Foreign Language Professionals In Great Demand
Continuing on the many prospects foreign languages can offer you, i thought of sharing an exciting information here. A one-day workshop was conducted jointly by the University of Hyderabad (HCU) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in which we came to know that the industry will require around 1,60,000 foreign language professionals by 2010. The University of Hyderabad offers proficiency courses in a few foreign languages already and plans to inaugurate a full fledged centre for teaching foreign languages. It will offer courses in Japanese, French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian initially and more will be added later.
This is promising news indeed and all the more reason for you to consider picking up a foreign language to make yourself employable for lucrative openings coming your way.
Outside the Classroom:A Different Take on Creative Learning.
In the academic fields of literature and language, a creative writer is highly appreciated. Several universities and colleges both in India and abroad offer courses on creative writing. If you are an acclaimed creative writer, your proficiency in the language can hardly be called into question. It is taken for granted that you have mastered the language and are able to play with it as per your wishes. You can compose poetry, write stories, argue convincingly and so on. Armed with such abilities, you may think that a job in the industry that involves writing will be a piece of cake for you. Pause here and think again.
Lucrative opportunities like technical writing and blogging require extensive writing from you but not the kind that you have been producing so far in your classrooms. I once attended an interview for the post of technical writer in a reputed company where I was asked why I want this job. I confidently replied that creative writing is one of my skills and I would love to apply that skill in my job. My interviewer smiled and told me “creative” writing is not what is expected out of me. The focus should be to keep the language as simple as possible and be straightforward. The writing thus has to stem from an entirely different attitude and perspective.
You need to keep in mind that a company is hiring you to write about itself, its objectives, its products etc. Through your writing, existing and prospective clients will form an idea about your company and what it is all about. It is up to you to make this idea as clear to them as possible. So you need to free your writing from veiled references and images to make it clear and comprehensible. When you are writing about a product, you have to make all specifications easy to understand and when you are blogging about the company and its services, your style needs to be simple so that your writing is understood by everybody. A poet or novelist can get away by saying he/she writes for a specific target audience, but you won’t usually have that excuse. So does that mean there is absolutely no creativity? Not at all; you need to be creative to make your writing simple, comprehensible, yet eye-catching.
Raw Deal for the Rural
In India we often have a lot of discussions on our lack of English knowledge. It might come as a surprise to many but India is right up there in terms of the number of people who can speak English. Beating UK and Australia hands down and offering stiff competition to the US, India has to offer a huge English-speaking populace. However, this section is only 4 percent of India’s total population and basically the urban cluster and as of now, this is the cluster the industry has to depend upon for filling up its many vacancies.
Almost all the jobs on offer in the private sector require a good knowledge of English. Being more exposed to the requirements and facilities, city-dwellers are in a better position to occupy vacancies in the Industry. The rural youth, on the contrary, focus more on the public sector as proficiency in English is not vital. According to an article on rediff.com, rural youth would rather take up positions of peons and security guards in the state’s payroll than try for jobs in the private sector which require English. According to the article, the north-eastern states have a different story to tell thanks to their Baptist schools whereas the rest of rural India would rather shy away from the private sector with its imposing demand that candidates be fluent in English.
When we are not providing the rural youth adequate exposure and training, we cannot really blame them for their apprehension of city life and the private sector. We need to urgently realize that a significant change in the education system might just raise the percentage of English speakers in India from 4% to 40%.