Government-driven EFL training: Is Mongolia left behind?

Mongolia is an example of an EFL, or English as a Foreign Language, country. The first and official language here is Mongolian, and English is just one of the foreign languages that Mongolians speak aside from Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc. In comparison, there are also ESL, or English as a Second Language, countries. The United Arab Emirates is an example where Arabic is the official language, yet most, if not all, of its citizens and residents speak English.

Another EFL country is Tunisia where the government has implemented a national training initiative that targets its jobless youth for enhanced skills training. There was a time when unemployment was chronic in Tunisia, reportedly at around 30 percent, and many experts believe that this was one of the major reasons that contributed to the recent revolution there.

The Tunisian government has a “free education for all” policy which has, on one hand, enabled thousands of students to receive university degrees over the past years. On the other, many of them have not acquired key skills that employers are seeking. The educational system has been producing graduates for the sake of producing them, so quality has been compromised by quantity.

Particularly with big local companies and multinational corporations in Tunisia, one of their job requirements is for a potential employee to have adequate skills in English. Unfortunately, such demand has not been met by the already huge supply of university graduates in the country. The Tunisian government, thus, wanted to address this skills gap. Launched in 2006, this national program, aimed at helping unemployed university graduates, sets out to provide them training in the English language as well as in information technology.

The Tunisian government also has a policy of providing tax rebates for any kind of employee training in the private sector. More specifically, the government returns part of the corporate income tax to the company that trains its employees or have them trained. The reimbursement is the actual amount of training expenses that the company incurs. To put it simply, it does not cost the company at all to provide training which is an effective incentive to continuously improve skills in the workplace.

It is interesting to note that this rebate system was, in fact, started in 1956 and was reformed in 1993. Even then, the Tunisian government had a long-term vision of making their citizens competitive in the labor force. Looking at all of these from a bird’s eye view, the government of Tunisia has targeted both its workforce before and during employment to address any skills gap. In terms of English language training, this is provided for free to unemployed graduates as well as to private sector employees in the form of tax rebates for companies.

In another EFL country that is Yemen, the government is providing free English language training in the form of aviation English to its pilots and air traffic controllers. As the common language of global aviation, using English is a valuable skill for these professionals who rely on it to ensure air safety. In recent years, the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, has required that key aviation workers around the world demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency in plain English and utilize a standard phraseology for all work-related tasks.

Albeit there are few international flights to and from the country vis-à-vis their regional flights, the Yemeni government did not want its aviation workers to miss out on upgrading their English language skills. It is interesting to note that pilots and air traffic controllers in Yemen must come from the military, so they are, unlike most of their global counterparts, actually government employees. In shorter words, the government has budgeted a specific amount of money for this “language of the air” training for this particular group of public servants in order to meet the minimum ICAO competency on using English at the workplace.

It is unfortunate that Yemen is infamous for being the headquarters of the terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. Maybe this is one of the reasons why cultural diplomacy with the United States thrives in this country. Yemeni officials are, factually speaking, cooperating with the US government on quite a number of fronts. One of them is to encourage their top students to become scholars in America. The Youth and Sports Ministry of Yemen actively calls on high school and university students to apply for such scholarships.

Scholarship recipients are given the opportunity to take as many English classes as they need for one to two years. It does not matter whether they start in the beginner or advanced level. Part of their scholarship is to finish the last level in our institute and become very proficient in the English language before they leave for America to get a university or Master’s degree.

Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and has fallen economically way behind its neighbors in the Gulf such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Its government, of course, wants its constituency to experience progress and the country believes that one of the keys to economic development is for its people to learn the English language and be good at it.

In Egypt, this EFL country seeks to grow its international tourism sector much bigger, so the Ministry of Tourism together with the country’s tourism industry associations have partnered with the language institute I was working in to improve the English language proficiency as well as cross-cultural skills of front-line professionals in the field of tourism such as tour guides, travel agents, and hotel receptionists.

The country, however, is also thinking long term and does not want to depend solely on tourism for its national income. Egypt also wants to be fully industrialized in the likes of Germany and the United States, so the government has invested some money in upgrading the English language skills of Egyptian engineers. The program involves any engineering student, graduate, or professional to take additional English classes with a subsidy. This has definitely been an incentive for them to develop their English language skills in the government’s hope of developing the country.

Like Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt, Mongolia is an EFL country. But unlike Mongolia, the economies of these three other countries are not growing at a remarkable rate. Yet unlike their governments, the Mongolian government does not seem to be as pro-active particularly with regard to encouraging and promoting proficiency in the English language as a means to have a more competitive labor force. In the next article, two more countries will be discussed whose government-driven ELT initiatives are as equally commendable and where Mongolia can also learn from their examples and experiences.

Short URL: http://ubpost.mongolnews.mn/?p=3688