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  English Is The Killer Application A Kaytek Education Consulting Perspective |
Consulting
Education
English Is The Killer Application
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English Is The Killer Application A Kaytek Education Consulting Perspective |
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For the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, the Chinese government is ensuring that every taxi driver in the city can converse with foreigners in English. Hence, they are all being trained for the same. They have also imported thousands of English teachers from all over the world (including many from India) to help them learn English. It is reported that English lessons are given in Football Stadiums in China. One more small example of China's drive and determination to integrate easily into the global economy. Such is the power of English. It is Indeed the Killer Application of the Knowledge Economy. There are multiple variations of English. I was amused to hear the Singaporean version of English called as 'Singlish' when I went there a couple of years ago. I was equally amused to hear Thai 'English' in the shopping malls of Bangkok. Most people in India speak multiple languages - English being only one of them. Hindi, our national language is spoken across the country. Besides, each state in India has it's own regional language. For instance, in the Indian Western State of Maharashtra, the local language spoken is Marathi, besides of course English and Hindi. In Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, for instance Kannada is the local regional language. |
There are various local IT applications being developed in India which help easy automatic translation from one language to another e.g. Hindi to English and vice-versa, Marathi to Gujarati, etc. Somebody has expressed a viewpoint that since most Indians are trained and educated to read, speak and write multiple languages, our brains are probably hard-wired for complexity. Hence the ease in handling tough software programming and design challenges. IELTS and TOEFL are also the buzzwords amongst the students in India. AdvertisementHowever, since most Indians in their spoken vocabulary have strong regional give-away accents, these get neutralized via accent correction training. Most Call-Centers in India have got full time induction training programs for their employees for accent neutralization and correction (separately for British, Australian and US accents). There are thousands of private and public schools in India which help people learn to communicate better in spoken and written English. Experts are of the opinion that it will probably be mainly our superior knowledge of English that will help India retain an slight edge over China in the future IT services global marketplace. |
Also, do you know that for the first time in many decades, there were more Hollywood English hits in India than the local Hindi movies. Interestingly, these Hollywood movies get appropriately sub-titled in Hindi, for broader acceptance amongst the masses. A James Bond and a Rocky Stallone or Arnold the Terminator spouting out at the bad guys aggressively in Hindi are no less popular than some of the local heroes here. We live after all in a global village with English as the only underlying unifying factor common across all cultures and regions. Our own office assistant from Nepal, spends his evening free time typing English sentences on the PC. He even has his own Hotmail and Yahoo Email accounts to communicate with his brother in the UAE. Such is the power of English, the original Queen's language of India that the offshore outsourcing revolution could not have really happened without it. English is also the foundation for the coming revolution in IT technologies like XML( Extensible Markup Language ) and Web Services !
Email Us : Can we help you leverage your knowledge of English for a Career in Object Oriented Software Development ? An Earlier Version of this Article with the same title published as a Weblog on an External Website - 20th Jan 04
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