English: Language of opportunity English in science
NARRATOR In science, English is increasingly becoming the lingua franca for research. At Oxford University two thirds of post graduate students come from outside the UK. The students in the university’s chemistry research lab admit that working in English is a key attraction.
JOSE We recognise that on the scientific setting English has become the most common language in which most of the literatures produced and therefore is the language in which most of us feel more comfortable speaking, like in a mixed setting.
JOSE And in this case three are the same substituent… err substituent for each of the…
STUDENT Ah for all these three…
ESTHER Chinese is picking up but as a major language that everybody can come together and speak I would think English is still the most important.
JOSE It’s your decision in the end. I think what we could do, if we wait until err… the rest of the product concentrates, we could just rest them with this and that would allow it to evaporate again, we can see if its still collecting on this one. We could just get rid of it.
NARRATOR Communicating in English can prove challenging.
JOSE If you are not very used to, especially to different accents that might make the task of communicating freely at the beginning a bit difficult but as time goes by I would say that we start getting used to hearing many different accents here and we start to be able to adapt to the way each of our friends speak here.
TOBIAS Of course, if you then meet some old friends that visit you here in Oxford that probably speak sometimes German with colleagues, with German colleagues then it’s sometimes not easy to switch very, very fast between English and German and so on and so on, it’s often much more easier to stay in the English language.
JOSE I would say that even if I had my confidence in speaking in English has improved very much since I arrived here. I still feel more confident writing in English especially because for a significant amount of time before coming here my main interaction with English was reading in English so I feel more confident to express myself more elegantly writing than speaking.
NARRATOR Although Jose plans to return to Mexico when he finishes his studies, he recognises that his fluency in English will remain a valuable skill.
JOSE Most of the companies in Mexico they are subsidiaries of American or British companies so even if the day to day operations are performed in Spanish because that’s the country, most of the time the managers they would not be able to communicate with us in Spanish so we need to communicate with them in English.