ST: English test for foreign front-line staff? Bosses say 'no'

From the ST on 25 May 2008:

English test for foreign front-line staff? Bosses say 'no'

Many not keen on imposing test, citing current labour crunch in service industry

By Jamie Ee Wen Wei and Dhany Osman

Should there be an English entry test for foreign workers in front-line service jobs?

Judging from the response of employers and human resources experts contacted by The Sunday Times, the answer seems to be no. In fact, most say that such a test may pose more problems than it solves.

The idea of an entry test was mooted amid a brewing debate in the Forum page of The Straits Times over the issue of foreign front-line staff and their English proficiency.

Letter writer Jaggi Kumar, who suggested the test, wondered why it is not in place, since a similar test was imposed on foreign maids.

Introduced by the Ministry of Manpower three years ago, the English entry test for first-time maids was designed to ensure that they have basic numeracy and literacy skills to do household tasks and adapt to life here.
A check by The Sunday Times with employers revealed that most were not keen to impose a similar test on service workers, though the idea did find a few backers.

Among them was Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, president of the Consumers Association of Singapore and co-chairman of the Customer-Centric Initiative, which helps local companies to raise their service standards.

He said: 'If we have it for maids, I don't see why we can't have it for service staff too.'

Mr Tan Yew Kiat, general manager of fashion chain bYSI, believes that a test would improve service standards and help new foreign workers understand what is expected in their work.

Is it really necessary?

But industry players not sold on the idea worry that the test may shrink the pool of workers and worsen the labour crunch faced by the booming industry.

'Singapore cannot afford to say 'no' to foreign workers. I think if we introduce this, the number coming in will be reduced by 80 per cent,' said Mr Heinz Javier Colby, general manager of Novotel Clarke Quay Hotel which has about 30 foreign front-line officers.

Ms Elim Chew, director of streetwear chain 77th Street, felt the language problem is actually 'minor'. She said: 'If we put more obstacles, then it will be harder to get workers. This will raise costs, which will be passed on to consumers.'

There is one foreign front-line worker for every three Singaporeans employed by her company.

Mr Edward Tan, human resources director of department store chain Metro Private Limited, which employs foreigners from Malaysia, China, the Philippines and Myanmar, also wondered if there is an over-emphasis on English.

'If some stores are in the suburbs, having staff who can speak Mandarin or dialects may be more appropriate,' he said.

Mr Josh Goh, corporate services manager of recruitment company The GMP Group, agreed, noting that English speakers may not necessarily deliver better service.
'Implementing such a rule will eliminate those able to give good service but not privileged enough to learn the language.'

His company has recruited more than 100 workers from China for the service industry since hiring rules were relaxed last year.

That said, employers agree that English skills are good to have. In fact, given a choice, most companies would prefer to hire English speakers, said employment agencies.

The reality, however, is that it is hard to find such people, especially when the industry is turning to non-traditional sources like China.

'Some know English, but it is still hard to understand them because of their pronunciation,' said Mr Daniel Low, director of Wilm Management, a recruitment company. It has recruited more than 200 Chinese workers for service-sector companies this year.

Those who do speak English well also expect higher salaries. Often, they also prefer to work in Western countries where the pay may be better, said employment agents.

Training efforts

Still, employers agree that more can be done to train staff to communicate better. Some employment agencies and service-sector firms have started in-house English training programmes.

On a national level, there is also help offered by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA), which companies like Sakae Sushi are tapping into.

Mr Douglas Foo, chief executive officer of Apex-Pal which runs the Japanese-food chain, said all his workers have to go through the Employability Skills System under the WDA. Under this, there are courses to upgrade English proficiency.

A few weeks ago, Mr Foo said his company hired its first batch of 10 Chinese workers. They are undergoing a three-month English course.

But not all companies may have in-house or external training. Smaller enterprises, noted industry experts, are often hard-pressed to say yes to training.

'Operation costs are going up. Their margins are already very slim,' said the Singapore Retailers Association's executive director Lau Chuen Wei.

Another issue is time. Mr Justin Ng, director of human resources company AICG, said: 'Most employers require their foreign staff to work long hours. By the time they finish, they are too tired to attend any courses.'

