Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

If you’re keen to experience Asia, but not sure you want to live in a stressful, smoggy megacity, Malaysia offers a refreshing alternative! Euroasia is working with a client looking for teachers of EFL to teach foreign students (mainly adults from China, the Middle East, Russia etc.) who choose Malaysia for their English language studies. Some are required asap, but others may join the team at a later date.

Malaysia offers:

• Unique cultural background, see all of Asia in one country
• Year-round tropical climate
• Lively city life and unspoilt nature both within easy reach
• Modest cost of living, much cheaper than Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai
• Cheap flights to other Asian destinations (45mins to Singapore, 2hrs to Bangkok, 3hrs to Bali, 4hrs to Hong Kong)

Applicants have to meet minimum criteria as detailed below.

• Degree
• CELTA or equivalent
• Min. one year’s teaching experience (TEFL or other subject)
• Native English speaker
• Good general health
• Preferably aged 25 and up (for Malaysian visa purposes)
• Citizen of NZ, Aus, EU, USA, Canada (for visa purposes)
• Customer service oriented
• Willingness to contribute to the life of the school

More details and online application available via the following sites:

• Trademe Jobs
• Seek

Do tell your friends about this opportunity (but we can only proceed with applicants who meet the minimum criteria).

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

The National Centre for Languages (Cilt) points to a worrying decline in the take-up of modern languages.

Cilt chief executive Kathryn Board said: “English is one of the great global languages but it will only take us so far. Our engagement with the non-English speaking world will remain superficial and one-sided unless we develop our capacity in other languages.”

Recent research from Cardiff Business School suggests improving languages could add an extra £21bn to the UK economy and that export businesses that use language skills boost their sales by 45%.

That’s not surprising,  simply because foreign-language capable staff make a big difference in terms of engagement with clients. At the moment, many Kiwi firms use amateur translators (friends and family or Google Translate) to process enquiries and then respond to clients. This is tedious and messages can get lost in translation. Worse still, many NZ companies do not even bother translating documents in dealing with foreign language speaking customers.  The expectation is that the buyer will deal with us in English.

Much has been said of New Zealand’s increasing trade engagement with China, especially since the signing of the FTA last year. But the reality is much of our trade with China involves NZ importing Chinese-made goods.  In terms of our exports to China, I wonder how much we really sell once we strip out the contribution of Fonterra (dairy products), Fletcher and Carter Holt (wood products). Partly our dismal performance in terms of exports offshore is due to our inability to service foreign-language speaking customers.

The reason English is so dominant globally as the language of trade  is partly because traders have always learnt the language of the paying customers.  Our arrogant attitude in assuming everyone speaks English has been tolerated when NZ firms are the customers (which is most of the time looking at our current account deficit). If on the other hand, we are selling to overseas customers, the onus is on us to speak the language of the customer. Failure to do so could result in us losing the deal to those who can. The scary (or exciting?) thing for New Zealand is that we are becoming far less dependent on our traditional English-speaking markets and more dependent on other foreign-language speaking markets.

The English are getting very worried because of the dramatic decline in the number of students taking up foreign languages at school. In 1997, 71% of England’s GCSE pupils (roughly NCEA Level 1 or School Certificate in NZ) took a foreign language, last year the rate was down to 44%. The equivalent rate in NZ is about 14% (8400 taking international languages out of approx 60K Year 11 students).

Cilt’s director of communications Teresa Tinsley said: “We are going to be held back as a nation as we seek to emerge from the economic downturn or recession.

“Companies are looking to recruit people with language skills and if they can’t find them amongst our home-grown graduates they will obviously bring in people from other countries to fill these gaps.

“We really need to buck up our ideas or we are going to be stuck in a mono-lingual world when everybody else is taking global opportunities.”

If the English believe they will be “held back” as a nation because “only” 44% of their kids learn a foreign language at high school, what about NZ where only 14% of our Form 5 kids do? There is simply no way we can be a serious player in world trade when we cannot even communicate at the most basic level with our customers. We are not even at first base.

No matter how good we are at foreign languages, the fact remains that a lot of the time we will be communicating with non-native speakers of English – in English! We may find ourselves using English with non-native speakers in business meetings, either at home or overseas, writing emails or publicity materials intended for them, or simply working and living alongside them. But how much thought do we give to our use of English? Are we using our own language as clearly and succinctly as we can? And if we are not, what impact does that have on our business or professional lives, or even our personal lives?

Some difficult issues that perhaps too many native English speakers don’t pay much attention too. At Euroasia, we’ve been contemplating these issues, and Peter has been working on some exciting initiatives in this area.