Ilango lives and works in Chennai, India. I met him for the first time via IATEFL BESIG years ago, and have stayed in contact ever since. As you will see, Ilango is a trainer who really thinks about what he is doing, and is never afraid to branch out into new fields. He has called this article "One day in the life of a business English trainer 'masquerading' as a soft-skills trainer", but I don't think there is much 'masquerading' going on at all.
Where does Business English stop and soft-skills training take over? This was the question that faced me when I was invited last week to lead a ‘train the trainers’ workshop on soft skills for a group of English language trainers in a big city in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India.
The training company I’m consulting for had just then signed an MOU with the authorities of a large university in that city with the objective of delivering soft-skills training to all of its year-three (final-year undergraduate) students studying different majors there. Readers at this point may wonder at the rationale’ of giving training in soft skills to undergraduates. But, as David Graddol (2010) points out in his book, _English Next: India_ published by the British Council, UK, “English has long been thought of as a ‘library language,’ but spoken English skills are now increasingly needed both for higher studies and employment (p. 14).”
Yet another unasked question seems to be as follows: ‘if giving training in Business English would suffice for the purposes of pre-experience students getting prepared for eventual employment in the marketplace, developing one’s ability to present one’s ideas and notions with confidence and persuasive skill in public, reading and / or listening to business texts for obtaining critical information that could be made use of for furthering one’s career goals or to engage in entrepreneurial and business activities and writing business texts for similar purposes, what then is the necessity for giving soft-skills training?’
There are at the least four major obstacles preventing the spread of BE in the country at the moment, though it needs to be said that many Engineering universities and colleges at least in the southern part of the country have woken up to the fact that getting their undergraduates to prepare for an examination such as Cambridge ESOL’s Business English Certificate – Preliminary, which if they pass, would add value to their employability quotient!
The first main hurdle is that most English teachers in the country study English literature at the post graduate level before being employed as faculty members in colleges and universities. Only a miniscule fraction of that number ever get trained in BE! The second hurdle is that apart from the University of Delhi and a few others, Business English does not figure in the English language curriculum in colleges at all. The third obstacle is that even if BE is found a place on the college curriculum, most teachers and lecturers in the country are not trained in assessing students in BE. The fourth hurdle is that most corporate entities, though there needs to be made an exception especially in the case of Information Technology and Information Technology Enabled Services companies (that roll out all kinds of software and Business Process Outsourcing services to buyers in other countries), assume that since their staff (the rank and file) have already been educated in English (in school and college here in India), they do not need Business English for purposes of work! Their assumption is that knowing English equates with being able to do business in English! And, to compound matters, realisation has dawned on recruiters and employers working for Indian industry that students who graduate from college lack the ability to make use of their English language skills in ways that would easify their entry into the world of work. To illustrate, most undergraduates fresh out of college would find it difficult if not impossible to, say, answer the phone and take a message in English from the caller for an absent colleague. Thus it may be the case that it may take more than the usual time for the new employee to adjust to their work surroundings.
Therefore, in response to the demands of the marketplace and requirements of industry, and in response to the realisation that English language skills are also not being taught in functionally useful ways in college, many colleges and university systems (including some in the public sector) across the country have started outsourcing their requirement to give training to students in soft skills to third-party English language training providers and Information technology companies (that are also the eventual recruiters of such students) in the private sector.
Getting back to the workshop I led, I need to say that I planned to give training to impact the trainers in the following ways:
The trainers needed to understand that giving soft-skills training was all about transforming theoretical knowledge in their domain into skills-based practice and understanding for their trainees.
Trainers would need to understand that the more trainer-centred the training is, the less the skills will transfer; so they would have to facilitate their trainees every step of the way. So, I started the workshop by outlining the following guidelines for giving training and developing materials during the forthcoming weeks:
1) Demonstrate principles and concepts to trainees
2) Lead the trainee to do a task or activity or assignment
3) Facilitate learning and any and all exchanges between learners
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