Job Discussion Forums

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

I want to know what jobs are available to Chinese citizens who speak excellent English. I know a good Chinese man who lived all his life in a city with absolutely no foreign people and he more or less taught himself the basics, plus a few more in Jinhua, Zhejiang, at a university where there was no foreign speakers. No EF, no bull-s h i t. A hard worker who wanted to know our langauge, and succeeded.

My question is what can Chinese people who know excellent English do better than anything else? Several thousands are needed to work import/export industry. Maybe a few more in tourism. Why is there such a crze to learn English?? For what?

Employees speak decent English in McDonalds, KFC and the bars we go to. I have always wondered if getting a job in a fast food place was a desirable position, and what do these kids do? How many jobs is there for English speakers?

I have taught everybody, many kids who will graduate college in 2015-2020. What are all these kids supposed to do? Only 1 percent of these kids will ever use English on a fluent level. There will not be any need for their services. Most will say simple phrases for sure, but only one percent will be fluent.

When will the Chinese (or other governments worldwide) conclude that knowing English is not that important?

Senor

*inebriated slow post.

[kev7161]

I think China is anticipating a MASSIVE influx of English speaking visitors over the course of the next 10 years. From tourists to Olympic personnel and athletes to business employees to college students. Right now, it seems these people are sort of trickling in but the Olympics will surely be bringing in a large amount of people in the next 2-4 years. Also, Chinese students are so sure they are going to go to another country to study? visit? live? work? and they think (hope?) that English will pave the way for them. I know I see more and more foreigners everyday in Hangzhou. My school alone has gone from employing 4 or 5 FTs to 10 last school term to 15 this term. Are ALL the foreigners teachers? Surely not. I'm sure there are students and business people mixed in amongst the teachers. I'm sure there are a lot of political reasons as well when it comes to having students learn English: future ambassadors and translators, perhaps.

There are and will be jobs in probably all walks of life that will call for English speaking people. Right now it's frustrating when I can't find someone that speaks English but I have found them in banks, post offices, restaurants, train stations, even the occasional taxi driver has a smattering of English. I had to get my mobile phone repaired and there was someone who spoke English well enough to assist me.

And, as Senor mentioned, major companies will also want their employees to speak English as they will have to deal with other English speaking personnel from around the globe. . . but not just the import/export businesses. Speaking of exports, I have a Chinese friend who works with the parts of the air conditioners his company exports. His English is pretty good it seems, but he says he still struggles when the people he calls in, say Texas, speak so quickly and with that Texas twang (my words, not his). He appreciates me as I talk slowly in well-modulated tones (I am an English teacher, after all) but I have told him he must constantly try to improve his English so he gets more comfortable with the language.

[Captain Yossarian]

Hi Senor,

This is an interesting question. As you say, there are 1000s of jobs for people in import/export companies (Shenzhen, Shanghai, Qingdao, Dalian etc). Most big shipping companies operating in China use English on a day-to-day basis. Most German companies (Germany is the world's biggest exporter) use English at company level now. The German and Chinese staff at the VW plants in Shanghai and Changchun communicate in English, which I think is staggering. Despite these examples I do wonder what the majority of English majors can use their language skills for. A lot will become teachers and I suppose, eventually, China could end up like Sweden or Holland or Denmark where 90% of those under 45 can speak English exceptionally well. I haven't met McDonalds or KFC staff who speak any English in Qiqihar - it would concern me if I did!

On the other hand...most private schools are reporting that significantly fewer adult students are enrolling for class. This is an interesting development.

What do you think will happen after 2008? So many students tell me they are studying to be volunteers for the Beijing/Qingdao Olympic Games. At least 500 people have said that to me over the last two years so at a rough estimate about 100 million want to go to Beijing to offer their services! Considering that only a minority of athletes/coaches/press etc will be English speaking I think many Chinese will be saddened to find out that all their efforts haven't helped them communicate more successfully.

Over the years I have also had several students who have asked me where I am from because they thought I might be Italian/French/German/Spanish and they have been amazed when I have told them that these are not English speaking countries. I think many people here are under the impression that every other country speaks English so they have to work hard to be like them.

Governments will realise that learning English is not vital when someone develops a babel fish:

The Babel fish, said the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Yossarian

[Roger]

The mistake - in my view - that you have made is to assume that Chinese CHOOSE to STUDY ENGLISH; they don't. IT's their government that has decided English is good for the masses. and it is good for the country's reputation.
It started under Deng Xiaoping. Remember, in the 1980s English was becoming popular because students realised it would help them emigrate, and lots actually did emigrate. Then came 1989, and China lost its face...
In the 1990s, the authorities changed tack. Have you noticed how much more fanatically chauvinistic the CHinese youths are now? This is because the Old Guard realised that the young are the most likely to rebel against the inequities and corruption in this society; thus they decidedn to corrupt them in turn - now English is compulsory, now CHinese can move house freely, now Chinese can even cohabit (still illegal and falling under "PRostitution" in their book...), and now CHinese students can enrol overseas of their own free will (the demographics and economics greatly helping this - too few university places, too much demand which gets diverted abroad, but with people being heavily indoctrinated, the government is no longer afraid those students will remain overseas...).

Deng had a more practical idea: he wanted the new generation of Chinese to be technocrats, scientists, - well-trained and highly-educated. Before he died, Chinese used to say "we have to learn a lot from Western countries!" That's why just a decade ago, young CHinese were very eager to learn the lingo; these days I don't think this is the case anymore! They still learn because the Olympiad and the World Exhibition are two prestigious events intimately linked to the country's prestige, so Chinese think they can serve their motherland by speaking that hated foreign language when China will need to promote a good image to its various foreign visitors.

