Learning Ins and Outs of English From the Horse’s Mouth

OXNARD —  English, she is a funny language, say students from several continents who attend the FLS intensive English language school on the Oxnard College campus.

If people born in the United States sometimes have problems with the future perfect tense, or the spelling of “thorough,” “embarrass” or “cough,” imagine the obstacles for someone whose first language is one of the 3,000 other tongues used in the world today. English not only has the most words of any language, at 600,000 and counting, it has irksome spelling and more confusing idioms than you can shake a stick at. If you don’t believe it, you can go fly a kite.

“But your slang is funny and easy to remember,” said Yoshiki Tobinai, who studies English at the privately owned English school that operates on the college campus. He has put in 25 class hours a week on conversational English since he arrived from Japan in August.

Tobinai ducked his head and, with a small smile, added: “I can remember easier your bad words, but I am here to learn business English.”

Indeed. English has become the international language of not only computer technology, but of engineering, aviation and science in general. That is why foreign students on the Oxnard campus, 75% of whom come from Asian countries, find it necessary not only to learn English, but also to become truly fluent in it.

FLS advertises its Oxnard school in several Asian countries. Fifty-five students are enrolled. Classes are held in a modular five-classroom building that FLS trucked to a leased site on the campus.

“The college doesn’t so much make a profit from our rent as it does from the foreign students who learn English at FLS and then continue on in studies at Oxnard College,” said Michael Daly, the school’s director, noting that foreign students pay a higher tuition.

The acronym FLS actually stands for Flight Line Services, which suggests the school’s early focus when it started a decade ago in Los Angeles: the teaching of English to pilots and air traffic controllers from around the world.

It is the aviation world’s common language today. Otherwise, flying into LAX from Athens International Airport could be touch and go for a Greek pilot. That goes double for a pilot flying into Athens from LAX.

“Japanese and Korean students usually come here with about six years of English classes in their own country,” Daly said. “But it’s ‘book’ English. Here, we stress oral communication.

“English itself probably contains the greatest variety of vocal sounds. Our students have to teach their mouths to make different sounds. The younger a student, the easier a new language’s sounds are to make. The more years you’ve spoken your language exclusively, the more it’s embedded in your memory bank,” he said.

Maricarmen Ohara, author and professor of Spanish at Ventura College, agrees.

“English is the most difficult language to learn, especially in terms of pronunciation. Its sentence structure, all those idioms and those little prepositions can be murder, too. But more than anything, it’s the pronunciation.

“However, English is such a beautiful language--I love the way you can play with it. You can’t do that in other languages,” Ohara said.

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Another FLS student, Frank Valentin, grew up in Brazil and studied English in Rio de Janeiro for three years. But “it’s only in the United States that we can really learn English,” he said.

Valentin has been here five months. “English is the common language of engineers. I’m also taking business English classes, which I will be able to take back to Brazil with me.”

Lu Cheng-Hsing landed at the language school in June from Taiwan. “I have trouble with vocabulary--so many words,” he said. “I also have a hard time understanding people speaking,” which is the primary reason he wanted to study English in the United States.

Lu gave an example of an English idiom that trips him up. “I know the word ‘give’ and I know the word ‘up.’ But together, they have a third meaning.”

He won’t give up his English studies, however. He added that the past tenses of verbs also give him fits.

Lu was not barking up the wrong tree when he made the observance about idioms. These students take to California slang like ducks to water, even though learning the double meanings of words like “dude,” “killer,” “rad,” “cool” and “awesome” may force them to burn the midnight oil.

The students are learning that a little elbow grease and keeping their noses to the grindstone are just the ticket to being on top of the world, if not setting it on fire.

These youngsters believe in making hay while the sun shines.

And we’re not just whistling Dixie.