Dongwha boosts employees' English proficiency

Ahn Seong-jin, NIE (Newspaper in Education) Times Editor, gives a lector to Dongwha Enterprise employees, at the company’s headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, on Nov. 26. / Courtesy of Dongwha Enterprise

By Park Jin-hai

Dongwha Enterprise’s headquarters in Yeouido are packed with employees asking about “long forgotten” English grammar during a two-hour lecture.

“The basic passive voice sentence is formed of the verb ‘to be’ and a ‘past particle,’” Ahn Seong-jin, NIE

(Newspaper in Education) Times Editor, told the employees.

Since August, more than 100 people have applied for the lecture series.

Dongwha Group’s wood materials manufacturing unit has been striving to boost the English competence of its employees in order to nurture them as global talent. It has four overseas offices and factories in Vietnam, Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand.

“Our company provides able employees, regardless of age and rank, opportunities to work at our overseas offices,” said Dongwha Enterprise official Lee Ki-young.

“Only a year after joining the company, a recruit has been sent to our New Zealand office.

“Building up employees’ language capabilities has become all the more important.”

With the increasingly important language proficiency, the company has been running educational programs and hires an in-house native English speaker. Any employee can make an appointment to have a conversation with the native speaker at any time.

In the latter half of this year, however, the company made a major shift in its English education programs. Instead of casual talks, it started to place more focus on “business English,” for instance, how to make business phone calls and write e-mails.

The first step has been grammar lessons, one of the biggest hurdles in learning English.

The company plans to continue the grammar lectures.

Regarding English speaking ability, it has tapped famous TED content. Since 2004, the company has held an annual English presentation contest, in which each presenter gives a five-minute speech.

The contest aims to foster a global corporate culture as well as finding talent for its overseas offices.

The speech contest has expanded over the years to include plays and musicals.

The last speech contest in April was about Dongwha’s core values and learning about other countries.

From this year, the evaluation has begun to reflect audience opinion. The audience listened to the presentations carefully and voted for their favorite presenters via mobile phone. This judgment accounted for 20 percent of the total score.

Including a 1 million won prize for the winner, four employees have been awarded cash prizes.

“Because Dongwha Enterprise’s overseas sales have jumped, there is an increasing call for our employees to foster their global competitiveness,” said Choi Ju-young, an official in charge of employee education.

“Through diverse forms of educational programs, we will help our employees continue to brush up their English skills.”