Language Barrier Experts Conclude That English Skills Are Worth More In The Information Age Than In Previous Periods Of High Immigration

As a teenage guerrilla fighting the Soviet Army in the mountains of his native Afghanistan, Gada Mohammad admired Western television crews covering that war.

From then on, he wanted to work for CNN.

Mohammad, now 26, has been in America for nine years and works in an airline ground crew.

He still dreams of going into television. The problem: though he speaks English well, he struggles with reading and writing, so much that it sometimes makes his head hurt.

“In a lot of jobs I qualify as a speaker, but I need to read and write,” said Mohammad. “You can’t go anywhere in this country without reading and writing. You don’t want to be the rest of your life a dishwasher working for $5 an hour. The economy is changing so fast.”

Even as the immigrants of the 1990s bring an ever greater variety of languages to America, technological change is boosting the economic and social importance of learning English.

Language experts and economic researchers say that English skills - speaking, reading, and writing - are worth more in the Information Age than in previous periods of high immigration. Immigrants realize it. In many states, there are long waiting lists for adult English classes.

“There is absolutely no reason to believe that immigrants are learning English more slowly these days,” said Allene Grognet of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a national research and language-training organization. “Nobody knows better the value of English than someone who doesn’t speak it.”

Yet the notion of an English dividend may be not be apparent to native speakers.

With the rush of new arrivals from Latin America and Asia, many native Americans fear English is being devalued and displaced, edged out by Spanish, Korean, or another imported immigrant tongue. The effort to pass a national law declaring English the official language reflects concern that America is sliding toward Babel.

In the 19th century, it was not unheard of for a community to function in a foreign language, say German, right down to the schools. And as recently as the 1970s, there were plenty of manufacturing jobs that did not require much English.

Not so anymore. Computers. Automated phone systems. E-mail. Faxes.

The standard tools of the modern workplace require English-language skills.

Cashiers at McDonald’s used to have registers with pictures of menu items; now they ring up orders by touching a computerized screen with words on it.

“You have to be able to read the words on the screen,” said Susan Bayley, director of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, a professional organization.

Outside the workplace, the value of English has also risen.

For example, as recently as the early 1980s, calling a doctor’s office to make an appointment involved a fairly simple dialogue.

These days, a caller might encounter an automated answering system or a “gatekeeper” with a list of questions.

The economic value of English can be measured in dollars.

Using Census data, University of Illinois economist Barry Chiswick estimated that immigrants who become proficient in English can expect to earn 15-19 percent more than those who don’t. Chiswick’s research separated the effect of English proficiency from other important factors that affect income, such as schooling, age, and homeland. Without such adjustments, the gap is even larger.

Chiswick went further. He analyzed English fluency as a hypothetical investment. Conclusion: it beats the stock market.

Assuming a year invested in becoming fluent, the return each year thereafter would be 18 percent. If it took two years to gain fluency, the annual return would be 9 percent. A successful six-month crash course would net a 36 percent return.

“This is a type of human capital,” said Chiswick. “Success in the U.S. really depends upon fluency in English.”

It can take two years to establish functional fluency in English and four to seven years to develop academic mastery.

Statistics aren’t available on how fast immigrants learned English in earlier eras, but according to the 1990 Census, about half the foreign-born say they speak only English or speak English “very well.”

The rest are divided evenly among those who say they speak English “well” and those who have difficulties.

Many of the latter are Spanish speakers.

Spanish speakers are the most numerous foreign-language speakers, but compared with other immigrants, they are slower to acquire English.

Fifty-five percent of foreign-born Spanish speakers are fluent in English, compared with 80 percent of those who speak other languages.

Reasons for the slower pace could include the presence of large Hispanic communities, continuing immigration, close contacts with Latin American homelands and a flourishing Spanish-language media.

Nonetheless, there’s a similar pattern for all groups: each generation speaks less and less of the original language, which usually disappears in the grandchildren of immigrants.