they read slower than native-readers, and many other issues. The point
is that they were having language-related problems, and they felt that
speakers and questioners were oblivious to this. Some of them told me
that they have studied written English for 10 years or more, and are
working hard to improve their English hearing and speaking, but that it
takes many years of practice to master the fluency needed to fully
participate in an IETF-meeting-level discussion. (Remember, most Asian
languages share no roots, vocabulary or writing system with English).

[Side note: With packed agendas, most presenters get 10-15 minutes at WG
meetings. For some reason, many people decide to pack as much content
into those 10 minutes as possible, and then are forced to rush through
their presentations. Is this a related problem?]

IvB> > I don't think the situation is black-or-white with the all the European
IvB> > participants either. There may be a significant minority of European
IvB> > attendees who would have a much better understanding of what is going 
IvB> > on
IvB> > if speakers spoke slower and more clearly, in plainer language.
IvB> 
IvB> I don't think speaking slow in itself is of much value. It's just that 
IvB> many people try to speak too fast for reasons I can only imagine and 
IvB> this tends to get in the way of clear articulation. This is especially 
IvB> problematic if the speaker diverts from "generic" (American?) English.

Agreed.

IvB> > I do agree with you that we need more information about the scale of 
IvB> > the
IvB> > problem before deciding whether or not it is significant enought to act
IvB> > on. I have lots of anecdotal evidence, but no hard data. I would love
IvB> > to know how many people have already stopped attending IETF meetings
IvB> > because of this problem. Unfortunately, it is hard to find out from
IvB> > within the IETF who is no longer involved in the IETF, but we could 
IvB> > send
IvB> > out a survey to all non-native English speakers currently subscribed to
IvB> > all WG mailing lists (should this be done?).
IvB> 
IvB> Why not contact people who used to come to the IETF meetings but don't 
IvB> anymore?

Would the IETF registrar have this information? Just knowing the
non-native English speaker attrition rate could be interesting (again,
they could be leaving for other reasons, so we would need to ask them
directly).

IvB> 
IvB> > How large a number of
IvB> > people complaining would you say would be needed to justify action? 100
IvB> > people? More? Less?
IvB> 
IvB> I'd say that if less than 10% of all people who respond didn't stop 
IvB> coming because of language-related problems there is no reason to do 
IvB> anything. Above 35% we absolutely need to do something.

Perhaps those are good guidelines. I need to think about the metrics a
little more before I can give my opinion.

To the Chairs: Is there enough interest to do such a survey? Are there
other items that would go on this survey? Are surveys out of scope?

Thanks, 

Cyrus


Cyrus Shaoul
NTT Advanced Technology Corp.
cyrus at ntt-at.com
http://www.ntt-at.com/