Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Multicultural Diversity Symposium

The Western Pennsylvania Diversity Initiative hosted a workshop this morning at the City-County Building to provide guidelines on how to communicate successfully in the ever more common multicultural workplace.

Linda Stucky is president of ClearlySpeaking, employed by corporations to work one-on-one with non-native employees. She says native speakers have more than a passive role to play and can enhance understanding with compassion and patience.

People coming here to work or study are dealing not only with a new language, but with cultural differences, says Stucky.

Helping non-native speakers encompasses the rhythm, rate and melody of English, says Stucky, as well as pronunciation of sounds and overcoming accents that are hard to understand.

The goal of the Western Pennsylvania Diversity Initiative is to attract, retain and hire a diverse workforce.

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