Article Tools
Imagine this: you've been seconded to a position in Tokyo, starting in no time. You don't speak a word of Japanese, so what do you do? Or maybe it's Mexico City or Montreal, and the languages in question are Spanish or French. Although many of us are daunted by the thought of trying to master a new tongue, the average Canadian could acquire one every year in the time he now spends watching television. In fact, one of the biggest challenges in picking up a second language lies in picking out the right course of study. "We have a bewildering number of opportunities for a business executive to respond to the challenge," says Jan Walls, director of the David See-Chai Lam Centre for International Communication at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University.
For the self-starter, there are multimedia CD-ROM packages. Cultural organizations, community centres, universities, colleges and institutions like Berlitz all offer excellent classes. The Goethe Institute (for German) and the Alliance Française (for French) are also well regarded. Then there's study abroad, either of an academic bent or in the more luxurious bicycle-tour-and-wine-tasting mode.
Some institutions specialize in high-level language training specifically for business, the David Lam Centre among them. "We focus on the languages of East Asia: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean mostly," says Walls. (Bahasa Indonesian is also offered.) "We're geared toward people in business and professional or government services who need to interact with counterparts or customers from East Asia." The centre offers small-group courses year-round. Nine-week, 22.5-hour language courses cost $288. Occasionally, the school also offers "kamikaze courses," which Walls describes as "suicidally intensive," to people who must reach a survival level within a few weeks.
Eighteen years ago, the McRae Institute of International Management at Capilano College in North Vancouver began to train Canadian managers to work effectively in Asia. Candidates typically spend the first year in Canada and the second on a paid co-op placement in the target region. The program was designed around three components: managerial skills, the context of the region, and languages, including Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesian. It has since expanded to include a Latin American stream offering Portuguese and Spanish. The institute accepts a limited number of students into language classes alone. The basic fee for a 120-hour, 30-week course beginning in September is $1,150. (The full two-year program has also recently begun to take in international trainees from its focus regions. "This is a very effective and cost-effective approach for Canadian businesses," says Mitra Kiamanesh, director of external relations and former program chair.)
But what about French, probably the language most needed by anglophones in Canadian business? Louise Charest (yes, she's the sister of Quebec Premier Jean Charest) founded her École de langues de l'Estrie 20 years ago. "Our primary objective is for employees to be able to function in French or English in the workplace," she says. The school offers courses in Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke, and can make programs available anywhere in Canada, as it often does for military and government clients. Fees range from $40 to $50 per hour, typically for one to six hours a week.
The crème de la crème would be the Canadian Foreign Service Institute's Centre for Language Training. Among business clients, the centre has trained foreign correspondents for The Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen, specialist technicians sent to review hydro installations in Costa Rica, and operations managers for a Canadian-owned brewery in Mexico. "We can offer survival or professional language training and testing in over 50 languages anywhere in Canada," says director Gerald Redmond. "We can do it at their site, they can come here, or we can even arrange to have them registered in an immersion in-country program after they've reached a high enough level of proficiency." The cost is a flat $55 an hour for training in Ottawa, more elsewhere. "Our price is the same for one student or for eight," says Redmond. "If they wanted to come to Ottawa and join one of our existing groups, we would charge them a pro-rated fee." The most advanced, six-month, full-time courses start in September.
By comparison, Berlitz can tailor its corporate programs to a specific industry or job and offers group instruction for up to $65.50 per 45-minute lesson. (The lesson can be offered to 300 or more at a time; larger classes cost slightly less.) Individual instruction for executives costs $2,850 per level (one level consists of about 36 hours of instruction). Total immersion runs $2,875 per level, covered in just five days.
How to choose among the many options? These questions would be an ideal place to start.
What types of skills do you require?
"If you're dealing with a high-level executive, they don't have time to waste," says Joan Rubin, an independent consultant in teacher training and diversity management based in Wheaton, Md., and co-author of the book How to Be a More Successful Language Learner. "What are you going to need? To be able to make a presentation? Manage staff? Write memos?" If it's not immediately clear what skills a certain job requires, she adds, "you can do a language audit, where somebody goes in and talks to the people doing the job."
A business traveller may get by with survival-level skills, like the capacity to ask directions, visit a doctor and introduce herself. While more senior executives, who use interpreters and translators, often require only survival skills, Walls says "it would behoove more front-line executives to aim for a more advanced level."
It's worth noting that in our own mother tongue we spend the vast majority of our time speaking "around the intermediate level," says Redmond. "Advanced skills will be important if you need to do such things as work over the telephone, conduct and chair meetings, negotiate or defend your company's actions."
How many hours of instruction do you need?
Rate this article
|
Rated
by 0 people
Rate This
Not rated
|
