The new market trend: proficiency in multiple languages
dublin |
education |
opinion/analysis 
Thursday May 17, 2012 11:54
by Diarmuid Haughian
The Irish educational system is currently failing to provide equal chance, equal access and share to graduate employment opportunities with global employers in Ireland. There seems to be a cultural over-reliance on the English language in Irish society, a lack of awareness importance of being multi-lingual at an early age and language learning time in the classroom is spent on compulsory Irish.
IN the current jobs market being proficient in multiple languages is now more important than ever before. Unfortunately many Irish students are found to be lacking in this area. Ireland came second last In a recent study of 25 European carried out by Euro student with only five per cent of third level students surveyed in Ireland claiming to be competent in at least two foreign languages - the average was 20 per cent. Career Guidance practitioner Diarmuid Haughian looks at the importance of languages in boosting your career.
The Irish educational system is currently failing to provide equal chance, equal access and share to graduate employment opportunities with global employers in Ireland. There seems to be a cultural over-reliance on the English language in Irish society, a lack of awareness importance of being multi-lingual at an early age and language learning time in the classroom is spent on compulsory Irish. A report published last year by Ireland’s Expert Group on Future Skills Needs stated that ‘jobseekers with third level qualifications coupled with work experience and foreign language skills were more likely to be in demand by employers’. Unfortunately our educational system is not producing multi-lingual graduates.
When considering what language to study, you must evaluate the economic importance of that language and which can apply the best advantage, find your niche and analyse each country’s economy. For example take German; it is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union and accounts for 4% of internet use.
In a European business skills survey by ELAN, it was revealed that amongst employers specifically looking for employees with language skills, French and German remain the most sought after languages. Perhaps this is why 49% of Irish students sat French in the Leaving Cert in 2011 yet France is not an emerging market.
According to recent studies, 38% of British firms are interested in people who can speak Cantonese or Mandarin, in order to build business links with China. These are the facts that you must reflect upon when choosing a language.
The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, China and India) economies are thriving at the moment, however how will they be faring upon graduation? Ultimately, fluency in any global language is a positive toward your human capital and unfortunately I don’t believe our young students realise the importance of being multi-lingual.
The depth of language study can vary depending on the course duration and NFQ (National Framework of Qualifications) level – the higher the NFQ level relates to the level of exposure and study depth, for example cultural employment exchanges, academic placements, cultural studies, etc. Private language schools may focus learning time on speaking and writing the language and is usually a phased learning curve, allowing the student to bridge from Level Basic on up to Intermediate and Advanced. There is also the option of learning from home using computer based applications which are very popular if you are leading a busy schedule. Again, research and reflection is required when making a decision.
It is equally important to realise what jobs can be attained with certain languages. A large proportion of multi lingual opportunities are in any multinational company in Ireland more so within, software, IT and Internet companies, call centres, sales and administration positions, the export sector and teaching abroad. What job roles will each language open?
Ultimately, it’s about competitive advantage, if you have a background in Law and you can speak French, you have a greater prospect of landing a job with a Law firm that has a number of clients who have business relations in any French speaking country. The world is a globalised commercial society and our educational system must produce the multi-lingual graduates that will allow us to export and trade our way out of our current problems.
[edited by moderator to remove commercial links]
Comments (9 of 9)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9..out of our current problems.'
One in five of our kids go to bed or school hungry(recent NUIG/WHO study)while our agribusiness export stats are going astral...
Please explain, Diarmuid, how growth(carcinogenic?) in ' export and trade' will not DEEPEN this problem.
I'm all for language upskilling and globalism...but NOT the current feral competitive model; thats what brought us centuries of famines while our produce fattened absentees(read tax-exile capitalists).
I suggest you reflect a little on your enthusiasm for your obvious vested interested in your subject. Its needs refining.
Future wage slaves need lower wages but higher skillsets to make our corporate lords and masters happy and increase their profits. Children of our livestock should prepare better in future for the empty lives of wage slavery spent away from your families to come. But don't worry You'll have your shiny iphone to comfort you. You can put pictures of your children on it so you don't forget what they look like.
Prepare well and you have an empty soul sucking future as cogs in our corporate machines. Or you could starve to death homeless. Soon you'll have no choices as our well paid puppet neo liberal politicians cut all your safety nets.
So prepare well or die children of our livestock.....
more capitalist wage slavery propaganda:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0519/1....html
Oh no...what if I never get a tedious job I hate but which allows me to work all day 5 days a week for the rest of my fucking life just to enable me to go into debt to buy an iphone 4s and a flashy car. I'd be such a social outcast.
You'd think a shitty corporate slave job was the only thing you could do with your life! and You're supposed to believe you're a piece of shit if you can't get one. Well I got news for you. You get one life, no reruns, you can't buy extra time except for the crap kind you don't want in an expensive hospital with tubes up your ass. Wasting that opportunity to be truly alive in order to make money for a greedy sociopathic destructive corporation is NOT the only OR the best way to use that life.