Among his clients, only 30 per cent require their foreign staff to go for language training.

When Metro started a computer-based English training course four years ago, it became a hit with its foreign staff.

But after a few years, the department store faced another problem. Some workers, after receiving training, left for better jobs.

Others have suggested that the Government extend subsidies for training to foreign workers as well. Currently, training subsidies are limited to Singaporeans and permanent residents.

Still, in the light of the current situation, most feel that the onus is on companies to train their foreign staff to communicate effectively.

Those which do not may soon lose their competitive edge, said Ms Caroline Lim, director of the Institute of Service Excellence at the Singapore Management University. 'After some time, customers will stop going to their shops. This is when the companies will start feeling the pinch.'

The presence of non-English speaking PRC staff has increased significantly in Singapore retail shops and many people, especially the non-Mandarin speaking ones, are getting annoyed by it. What the authorities have to bear in mind is that there is silent social compact between the major ethnic groups in Singapore that, despite the Chinese majority in Singapore, we do not use Mandarin as the national inter-ethnic language very much like Malay is the decreed lingua franca in Malaysia. There is nothing wrong with learning Mandarin, or Malay for that matter, but we shouldn't expect our fellow non-Chinese Singaporeans to learn it just to buy their groceries.

While it is true that most non-English speaking PRC staff are found in the heartlands, where there are a large number of Mandarin speakers, what fails to be noticed is that, because of our national policy to disperse minorities, there are Malay and Indian Singaporeans living in the same heartlands. How do they feel? There is no avoiding of these non-English speaking foreign staff.

ST Forum: Speak English the way it should be spoken

From the Straits Times Forum (10 May 2008):

Speak English the way it should be spoken
I FIND that our spoken English and Mandarin in Singapore are appalling. However, what amazes me is that our Malay and Indian friends are speaking at least their mother tongue efficiently. Some are even competent in handling both English and Malay/Indian languages.

So are the Chinese learning languages the wrong way or does it have something to do with how we handle the two languages?

While working in China, I have come across people who handle two languages competently. Most naturally speak Mandarin well as it is their first language. However, many also speak English fluently enough and sometimes they put me to shame. I find that they learn most of their near-perfect spoken English from native teachers such as the Australians or Britons. Their level of competency in handling the spoken language is thus influenced greatly by their teachers.

I find that most Singaporeans can speak English and Chinese but at a basic level. Most could not express themselves well enough in either language, causing miscommunication along the way. Our Singlish is a disgrace and should never have being promoted, nor encouraged at all. It is often peppered with grammatical mistakes and our pronunciation is horrendous, to stay he least. We also dare not express ourselves too much as we have limited capacity to do so.

My Secondary Two daughter speaks Singlish often and tends to be lazy in the use of proper sentences. Moreover, she always ends her sentences with 'lah' or 'loh', making it sound like a mixture of Chinese and English when she adds Chinese phrases in between words. There is also no effort to pronounce words correctly. I am sure a Briton or Australian will not understand her style of spoken English.

Having also travelled around widely, I find that when I speak to the Australians or Americans, I tend to make an extra effort to speak properly and my Singlish disappears almost immediately.

However, when I return home, I switch back to improper English (Singlish) automatically and all my 'lahs' and 'lohs' come back to my sentences. I try my best not to speak Singlish but fail as most of my friends speak Singlish. They would laugh at me if I try to speak correctly.

Maybe we should hire proper native English teachers for our schools here to teach us the right way to speak English. It may take a long time for us to drop the 'lahs' or 'lohs' but it is definitely worth the time and effort invested.

Gilbert Goh

Hubei, China

I find it a little ironic that a letter which puts down Singlish and extolls the virtue of proper English is so riddled with spelling and grammatical mistakes. My guess is that the sub-editors in the ST deliberately left these mistakes uncorrected. Someone in the newsroom sure has a sense of humour... But let's not go there. Instead, why don't we examine the arguments put up by this Gilbert Goh person.

