By Jason Lim
In today's global business environment, executives and managers have to communicate instantly with people across different time zones to make a decision that will potentially have a huge impact on the health of their respective organizations. The common medium of this organic network of communication is English.
Despite the occasional emotional rebellion against the suffocating necessity of English education, there is no escaping that English is no longer just the Lingua Franca of the 21st Century. English is also the Lingua Japan, Lingua Korean, Lingua China and even Lingua Mongolian.
According to a recent NY Times article titled, ``For Mongolians, E is for English, and F is for the Future,'' the ``growing dominance of American culture and international financial realities'' are fueling an astronomical growth of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) schools in Asia. Ancient news for anyone in Korea.
Before we slip off into a cliched diatribe on the state of English education in Korea, let me ask you a question first:
As a Korean, why do you learn English? Because you want to watch ``Sex and the City'' without the subtitles? Because you want to understand the lyrics of the latest rapper? Or, because you want to enhance your personal competitiveness as an executive, manager and academic in today's global economy? Probably the latter.
If so, your purpose in learning English is to increase your marketability by improving your skills at persuasion. Your study of English is not to enable you to say, ``What's up?" to an American with an authentic mannerism. Your purpose in studying English is not to speak with the easy, everyday fluency of native English speakers.
Not only is that not realistic, it's not even relevant. Fluency does not automatically translate into effectiveness. No, the English you should be studying should be to help you exercise influence on others by persuading them to your point of view.
In Korea, we often forget the real reason we study English. The reason we spend so much money and effort to learn English is to make us more competitive in the global environment. In short, English is an essential skill set in our professional toolbox. But we must never forget that English is just a means to an end, not the end itself.
Recently, Korean news was filled with the heartbreaking loss to Sochi, Russia by Pyeongchang of the right to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The stories were filled with how Pyeongchang was robbed of its righteous privilege and how wonderful Pyeongchang's PowerPoint presentation was compared to anyone else's.
There were also stories of underhanded Russian tactics and how Putin's amateurish English appeal to the IOC members made everyone laugh.
But if Putin was not a fluent English speaker, the question begs: Was he a persuasive English presenter? The answer is a simple yes. Because Russia won. Does it matter now that Putin did not pronounce English words perfectly? Who gets the last laugh?
A general distrust is apparent in the current regime for teaching and measuring English skills. More and more companies in Korea are no longer using TOEIC and TOEFL scores to measure a candidate's English proficiency.
Apparently, they finally realized that TOEIC and TOEFL scores do not accurately predict English performance in real situations. Even worse, the time people spend on overseas language learning camps is not a reliable barometer to their real-world English skills.
The urgency over the situation has become so dire that industry CEO's are publicly pressing for English education reforms so that college graduates become ``hireable'' in today's global environment.
They recently demanded a new testing system that would accurately reflect the English skills of a potential hire. This is understandable since it costs money to hire someone only to find out that they are not ready to do the job and have to be further trained.
So, what barometer should guide us? In preparing to engage in a professional communication, we can never lose sight of the fact that dialogue is about getting something you want by persuading others.
Speaking English is only the technical part of the process. It's not enough to memorize certain sample dialogue pieces because the actual dialogue will never work out as you planned. You need to train yourself to frame your thoughts and words persuasively.
In short, it's not about sounding cool. It's all about the bottom line.
Jason Lim is a fellow at Harvard Korea Institute researching Asian leadership models. He can be reached at jasonlim@post.harvard.edu.
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