Spend more time with your kids, help others, write, learn to grow organic food, sell your TV, build a wind generator, Learn to fix things, work with wood, learn to cook, read some books. Jeez, with all that who has time to be enslaved!! And when you build community and work together on stuff not to extort money all the time, its surprising how little you can live on. You help others, they help you, food is shared, people rally around where there is a need, work growing food etc is shared communally. Its actually quite a fulfilling way to live. Much better than the nasty brand of dog eat dog "me feinism" and consumerism touted incessantly in our media and in our schools or "socialisation camps". as another indymedian said recently: "don't let school get in the way of a good education".
Stop letting corporate media and propaganda frame your thinking in such a limited fashion. Free your mind and Live your own life instead of giving it away to those who do not deserve it.
"The greatest achievement of modern propaganda is that people think that it doesn't actually exist"
You are all SLAVES! You police YOURSELVES. It is up to you to BREAK YOUR OWN CHAINS.
Enda kenny and his right wing pals like it this way and he certainly won't do it for you. Quite the opposite. There are other ways for people to exist on this rock other than as slaves. There are other ways to face your reality. There are other ways WE can face our reality TOGETHER!!
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Madeleine Bunting wrote a book about the subject of work slavery. It's called "willing slaves". review here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/jul/03/highereduca...news2
worth a look
Look even if all you post modernist types were to all smoke ganja and drop out the capitalist system will continue. The counterculture was tried during the 1960s and it just didnt work. Maybe humanity needs structure and work provides this. This is why things like ganja and ########### are bad and this has been commented upon going right back to the french revolution. These things are negative and just cause the lower orders to question their betters and eventually undermine respect for authority. The vast bulk of people were more unhappy after the french revolution and all other revolutions including the failed 1960 counterculture than they were before these futile rebellions.
You people have no argument of substance so you choose to focus on the mention of Ganga in the comedy video above.
The real point was not the Ganga smoking but the perspective about the nature of work being expressed. however, surprise surprise you focus on the Ganga. ask Ming about how this tactic is used to avoid addressing real issues.
It is the socially compulsory soul sucking wage slavery to enrich financiers and parasite corporations while giving up time spent forming strong family and community bonds, all to buy shit we really don't need and subsequent and almost inevitable personal debt that follows that I detest.
I am not against hard work at all if it is for a good purpose such as to help a community to thrive, to keep the environment in good shape and to help people in need. personally I give tutorials and coaching for free to families and kids who dont have much money, as a way to give something back to my community. money ruins the whole thing. I find most people respond in kind to this gesture and appreciate the new paradigm I offer not based on greed. these ideas are scaleable up to a point using let's systems etc. I refer you to the book "small is beautiful" for further information on alternatives to the ridiculous economic and environmental disasters that we live in currently
I also detest the notion that the only learning that is acceptable is the learning you get in paid educational institutes. In America, students leave college with debts of around $100,000. For what? In many cases For an education that could be just as easily gained from a library ticket and a desire to learn. but then libraries are deliberately underfunded in a neo liberal economy.The jobs they get after their expensive education are lower paid jobs and since student debt follows them for life and student loans are a special case in the US. you cannot escape it even by bankruptcy
contrary to what you are implying, None of these ideas are hippy notions and Ganga induced naïveté. People have grown up since the 60s. They are concrete efforts to show people that money is not the be all and end all and that community building and mutual helping without money as the driver is every bit as subversive and revolutionary an act as running about with signs then going home after leaving nothing changed. Change has to happen from the grassroots upwards.
This is the same point essentially that deek was making in his video, albeit in a more amusing fashion..
"These things are negative and just cause the lower orders to question their betters and eventually undermine respect for authority. The vast bulk of people were more unhappy after the french revolution and all other revolutions including the failed 1960 counterculture than they were before these futile rebellions."
Yeah we can't have the lower orders questioning their betters can we?
So what's your solution? Unpaid corporate externality FG skillshare jobs in tescos and mcdonalds to give people structure and keep the livestock happy? (gee and cheap/free labour would be very profitable to the corporates too but that's not the point of course!)
Fascism: "when state and corporate interests merge"
I guess it is a step up from the labour camps in WWII Germany. I suppose we should really be grateful that fascists have softened at the edges somewhat shouldn't we!!
Instead of taking the fillings out of your mouth when you work yourself to death, they take out fat insurance policies on their employees instead. Thats progress!
..at the moment in Galway.
They just cleared the Occupy protest/info camp off Eyre Sq(4.30am gestapo hour again)because Volvo are arriving with the yachting crowd and no evidence of the sordid conquences of the scams must embarrass the snots(bit like the forelockery for her majestic parasitism). This of course will be more economic growth for the already financially obese(subsidised by the workers' taxes while the beneficiaries will be offshoring the net gains.
Meantime I read that 'Volunteers are being sought to become Galway City Street Ambassadors, an initiative which will see volunteers offering visitors tourist information and directions and distribute maps.'
This, by the way, is flagged as the '..brainchild of Labour city councillor Niall McNeilis...'...Arbeit Macht Frie-ed, yet again, Batman..
It doesn't say if the volunteers will have to pay for the maps....
Meantime 'Mayor(mare, she looks disturbingly like Shergar)Hildegarde Naughton says Galway can prosper if dead hand of central government is loosened'.
Sooo...our economic woes were caused by too much regulation and oversight and the strict eye of our regulators, then.
Ya know...I think they're right...we DO seem to need a squad of Volunteers. A whole fucking lorry load.
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