1. I find that our spoken English and Mandarin in Singapore are appalling. However, what amazes me is that our Malay and Indian friends are speaking at least their mother tongue [sic] efficiently. Some are even competent in handling both English and Malay/Indian languages.

Actually, the usage of Indian languages (Tamil, Punjabi, Malayalam, etc) amongst Indian Singaporeans is declining and being eroded by English/Singlish. From the Wikipedia article on Indian languages in Singapore,

Interestingly, about half of Indians in Singapore predominantly use a non-Indian language in the home. 39% spoke mainly English, in contrast to 28.1% nationally. This made English the most spoken language in Indian homes, by a small margin.

If anything, the proficiency of Indian Singaporeans in Indian languages is probably similar to that of Chinese Singaporeans in Chinese. In other words, most young Indian Singaporeans are more comfortable in Singlish/English than in their respective Indian mother tongues. Why should that be surprising? Both ethnic groups share the same linguistic environment; Singlish is much more prevalent than Tamil and Mandarin and English has far greater functionality in Singapore. I don't speak Tamil (because I'm of Chinese descent) and I get along fine in Singapore. Similarly, an Indian Singaporean can work and live in Singapore without knowing a word of Mandarin.

2. While working in China, I have come across people who handle two languages competently. Most naturally speak Mandarin well as it is their first language. However, many also speak English fluently enough and sometimes they put me to shame. I find that they learn most of their near-perfect spoken English from native teachers such as the Australians or Britons. Their level of competency in handling the spoken language is thus influenced greatly by their teachers.

I've live in the great US and A for the past three years and honestly speaking, most of the PRC nationals that I've encountered have a rather imperfect command of the language. Generally, their command of the language improves with time and many can attain a near-native or even native fluency in the language. However, I doubt that one can have 'near-perfect spoken English' without any kind of immersion in an English-speaking environment.

Also, I've spent some time in Shanghai before although that was almost 6 years ago. Don't bullshit me about PRC nationals with near-perfect spoken English.

3. I find that most Singaporeans can speak English and Chinese but at a basic level. Most could not express themselves well enough in either language, causing miscommunication along the way.

That's actually true. Most Singaporeans don't speak English and Chinese well. For example, many Indian and Malay Singaporeans have a rather poor command of Chinese. In fact, most of them don't speak it at all!

Seriously, Mr Gilbert Goh, Singaporeans =/= Chinese Singaporeans. Non-Chinese Singaporeans may find it offensive. Very offensive.

Are Chinese Singaporeans able to speak English and Chinese properly? Well, it's probably true that most of them can only speak the languages at a very basic level. What do you expect? Singlish is the lingua franca amongst a great number of Singaporeans, especially the young, and despite what you think, Singlish is a distinct language from English proper although it is largely derived from British English.

4. Our Singlish is a disgrace and should never have being promoted, nor encouraged at all. It is often peppered with grammatical mistakes and our pronunciation is horrendous, to stay he [sic] least. We also dare not express ourselves too much as we have limited capacity to do so.

Why should Singlish be a disgrace? I think Singaporeans generally speak perfect Singlish and can be very expressive in that language. Okay, so most Singaporeans can't speak English like Cheryl Fox or Arnold Gay. Why would you expect them to do so? Not everyone's a newscaster, you know.

Of course, having said that, this doesn't mean that Singaporeans cannot improve their English skills. Pronunciation is something that bugs me a lot and I believe that elocution is something that schools in Singapore should teach. It's just that you have to make the distinction between Singlish and English. They are two distinct languages. Singlish is not English with bad grammar. Mangle the grammar of English proper as you wish but you won't be able to reproduce Singlish. Singlish has its own grammatical rules which are, of course, different from those of English proper. There is no given reason why Singlish and English proper cannot co-exist in Singapore.

5. My Secondary Two daughter speaks Singlish often and tends to be lazy in the use of proper sentences. Moreover, she always ends her sentences with 'lah' or 'loh', making it sound like a mixture of Chinese and English when she adds Chinese phrases in between words. There is also no effort to pronounce words correctly. I am sure a Briton or Australian will not understand her style of spoken English.

