Reflection 5

Reflection on "A curriculum framework for corporate language programs"

People have the tendency to think that those who work for foreign companies have good command of English. Contrary to this belief, they don’t. I worked for foreign companies for nearly six years altogether, and I noticed that as few as 20% of the employees have average or above level of English language proficiency. Although this rough statistic is only based on my own experience and assumption, many people with similar background will agree to it. The company I worked for once implemented a language program because the head of the company felt a need to improve his employees’ communication skills. Being an US-based company, almost every employee of all levels and all departments were required to have a certain level of English proficiency. Otherwise, effective communication could not be achieved. So, I guess the goal of the language education was to establish efficient communication within the organization and also with the headquarter office. The company assigned Minbyungchul Language Institute in charge of the program. What they did first was to conduct a placement test which divided the employees into two levels- intermediate and beginner. Only two employees (including myself) were exempted from the program because of their good command of English. In the beginning stage before the lessons started, the manager of the institution as well as the instructor was involved. Two of them worked together do develop a curriculum in which they took business context into account and made a decision of how the lessons would be carried out. Other decisions such as how many hours’ instruction and when and where the program will be held were done by the company. The program consisted of two 1&1/2 hours’ lessons per week for each group, which was done in the company’s conference room early in the morning before they started to work. The instructor was required to report the learners’ attendance and performance to the company, so she conducted a test at the end of each month. The employees picked up some expressions from each class, and they found the classes very enjoyable. However, the program was initially designed to last for only 6 months, and the company wanted to witness some improvements within that short period of time. I think the company’s approach was product focused rather than process focused; it failed to see language learning as a process.