It is true, of course, that multinational companies still conduct many of their discussions in English, but it is misleading to believe that English is the working language there. Far from true - such companies keep their foreign staffers for a relatively medium-long period, with a view of localising staff. What's more, they isolate those foreigners who can't communicate in CHinese. One perfectly bilingual English/Chinese secretary can conveniently serve her foreign engineer boss.

[burnsie]

The answer is YES.

I came to China and started a recruitment company which caters to all types of job seekers. We are currently working with alot of students at universities who will graduate soon.

If you ask them who/where they want to work most will say a joint venture or foreign company. Why? The pay is higher, better conditions, chance to learn better business practices etc. But they need good english to learn.

The other reason students want to learn english is because they want to study overseas. An overseas degree is regarded quite high here (but it's changing). Also with foreign study comes better english skills and even a chance to work in companies abroad.

The other reason has to do with living and immigrating overseas. They want to learn english to get to a better life.

In terms of generally working in China, english is seen as the business language and you are able to communicate with the rest of the world.

Also Chinese need to learn english so they can read all the english comments on advertising, brochures, websites and products!

[No Moss]

Good thread! I have some ideas to add. China will go through the same transition that Japan, Korea, and Taiwan did, i.e., from building stuff for other companies to having their own branded merchandise. When they do that, they'll have a great need for people who speak English in marketing, customer service, shipping, and management (those subsidiaries need supervising).

Also, China may want to get into the backoffice stuff that India does so well. This is customer service for banks, insurance companies, and other large service companies where the 800 (toll-free) call in America gets switched to an Indian company where an Indian Ms. or Mr. answers with an authentic American accent.

I agree in general that there are more English speakers than the economy can absorb at present. I don't foresee any rise in tourist business (outside of the Olympics) until China relaxes its visa requirements, suppresses its disgusting personal habits (spitting, farmer blows, etc.), and makes travel more, well, English friendly.

I think that the Chinese, in their heart, believe that Chinese will be a dominant world language. It won't. First, the Chinese-speaking world outside of the Chinese hegemony (China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) consists of----Singapore. More importantly, Chinese has a written language that is prohibitively difficult to learn and difficult to use with computers.

English is a world language not only because of the British Empire and America's post-WWII preeminence, but also because it is an easy language to learn to speak, read, and write at a basic level. No tones, no accent marks, no masculine/feminine other than people, no problems in forming verb tenses, only 26 characters. There are things about English that are difficult, of course, but you can get off the ground pretty quickly. And it is useful in many different ways.

China will accept that Chinese is not a world language as it becomes increasingly apparent that only salesmen and Sinophiles will take the trouble to learn their spoken and written language, and the lure of western culture becomes irresistable.

[waxwing]

[No Moss]

Hi, Waxwing. My comment about forming verb tenses refers to the fact that English doesn't have verb conjugations like, for instance, French. I didn't say that it was easy to know when to use a verb tense.

[waxwing]

Ah so you meant conjugations. Yes, french is absolutely a beast when it comes to tenses. i was forgetting that; my recent experience is Russian and Chinese (although only just started on the latter). Russian has 3 or so conjugations, pretty regular.. but when it comes to tenses it's a lot easier because there's really only three (although I always tell Russians they have 5 which is true in a way). Aspect is a bugger though in that language. And as for Chinese, from what I've been told, there is no tense at all (prob. just one of those beginner oversimplifications). Apart from Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan though, I've got no clue.
'get off the ground pretty quickly' - like I say, on the whole I agree, but I have my suspicions that ultimately all languages are equally difficult/easy.

An example of 'starting out' difficulty in English would be the appalling mismatch between the written characters and the phonemes. (e.g. 5 vowel letters to represent 20 vowel phonemes combined with total irregularity in spelling). I'm not sure if there are any other Indo-European languages which suffer from anything like that.
People often quote phrasal verbs as a big hurdle with English but that's an upper int kind of thing I guess.

[No Moss]

Well, I agree with you on languages. I always tell my students that English is an easy language to speak poorly and a hard language to speak well.

[william wallace]

Nothing to say.

[Ger]

Should English be the only language in the world?

What say you?

[Madmaxola]

Absolutely!

English is a gateway to another world, namely - capitalism and money.

On the simplest level, peopel who can speak English at a tolerable level can get jobs at Hotels, Inport/Export companies, Secretarial positions, as Representatives to foreign companies, etc etc etc.

China�s growth is being FUELED by foreign investors! English is the lingua franca of the world, to plug into China�s growth and be part of that process, the students NEED English. It�s basically part and parcel of any education that is serious about getting the student a good job.

[kev7161]

I think that the Chinese, in their heart, believe that Chinese will be a dominant world language. It won't. First, the Chinese-speaking world outside of the Chinese hegemony (China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) consists of----Singapore. More importantly, Chinese has a written language that is prohibitively difficult to learn and difficult to use with computers.

I was just saying the same thing the other day to another FT. One of the reasons I gave up on learning the Chinese language is because I am 99.9% certain I will be leaving China next summer (and that, in my opinion, it is such an outdated language). I just have no need for it in my brain. If I were planning on staying here for a few years, then that would be a different story. I said to my companion that the only people that need Chinese live . . . in China. I realize, of course, there are Chinese OUTSIDE of China (duh!), but many of them probably know some or a lot of English as well. I'm not saying that English is the best or even the easiest language to learn, but it IS the language of the world at this time.

[Roger]