Security guard with 49 languages wins helpfulness award

 John Bowman, of Leaver Road, Henley, says he is able to greet people in 49 languages and is “working on a few more”.

He said: “I’m a walking phrase book. I don’t consider myself clever — I don’t even know my own mobile phone number — I just have a knack for it.”

Mr Bowman, 61, who works for Securitas at Maidenhead business communications company Avaya, has already won the firm’s regional award for the most helpful guard.

Henley Standard

Why do we continue to isolate ourselves by only speaking English?

According to Will Hutton Britain's future economic and political wellbeing is being hamstrung by our reluctance to learn foreign languages

The Observer

JAPAN: Global Economy Exposes Japan's Shortage of English-Speaking Graduates

In Japan's business world, they call it the "Rakuten English shock." The country's largest online retailer has told its 6,000 employees that they must be fluent enough in English to converse with one another by next year. Executives who aren't up to speed will be fired; rank-and-file workers will find their path to promotion blocked.

That dramatic move by Rakuten's Harvard Business School-educated founder, Hiroshi Mikitani, is the latest sign that some Japanese companies are accepting a long-held truism: English is the language of global business. It is also, however, exposing a long-term shortage of local university graduates fluent in the world's lingua franca.

Chronicle of Higher Education

Languages for employability video (Leeds Met University)

Graham Webb and colleagues from Leeds Metropolitan University have produced a short video about languages for employability. It was filmed at their recent Language and employability conference which was attended by employers, students and academics.



Leeds Met Languages and Employability Conference Press Release


The coalition government’s education policy changes mean demand for language teachers is set to soar over the next few years. After a decade in which language teaching in schools has declined dramatically (total GCSE entries in modern languages this year were down this year by 43% compared to 2000) the inclusion of a modern foreign language as one of the 5 core subjects of the English Baccalaureate and which count towards school league tables means the focus is back on language study. The School of Languages at Leeds Metropolitan University is already seeing an increase in applications to study languages and more interest teaching languages as a career.

Rai Shacklock, Head of School, said “Over the next 5 to 10 years, qualified teachers that can teach two languages or a language and another key subject will be in high demand, so now is an ideal time to be taking a language degree.” However, teaching is only one of a whole range of careers open to language students as pupils from local Leeds schools heard recently at the Languages and Employability Conference at Leeds Met

Debbie Easton from Enterprise Rent a Car said “We recruit 750 graduates every year and we like language graduates as they can demonstrate good communication skills as well as resilience, confidence and leadership as most have had a year abroad when they had to fend for themselves”.

Fiona Spence, representing the global group ITW, said that they now actively targeted graduate entrants that had not one but two languages because their business needs people who can move between their main operations worldwide. English may be the major global language but people everywhere prefer to do business in their own language, especially if they are considering buying British products.

According to Victoria Boldison, Export Sales Manager of Optimum Medical Solutions, “languages are vital for UK companies as you can target markets that are not in recession even if the UK and Eurozone are”. So, the revival of languages in schools may be just in time to help revive the UK’s economy over the next few years.

Vous êtes congédié! Monoglots bad for business

British business is losing out because of the nation's foreign language failings - yet academics are struggling to convince their universities to do anything about it.

Those were among the issues raised in The Future of UK Modern Languages, a debate organised by the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies and the Modern Humanities Research Association.

Times Higher Education

CANADA: shop fined for selling English only sex toy

Distribution Percour Inc., owner of Boutique Séduction in Montreal North, has been ordered by a Quebec Court judge to pay $500 for selling an item called Sleeve Super Stretch whose packaging was in English only


Montreal Gazette

Students offered little incentive to study languages and counts for little in the UK job market

The plight of the British polyglot

Students are offered little incentive to study languages – and when they do, they find it counts for little in the UK job market

The Guardian

Biting the reality sandwich

Office workers are being urged to stop using jargon and go back to "normal" English.

The call came after a list of the most ridiculous business phrases was compiled, ranging from "biting the reality sandwich" to "touching base offline".

Yahoo news

Mandarin for all pupils, says Ed Balls

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said every secondary school pupil should have the opportunity to take the subject to meet the needs of business.

