English: sine qua non for Business

Trade, migration, and the increase and mixture of population must not only have opened people’s eyes, but also loosened their tongues.  It was not simply that tradesmen inevitably encountered, and sometimes mastered, foreign languages during their travels, but that this must have forced them also to ponder the different connotations of key words (if only to avoid either affronting their hosts or misunderstanding the terms of agreements to exchange), and thereby come to know new and different views about the most basic matters.  (von Hayek, 1988, p. 106)

“In 2015, out of the total 195 countries in the world, 67 nations have English as the primary language of 'official status'. Plus there are also 27 countries where English is spoken as a secondary 'official' language,” honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales and Bangor University, United Kingdom, David Crystal, mentions and states that over the past hundred years, English has come to be spoken by more people in more places than ever before.  Likewise, according to the World Economic Forum, in 2017, approximately 1.5 billion people around the world spoke English, with less than 40 million having it as their mother tongue.  Furthermore, a study carried on by the British Council estimates that by 2020, 2 billion people will be using the language or learning to use it.  But, why is English so important in the economy of a country and why are people in business eager to learn the language?

Annually, the Education First English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) tests millions of adults over the world in their English skills.  In 2017, 1.3 million people in 88 countries and regions with the median age of 26 took this test.  This test is taken voluntarily and in an online format.  The test results have proven that a country with a higher English proficiency has higher income, higher quality of life, greater ease of doing business and greater innovation.  Some of these could lead to a better competitiveness of the country, understanding competitiveness as the result of assessing 12 pillars conducted by the World Economic Forum, which include Higher education and training, Institutions, Health and Primary education and Infrastructure.

In 2013, another result the EF EPI showed was that “in almost every one of the 60 countries and territories surveyed, a rise in English proficiency was connected with a rise in per capita income. And on an individual level, recruiters and HR managers around the world report that job seekers with exceptional English compared to their country’s level earned 30-50% percent higher salaries.”

So who tops the EF EPI ranking?  Sweden, Netherlands, Singapore, Norway, Denmark, South Africa, Luxembourg, Finland, Slovenia and Germany make the top 10.  Eight of the top ten countries are in Europe.  Based on the International Monetary Fund and United Nation figures, the countries that top the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita are Monaco, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Bermuda, Iceland, Switzerland, Macau, Norway, Ireland and Qatar; Sweden being in position number 15.  The countries leading the Human Development Index (HDI) are Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Iceland, Hong Kong, Sweden, Singapore and Netherlands; Denmark being in position number 11, United Kingdom in number 14 and Finland 15.   

Christopher McCormick, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at
EF Education First accurately states in the article, “The Link Between English and Economics” (2017), published in the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the Harvard Business Review, that “there is a cutoff mark for that correlation (English and Human Development Index).  Low and very low proficiency countries display variable levels of development. However, no country of moderate or higher proficiency falls below “Very High Human Development” on the HDI.”  “Given their small size and export-driven economies,” McCormick continues, “the leaders of these nations [Northern European nations] understand that good English is a critical component of their continued economic success.”

In 2018, Sweden has reached the first position of the EF EPI ranking for the fourth time in eight years.    It is evident that English is a necessity for “the elongated country” due to its high dependence on exports.  Jörgen Weibull, Emeritus Professor of History, Göteborg University, Sweden and Henrik Enander, former Lecturer in History, University of Stockholm declare,

“Exports account for about one-third of Sweden’s GDP. The emphasis has shifted from export of raw materials and semimanufactured products (pulp, steel, sawn wood) to finished goods, dominated by engineering products (cars, telecommunications equipment, hydroelectric power plant equipment) and, increasingly, high technology and chemical- and biotechnology.”  

On the other hand, Tsedal Neeley, professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School mentions in her article published in 2012, “Global Business Speaks English”, that “large companies such as Airbus (Netherlands), Daimler-Chrysler (United States), Fast Retailing (Japan), Nokia (Finland), Renault (France), Samsung (South Korea), SAP (Germany), Technicolor (France), and Microsoft in Beijing are including English as their lingua franca, in an attempt to facilitate communication and performance across geographically diverse functions and business endeavors.”  But speaking of Airbus and Nokia and Samsung we can imagine only big multinationals using English as their lingua franca.  A six-month period study was conducted by the European commission in 2010, having interviewed 40 selected small and medium-sized international companies across 27 European Union Member States.  The project, Promoting, Implementing, Mapping Language and Intercultural Communication Strategies (PIMLICO Project) focused on identifying and describing models of best practice in these 40 companies which were selected due to their significant trade growth.  What was their strategy?  Formulating and employing language management strategies.  

In the case of Bolivia, it is ranked in the 61st position in the EF EPI.  According to the Census of Population and Housing of 2012 in Bolivia, 0,7% of the population over 6 years old knows how to speak English.  How far behind of the top European countries are we?  The British Council held an English Language Teaching Diagnostic in Bolivia in 2019, with the purpose of assessing the English level of students and professors in this area according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, used to evaluate the achievements of learners of foreign languages (A1 = Breakthrough or beginner, A2 = Waystage or elementary, B1 = Threshold or intermediate, B2 = Vantage or upper intermediate, C1 = Effective operational proficiency or advanced, C2 = Mastery or proficiency).  The study also assessed the interest of learning English in the next two years. 

The diagnostic drew the following results in terms of the students: 35.6% in A1, 28.9% in A2, 27.4% in B1, 7.4% in B2 and 0.7% in C2, and the teachers: 1% in A1, 3% in A2, 9% in B1, 27% in B2, 49% in C1 and 11% in C2.  How competitive, internationally, is it to have the bulk of the students in an A1 or Elementary level?  Especially in terms of business and international trade, an A1 level would hinder the possibilities of opening Bolivia’s economy efficiently to a globalized world.  The good news is that “61.1% [of the people surveyed] have the intention of studying English in the next two years, while 14.7% say maybe and 24.2% answered no.

It is inevitable to note that today, English proficiency in a country is not an economic advantage anymore, however it is the sine quo non of every globalized country seeking competitiveness in a world that will be more dependent on international trade, that will need to become an export economy, not only of goods, but of services as well.  

As the 2013 EF EPI report affirms, “it [English] is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship.” 

REFERENCIAS 

Breene, K. (2016, Nov 15). Which countries are best at English as a second language? Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/which-countries-are-best-at-english-as-a-second-language-4d24c8c8-6cf6-4067-a753-4c82b4bc865b/

British Council. (2013). The English Effect. 

Crystal, David (2006). "Chapter 9: English worldwide". In Denison, David; Hogg, Richard M. A History of the English language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 420–439. ISBN 978-0-511-16893-2. 

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language. 

Education First English Proficiency Index (EF EPI). (2017) 

Education First English Proficiency Index (EF EPI). (2013) 

McCormick, C. (2017, March 16). The Link Between English and Economics. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/the-link-between-english-and-economics

Neeley. T, (2012, May). Global Business Speaks English. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/05/global-business-speaks-english

Página Siete. (2019, February 17). Enseñanza de inglés: aumentan estudiantes y faltan profesores

Principales Resultados del Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia. (2012) 

Promoting, Implementing, Mapping Language and Intercultural Communication Strategies (PIMLICO Project). (2011) 

von Hayek, F. (1988). The Fatal Conceit: the errors of socialism, p. 106 

Autor: Adriana Ayoroa

Nota: Las ideas y opiniones expresadas en este documento son las de los autores y no reflejan necesariamente la posición oficial de la Escuela de la Producción y de la Competitividad (ePC).