Of course, a Briton or an Australian won't understand your daughter's Singlish. She's speaking Singlish, not English proper. Duh! Most non-Australians wouldn't be able to understand Broad Australian either. I've lived in Australia and trust me, Broad Australian is not easy to understand.

6. Having also travelled around widely, I find that when I speak to the Australians or Americans, I tend to make an extra effort to speak properly and my Singlish disappears almost immediately.

That's because you code-switch to English proper from Singlish. Code-switching is a perfectly good skill to have and I agree with you that people who need to use English proper should acquire that skill. I code-switch all the time (from Matlab to C and Singlish to English proper).

The point is that, proper English elocution can be learned regardless of one's existing background in Singlish.

7. However, when I return home, I switch back to improper English (Singlish) automatically and all my 'lahs' and 'lohs' come back to my sentences. I try my best not to speak Singlish but fail as most of my friends speak Singlish. They would laugh at me if I try to speak correctly.

Singlish without lahs and lors is just plain ungrammatical. For your information Mr Gilbert Goh, the lahs and lors, which are mood particles, are necessary because the intonation and the grammatical rules in Singlish are just different. Your friends laugh at you because you use a language inappropriate for the context. What is wrong with using Singlish in a social circle of Singlish speakers?

8. Maybe we should hire proper native English teachers for our schools here to teach us the right way to speak English. It may take a long time for us to drop the 'lahs' or 'lohs' but it is definitely worth the time and effort invested.

It depends. You don't need native English teachers to teach people to drop their lahs and lors in the appropriate context. Anyone who can code-switch between English proper and Singlish is perfectly capable of doing that. If anything, the ability to speak Singlish is a plus. How else can you teach people to code-switch unless you know something about the two languages in the first place?

Also, there is no more evidence that English skills can be improved by eradicating Singlish than evidence that one can do so by eradicating Mandarin or Malay.

Commonly mispronounced English words in Singapore

One of my pet peeves is the way many common words are mispronounced in Singapore, even by teachers of the English language. By mispronunciation, I mean the way the Singaporean pronunciation of a particular word diverges from that as prescribed in dictionaries. While learned opinion may remain divided as to how a particular word is to be pronounced (e.g. 'schedule' or 'often'), it is fairly safe to say that the Singaporean pronunciation of a common stock word would often be at variance with any of the established standards.

The reason for this state of affair is that reading was and still is not emphasized in English lessons in Singapore schools. I don't recall ever having a class on phonetics or on reading in secondary or primary school and I suppose this is probably true for most Singaporeans of my generation. Many older English-educated Singaporeans do however speak the language with a pronunciation scheme that conforms closely to the prescriptions in dictionaries. Two such speakers who come to mind are Lee Kuan Yew and Eugene Wijeysingha, if any RI alumnus still remembers that old dodderer. Younger Singaporeans, even the English-educated ones, have a more colloqualized pronunciation scheme.

Of course, there will be those in Singapore who will lambaste me for insisting on a foreign pronunciation standard. Afterall, it is the Singaporean-accented English that distinguishes the true sons and daughters of Singapore from foreigners. The same people also say that pronunciation should be descriptive, not prescriptive, and we should stick to the vulgar standard, if one can ever call it a standard. Strangely, no one has ever suggested that we should teach the grammar of Singlish instead of proper grammar. The consensus is that we have a linguistic diglossia in Singapore for grammar. The grammar of educated language should conform to that as prescribed in (British) English textbooks but the grammar of colloquial Singaporean English retains its distinctive character. The same goes for spelling - few in Singapore believe that we should have a uniquely Singaporean orthography. So, why should we reject the pronunciation scheme as prescribed in the same dictionaries from which we learn our spelling?

I think that it is important for educated Singaporean English speech to be less divergent from more established varieties of English such as Received Pronunciation (RP) or General American (GA). Afterall, it is the prevalence of the usage of the language that has contributed to our competitiveness in the global economy. This prevalence has enabled Singapore to position itself as a financial centre. Because English is the language of education, government, commerce and law, Singapore is able to import large numbers of workers from Australia, Britain, India, the Phillipines, the US, etc as well as to export hordes of Singaporean workers to the aforementioned countries. Even if their governments wanted to, countries like Japan and South Korea can't do that, at least to the extent Singapore can, because English is not their official medium. There is simply no reservoir of Japanese-speaking or Korean-speaking labour for them to draw upon.

