On The English Language

"The English language is a very significant aspect of an engineering student's academic life and prospective career."

I do not intend this last blog entry to be another argumentative essay. I guess we already intuitively know the arguments for and against that statement- on where (in our lives) the English language would be greatly needed, and the possibilities for other languages as a medium of thought and expression. For a typical Singaporean student like me, I believe that the English language would be very significant, if not mandatory, if we wish to continue beyond university and into the workforce. English is Singapore's first language, it's the language we use for trade, research, education and development.
As we know, many engineering graduates actually do not end up working in their field of study. Beyond the politically correct answers that 'English would be the qualitative counterpart to the engineering language" (Mathematics accounts for the quantitative aspect), we must still account if English is still significant to the student even if his prospective career is radically different. To this, we must of course focus back on the nature of language again.

Psychology has defined the English more than just a means of thought expression. Language has been the reason for human success and dominance, since it brings together individuals to work in cohesion and to a common development. Moreover, the English language in itself is a synthesis of various older languages, bringing together conceptual representations of various cultures into one unified language. From here, we can see that such unity would be crucial for life, since life is about development.

Now, if we were to empirically define the concept of 'the hard sciences', we find that these sciences are actually evidences and excerpts of our human success and development. It is on this basis we concluded (in the first post) that the prupose of engineering and technology is for human improvement. From here we could make a direct integration of English as a language of development and the hard sciences as a form of development and conclude that these two disciplines are very closely related.

However, we can still go beyond this premise-conclusion to see that English is more than just for academics and prospective careers in engineering. From the above, we see that the English language defines us for who we are. We use English to convey personal emotions, enjoy works of litrature (the movie review), and share our opinions. While these have little to do directly with the hard sciences, we see that they too have a lot to do with our future prospects. And to all the students who do not wish to pursue a career in the hard sciences, we can now see how English is still significant in all their future endeavours.

Be it a researcher in a lab, a teacher in a class, or a student in a library. English has proven its worth in all domains of our lives- be it in the development of knowledge in Science and Engineering, or in the 'softer' areas of our lifestyle and well-being. Our future success and prospects will depend greatly on these alphabets I type today, not only as an engineer, but rather as a human being- altogether.