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Lack of languages stifles Brits and USers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 57 of 95 11 July 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hummmm.... I guess I should have wrapped my text in [sarcasm] [/sarcasm] tags. Yes Chung, I was "taking the mikey" but that doesn't come across in text as well as it did in my head.
I think we all know that learning a language is a lot of long hard work for little or no of financial benefit. You just have to do it for fun. I do wonder at times why I'm putting in all this effort. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 58 of 95 11 July 2014 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I read the sarcasm. Except that I thought it was aimed at what was perceived as "negativity" in the thread. Ha! Sorry
for misinterpreting. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 59 of 95 12 July 2014 at 1:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think I'm going to put my head above the parapet and still speak out in defense of the point of the article. I agree that for the average US/UK employee working in a national company a foreign language is unlikely to make a difference in salary, as Emk keeps arguing. But glancing over the article again, there is very little reference to the internal job market. The subtitle mentions two benefits: understanding cultures better and boosting employability in the global economy.
Trying not to sound too rude, I keep wondering if we have read the same article. Every reference to the benefits had to do with the benefits to companies. There was no mention of benefits to employees (except that bilingual employees will be ready when companies wake up to the global economy). I suspect the authors would take Emk's points as evidence in support of their conclusions: companies are missing a trick by not actively seeking bilingual employees. If anyone joining this discussion hasn't read the article, please do read and think about these two paragraphs:
When I worked in India, people were very impressed with American money and know-how, but very often offended by American ignorance. A bit of effort to learn the language and culture goes a long way to smoothing the wheels of international business. I am again going to argue against the developing consensus here by saying that in many cases even A1 or A2 skills will help. You have a bit of a chat with your business contact in their language, but you have to switch back to English when you get serious. But the result is often that you get complimented for your effort, and your contact is more willing to work with you.
I loved this quote, and for what he's arguing, I think Emk is correct. But I think the article is trying to say that it's companies that are hurting themselves, losing potential business (which is what they mean by "stifling"), by not hiring bilingual employees. Edited by Jeffers on 12 July 2014 at 1:14am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 60 of 95 12 July 2014 at 6:06am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This does seem plausible to me, perhaps more so in the UK than in the US. When I look for evidence on this end of the problem, I can find some moderately convincing data: Mapping successful language use in international business: How, when and where do European companies achieve success? Here are some interesting excerpts:
That last bit is especially interesting: It sounds like even non-anglophone countries sometimes get lazy and complacent about using English everywhere, when they should be investing in other languages. Reading this paper suggests some potentially interesting angles for attacking the problem. Some possibilities that come to mind: 1. Work to educate managers on how much more money they could make if their employees had better language skills. 2. Build marketplaces to connect small and medium enterprises with specialized language talent. Need somebody who knows about book publishing and who speaks two languages? Check the marketplace. The marketplace could have almost any mix of translators, freelance consultants and potential employees, perhaps even with language certification. Sure, two-sided marketplaces are notoriously difficult to build, because you need to convince both sides to participate. But it's probably not impossible. 3. Offer serious, intensive training and certification: sort of like what the FSI does for diplomats, or what Quebec and Israel do for immigrants. But there's still a question of where to start: By substantially increasing the supply of multilingual workers? Or by whacking businesses with the cluestick until they realize that they're missing out, and until they start demanding more multilingual workers on their own? I think I would prefer the latter approach, because it would reward people for learning languages. Of course, I'm biased: I'd benefit if businesses started hiring a lot more multilingual workers! And if you attack the problem from this end, the increased profits will cover a lot of the costs. The other option, I suppose, would be asking the US and UK school systems to churn out a few million people who have L2s that they can use professionally, and to hope that businesses somehow find a way to use these skills. Honestly, I get sense of overpowering doom just trying to visualize it. There are too many things which could go wrong: students might not care, school standards might be far too low, and employers might not figure out how to use these skills. I'm pretty certain that getting the median US student to reach B1 would require a miracle. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 61 of 95 12 July 2014 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hear, hear, Jeffers. Well said. I agree that it's important to make the distinction between on the one hand the