This is not to say that Singlish should be eradicated but we should recognize that there are established pronunciation norms the same way there are established grammatical norms. At a time when millions in China are trying to learn English, an established English variety without any idiosyncratic pronunciations, it is highly inadvisable for Singaporean schools not to arrest this divergence in Singaporean English speech lest Singapore loses the competitive edge the prevalence of English has given it.

Anyway, here's an incomplete list of commonly mispronounced words that I can think of. The pronunciation scheme follows that of dictionary.reference.com (with slight modifications since the former approximate GA as its idea). Stresses are highlighted in bold while the differences are underlined.

WORD	CORRECT PRONUNCIATION	SG PRONUNCIATION
Calendar	[kal-uhn-duh]	[kuh-len-duh]
Compete	[kuhm-peet]	[kom-peet]
Complete	[kuhm-pleet]	[kom-pleet]
Compare	[kuhm-pair]	[kom-pair]
Comparable	[kom-pruh-buhl]	[kom-pair-uh-buhl]
Committee	[kuh-mit-ee]	[kom-mit-tee]
Complication	[kom-pli-key-shuhn]	[kom-pli-key-shuhn]
Compliance	[kuhm-plahy-uhns]	[kom-plahy-uhns]
Condemn	[kuhn-dem]	[kon-dem]
Condemnation	[kon-dem-ney-shuhn, -duhm-]	[kon-dem-ney-shuhn]
Compose	[kuhm-pohz]	[kom-pohs]
Composition	[kom-puh-zish-uhn]	[kom-poh-zish-uhn]
Concept	[kon-sept]	[kon-sept]
Conceptual	[kuhn-sep-choo-uhl]	[kon-sep-choo-uhl]
Colleague	[kol-eeg]	[kuh-leeg]
Cylinder	[sil-in-der]	[sil-in-der]
Excuse	[v. ik-skyooz; n. ik-skyoos]	[ek-skyoos]
Exclude	[ik-sklood]	[ek-sklood]
Extra	[ek-struh]	[ek-stra]
Estate	[i-steyt]	[es-steyt]
Especially	[i-spesh-uh-lee]	[es-spesh-uh-lee]
Establish	[i-stab-lish]	[es-stab-lish]
Excite	[ik-sahyt]	[ek-sahyt]
Excitation	[ek-si-tey-shuhn]	[ek-sahy-tey-shuhn]
Excel	[ik-sel]	[ek-sel]
Excellent	[ek-suh-luhnt]	[ek-suh-luhnt]
Japan	[juh-pan]	[juh-pan]
Japanese	[jap-uh-neez, -nees]	[juh-pan-ees]
Privilege	[priv-uh-lij, priv-lij]	[priv-i-leyj]
Second	[sek-uhnd]	[sec-kend]
Pressure	[presh-uh]	[prezh-uh]
Rectangle	[rek-tang-guhl]	[rek-tang-guhl]
Rectangular	[rek-tang-gyuh-luh]	[rek-tang-gyuh-luh]
Ticket	[tik-it]	[ti-keyt]
Triangle	[trahy-ang-guhl]	[trahy-ang-guhl]
Triangular	[trahy-ang-gyuh-luh]	[trahy-ang-gyuh-luh]
Wednesday	[wenz-dey, -dee]	[wen-uhs-dey]
Monotone	[mon-uh-tohn]	[moh-noh-tohn]
Monotony	[muh-not-n-ee]	[moh-noh-tohny]
The	[before a consonant/vowel thuh/thee]	[thuh]
Vehicle	[vee-i-kuhl]	[vee-hee-kuhl]
Vehicular	[vee-hik-yuh-luh]	[vee-hee-kyuh-luh]
Position	[puh-zish-uhn]	[poh-zish-uhn]
Potent	[poht-nt]	[poh-tuhnt]
Potential	[puh-ten-shuhl]	[poh-ten-shuhl]