Outside of science and engineering, I have always been interested in learning various languages. With Armenian as my mother tongue, English, too, has been a language that I have learned throughout the years. In addition, I have attained some level of fluency in Spanish, Italian, and Korean, whether it was through courses I have taken or out of pure interest.
When I began my undergraduate education studying chemical engineering at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), I realized that the engineering school did not have a foreign language requirement, unlike other schools within UCLA. This led me to wonder whether or not mastering a language besides English would help in one’s engineering career. I wanted to know if other chemical engineers found some benefit in knowing a language other than English.
Posing the question. To get a broad sense of the different scenarios in which knowing another language could be important, I asked AIChE members three questions:
- For those who have worked outside of the U.S., how has knowing another language while working as an expatriate helped both in and outside of your career?
- If you have worked outside of the U.S. and did not know the language of the country you worked in, what has your experience been like?
- How does knowing another language benefit...
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