He said "up and coming languages" were increasingly in demand and pupils should be suitably equipped for the world of work.

The Telegraph

CILT: UK will be held back unless it boosts numbers of language graduates

The UK will be held back as it seeks to emerge from recession unless it boosts the number of language graduates, campaigners say.

CILT, The National Centre for Languages points to a worrying decline in the take-up of modern languages.

BBC website

School teaches engineers Chinese

About 30 engineers at a Glasgow-based firm are going back to the classroom in a bid to improve their skills.

But rather than heading to the science lab the Clyde Union employees are more likely to be found in the language lab as they are learning to speak Mandarin

BBC website
Friday, 20 February 2009

The Languages of Others: Britain's reliance on foreigners' willingness to learn English is self-defeating

Five years ago Estelle Morris, then the Education Secretary, ended the requirement for all GSCE students to learn at least one foreign language. Last year she acknowledged that this had been a mistake, at least in its timing. It was, in fact, disastrous in every respect.

As unemployment nudges two million and Gordon Brown's ill-judged and inflammatory pledge to create “British jobs for British workers” comes back to haunt him, it is clearer than ever that British workers' inability to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the world's largest single labour market - the EU - stems in large part from longstanding reluctance to make more than a token effort with foreign languages.

February 16, 2009
The Times

Response from Baroness Coussins

Legal bid on Welsh language due

The Welsh Assembly Government's bid for more powers to make laws to promote the Welsh language is due out later.

It is expected the legislative competence order (LCO) will include the right to require some private companies to use the language

Monday, 2nd February
BBC website

Many 'change accent to get ahead'

More than one-third of employees have changed their accent in order to impress their boss and improve their career prospects, research suggests.

Among the 1,000 people surveyed, 38% of those with a regional accent said they had had difficulties being understood, the Bury Technologies survey found.

BBC website
Thursday 22 January 2009

European business schools offering more courses in English

This week's THE reports on the increasing number of business schools offering teaching in English.
Times Higher Education
22-28 January 2009
pp. 32-37

BBC NEWS | Wales | Supermarket tills to speak Welsh

BBC NEWS Wales Supermarket tills to speak Welsh

Tesco's automated tills will now speak both Welsh and English
Shoppers at branches of a supermarket chain will now be able to use self-service checkouts in Welsh following demand from customers.
Tesco said a programme that was started in the summer to convert the automatic tills was now complete.

Business blamed for slump in foreign language entries

Exam boards are blaming British businesses for a further slump in the take-up of modern foreign languages at GCSE.
Figures showed that take-up of French had fallen by a further 6.8 per cent this year to 201,940, which means that only about one in three teenagers is taking the subject. German fell again, too, from 81,061 last year to 76,695 in 2008, a drop of 5.4 per cent.

The Independent
Friday, 22 August 2008

Companies work better with languages - the Business Forum for Multilingualism launches its report

Extract from the European Commision website:

Europe should put in place farsighted policies that turn linguistic diversity into an asset for prosperity.Languages can be used as a competitive advantage for European business. These are the key messages in the report of the Business Forum established by the European Commission in 2007. The main conclusions of the report were presented at a press conference in Brussels on 11 July 2008 by Commissioner Orban and Viscount Etienne Davignon, the chairman of the Business Forum. In the same context, Günther Verheugen, the Commissioner in charge of Enterprise and Industry, participated in a discussion with the business organisations about the recommendations put forward in the report.

Tuesday 15 July 2008
European Commission

How to get the most from an international team

Time zones, language barriers, culture differences - managing a team spread across the globe presents unusual problems

Thursday 3 April 2008
The Times

Yorkshire fabric company named top Business Language Champion

Camira Fabrics with King James' High School in Huddersfield have been named Business Language Champion Partnership of the Year 2006-2007. The prize, awarded for inspiring students and demonstrating the real life relevance of language skills, was announced at the National Education Business Partnership Network annual conference in London on Monday 3 December.

http://www.cilt.org.uk/news/pressoffice/pressrelease/2007/pr0735blcp0312n.pdf

http://www.cilt.org.uk/employment/blc/index.htm