The American Language

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• proclaim
• obligation
• convert
• conversing

• hot topic
• citizens
• key
• assimilated

• reforms
• simultaneously

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Immigration has always been a hot topic in the U.S. Recently, the debate has gotten hotter among average citizens and government representatives. One of the key issues in the debate is about language: Should English be the official language of the United States?

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted to make English the national language of the U.S. Listen to Dave and Taylor talk about English as the national language.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Taylor

Dave

Taylor:  You know, Dave, President Bush here in America and the Republican government has been pushing for a bunch of immigration reforms and, ah, simultaneously, they’ve introduced, ah, to now proclaim English as the national language for the United States of America.

Dave:  Right, the senate just voted on it to make it the national language, not the “official” language.

Taylor:  Right.

Dave:  I don’t know that there’s much of a difference there.

Taylor:  That means that, ah, all paperwork is, they have no obligation to provide translation services for anybody who doesn’t speak English.

Dave:  Right. Yeah, English has always been the dominant language and most people would argue that, “Well, yeah, it is kind of the official language by default.” But, to make it the actual official language is kind of a scary thing because along with that comes a lot of federal policies and federal regulations for education, for example.

Taylor:  Mm hm. You know, they’re not all going to suddenly convert to conversing with everybody in English, you know.

Dave:  Right. People don’t realize that when immigrants come to the U.S., it’s not the first generation who become assimilated. It’s the second and third generation who become assimilated.

Taylor:  Right.

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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