Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 20, 2007
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Thursday, Sep 20, 2007 ePaper |
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Tamil Nadu
CHENNAI: If the English language is India’s competitive advantage in the IT and IT-enabled services sector, bridging the skills gap between the needs of industry and suboptimal graduate level English is key to India’s economic success. More than 15 senior governing staff of universities and higher educational institutes in South India, senior representatives from industry including NASSCOM and Cognizant, and IT Secretary Dr. S. Chandramouli gathered in Chennai on Wednesday to discuss strategies and tools to bridge that gap. The forum, organised by Cambridge ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) and the British Council at the Taj Coromandel, focussed on how to benchmark language standards, ensure quality and make English learning tools accessible, particularly for graduates of technical colleges. Barriers highlighted included the lack of reliable assessment processes, poor English language delivery by teachers dealing with technical subjects, poor English language teaching in schools and lack of emphasis on the spoken form. Dr Mike Milanovic, Chief Executive of Cambridge ESOL, stressed the importance of making the learning, teaching and assessment triangle contextually valid, consistently reliable, economically and qualitatively practical and of significant impact. He said, “With regard to setting a common standard for industry and education a good option is to adopt an appropriate level on what is known as the Common European Framework for language learning.” This framework is used by employers and trainers around the world to standardise and measure any language competency while allowing for diversity in the difficulty of languages and language form, he said. “It’s not a specifically European model,” he told The Hindu after the forum discussion, “it’s a tool developed in Europe that provides a framework to compare and discuss relevant issues.” Cambridge ESOL is in discussion with local universities, industry bodies and training providers on both the issues of benchmarking standards and teacher training. “The main grouse of the IT industry is that 50 per cent of graduates are not employable. They may be technically sound, but the soft skills of communication, of which the English language is essential, are lacking,” said Dr Chandramouli. Dr. Sandhya Chintala, Director, NASSCOM agreed: if India is to reach its target of employing 10 million graduates in the IT sector by 2010, English language skills must be improved, she said.
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