<p>You misunderstood my comment about Americans having a fear of foreign languages, which referred to the popular perception of foreign languages as harder to learn than they really are, which in turn lowers students’ expectations of their own progress and makes them more likely to become discouraged from learning languages at an advanced level.</p>
<p>And your post exemplifies the attitude you want an example of. It is riddled with faulty notions of the importance and global reach of the English language (e.g., English speakers living abroad who don’t speak the local language tend to interact primarily and sometimes overwhelmingly with other English speakers, not with local people who “want to practice their English” on them, which clearly indicates that knowing English does not in fact ensure you will be able to communicate freely with people anywhere in the world), gross generalizations (e.g., the bit about nationalities and good English), and factually incorrect claims, in addition to demonstrating a kind of intellectual laziness masked as common sense that is ultimately justified by the supremely unconvincing, “Well, we’re just so important that everyone speaks our language”–which is certainly not true in China.</p>
<p>Again, knowing the local language when you live abroad is essential to leading a self-sufficient adult existence, as opposed to limiting your social life to a narrow circle of ex-pats and struggling with the most basic of daily tasks. I have both lived abroad (in an Arab country where I did not know the local language, only my own, English & a little bit of French, and felt incredibly isolated, and in America) and played the part of the disdainful local (at my international school, most of the English-speaking teachers would only interact with each other, fail to experience the local culture fully, and, even after spending years in the country, panic and seek assistance whenever they needed to buy a monthly bus pass or call the plumber, which is the common state of affairs in Anglo-American ex-pat communities all over the world–it amazed me then and it amazes me now) and, after seeing both sides of the issue, I think to deny that knowing the local language of the country you live in is important/useful is the height of ridiculousness.</p>