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Originally Posted by stufflikethat
This is an extremely valid point to me. There are certainly valid arguments both ways. My biggest point which I'm sure many will consider controversial is that they will not speak english at champs. To me it is totally unfair for FIRST to start bringing teams from other countries to Champs especially when there is a game like Aerial Assist. Example: my team had a match with one of the Mexican teams. Awesome people for sure, but we couldn't work together when the game was all about assists. This blatantly caused us to lose.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Foster
As a VEX mentor, we've played with roboteers from Mexico, China and Singapore: They have had people that speak better English than I do  so communications isn't the problem. I'll guess that their "strategy" didn't match yours.
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Addressing these two together, I have had this on both sides, teams we have dealt with from Brazil, Israel, Mexico, etc. Have spoke perfect to passable English and had no issues. But I have also dealt with teams where I had a much easier time speaking to them in their native tongue if I could. The issue is terminology usually. This years game in strategy meetings we would use terms "Inbounder, Midfield, Finisher, Kiss Pass etc." since these were not official terms some non-native speakers had issues understanding what we meant. Language barriers exist, not as bad as the first says usually, but aren't non-existent as the second makes it out to be
Going back to the original point of the thread, expansion is good, China is a very big place with a lot of people, meaning a lot of students who can benefit from our programs, regardless of if this organization was started to help America get back into the sciences it is not a good reason to deny any other groups the same rights. Plus as anyone who has tried to do anything with our lovely organization knows, FIRST HQ will help you, point you in a direction, or direct someone to call you, but they will not do the work for you. There are legs on the ground who do the grunt work and are the face of FIRST to their local community, if these people or groups exist in China let FIRST grow their, no one cared when FIRST popped up in Australia, who now has their own regional taking up spots at champs, why should Chinese kids who just want to learn be treated any different?