11024

11024

Refereed Paper with Presentation

**Emergent Competence: Three Skills in Language for Cross-Disciplinary Performance**
Katherine Watson, Coastline Community College, Fountain Valley, California, USA, bizarrissime@gmail.com

Language is a necessary condition for understanding. Ironically, although the English language has become the lingua franca of the electronic age, more than half the students in America’s classrooms do not speak English as their maternal tongue. And even as facility in English alone is accepted as a prerequisite to academic and work success, not to mention human interaction across the globe, cerebral benefits have been demonstrated to devolve from multilingualism. Twenty-first-century educators can profit from programs instituted around the world demonstrating the need for global citizens to master basic vocabulary and reading skills in English, as well as the often world-sourced cognitive patterns characterizing their learning disciplines, if they are to succeed in integrating their specialized understanding into an increasingly multi-disciplinary world.

All Audiences English language, communication, education, teacher-training