institutional or business level and, on the other hand, the individual level. The problem, if we can call it a problem, is that the rise of English as the international lingua franca and the existence of countries with large English-speaking populations has meant that in these countries there is not the same perception of the need for a foreign language as there is the need for English in the rest of the world. I would also point out that these very same countries have also experienced massive immigration from all over the world. This immigration, I argue, has naturally provided foreign language capability to these countries. We see a massive influx of foreign students - currently primarily Asian - into North American schools at the university level and even lower. I suspect something similar is happening in the UK, Australia and even in France. The article referred to in the OP is a sort of wake-up call for US and UK companies to something that the rest of the world has known for quite a while. It is no coincidence that export-driven countries such as Korea, China and Japan have invested so much in learning English. There is, obviously, no comparable need for foreign languages in the large English-speaking countries. But, as the article points out, and I agree, there is some need for foreign language capability, and increasingly so for those businesses that are internationally oriented. And lest people forget, the existence of English as a lingua franca has not meant that other national languages, especially the big ones, are going away. In a world that is increasingly bilingual, the monolinguals are the English-speakers. But even the English- speaking countries some foreign language capability is necessary. Much of that need can be met by heritage speakers. And I have argued that the acquisition of high-level proficiency in foreign languages has a strong social class component because of the perception that languages open doors to prestigious international careers and to cultural sophistication. At the same time, most students never achieve any type of useful language proficiency and never perceive the need for any. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5374 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 62 of 95 12 July 2014 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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EMK wrote:
"by whacking businesses with the cluestick until they realize that they're missing out" "if you attack the problem from this end, the increased profits will cover a lot of the costs." Are these sarcastic statements? If not, please explain. Your two statements seem to explain perfectly why we have the current situation. The businesses won't do it voluntarily because the increased profits will not fully cover the costs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 63 of 95 12 July 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The entire point of the Guardian article was that businesses would benefit substantially from foreign language skills. Now, we don't see strong labor market evidence for that in the US, but as Jeffers points out, this may be because businesses in the US and the UK don't value these skills nearly as much as they should, and therefore they're missing out on a lot of sales. I'm willing to believe that this might be true. Did you see the passages I quoted above, the ones which claimed that language barriers imposed a de facto tarrif of over 10% on many export industries, and that export managers who "enabled" language skills were doing significantly better than those didn't take an interest? There's another interesting passage in that same report, which makes some dubious extrapolations and gets a really huge number:
Now, if European businesses really were missing out on a trillion Euro per year, that would pay for an awful lot of intensive language classes and bilingual immersion schools, two models which consistently produce proficient speakers. There are actually some interesting suggestions in the Guardian article:
The two most interesting suggestions here, from my point of view, are (1) providing official certifications to proficient heritage speakers, and (2) "getting employers on board." As I've been arguing throughout this whole long thread, I certainly don't believe US employers are "on board": They're not exactly working hard to hire lots of multilingual employees. But if poor language skills really do impose a 10% tariff (or worse) on foreign exports, they probably should start hiring. EDIT: Here, let me channel Don Draper for a minute, and write an ad:
Now, if I were an export-oriented business in the UK, I'd be willing to cough up my contact information. There's probably a real market here, actually, though it would take some work to figure out the details. And well, you'd want to hire a real copywriter, and not somebody pretending to be Don Draper for a few minutes. :-) Edited by emk on 13 July 2014 at 4:31am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 64 of 95 12 July 2014 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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A relatively minor quibble here with the concept of businesses losing money because of the lack of a foreign
language strategy. If businesses were really losing money, the problem would have been fixed a long time ago or the businesses would have gone belly-up. What I think people are referring to is businesses foregoing potential revenues. "Losing" is not synonymous with "missing out" or "foregoing". That said, if we return to the North American situation, I don't think the export-oriented industries are lacking of language strategies. There may not be explicit or formal plans in this regard but all these businesses have to deal with language issues in some way. Two examples come to mind: the computer consumer industry and the entertainment industry. The Googles, Microsofts, Apples and Oracles of this world are nearly everywhere and have to deal with language issues within their products and also in terms of sales, marketing and customer service. The American film and television industry is present, if not dominant, in nearly every country in the world. All the top grossing films in the world today are American. I would think that Hollywood earns more internationally than domestically. I don't think Hollywood has a formal foreign language staffing strategy as such or is in dire need of multilingual employees. What it does have is a system that combines huge budgets, technical sophistication, great marketing and an efficient distribution system. And just like the consumer software companies, there is emphasis on localization in the form of dubbing in local languages. Hollywood isn't losing money for lack of foreign language capability. I'm sure the many foreign language issues are taken care of naturally through the distribution network with key people having multilingual capability where necessary. I differ with the Guardian article and the others that paint a dire picture of foreign language capability in the UK and North America. I certainly appreciate all the wondrous benefits of knowing multiple languages but I believe that businesses will spontaneously seek out such skills when and where necessary. As much as I may lament the state of language education in our various countries, if there isn't a new demand for such skills or this demand is satisfied by other means, then boosting or enhancing language education is not the solution. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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