There are literally thousands of low-paid (usually young) English teachers scattered around the world teaching English to very diverse groups of people – pre-school to high school, university students, business people, and adults privately.  Not to mention the tutors, trainers, professors, teachers and family members trying to teach or at least practice English with their students.  By the time these people reach the early or mid-levels of their professional lives the should have a fairly robust understanding of English – and many of them do.  But they still can not seem to communicate with their international partners.

The French are actually fairly lucky learners of English.  Since English imported so many loan words for commerce, law, and science from the Renaissance through the 19th century, learning vocabulary is a fairly straightforward exercise.  Even for the English speaker who has a decent vocabulary and some knowledge of etymology, learning or understanding French vocabulary is not a huge challenge.  I now understand why so many of my fellow students studied French in both high school and college.  But even the French struggle with learning English – part of the reason is outlined in this podcast episode from The World in Words from Public Radio International’s The World.  This explains the rather fossilized system of recruiting English teachers here in France.  There are other cultural facts of learning English as well.  For example, how accepting the locals are of the culture, how close the target language is to the mother tongue of the learner, even spelling conventions might have an effect – Germans or Spaniards who are used to very precise spelling have difficulties with silent letters in English.

English, it can be argued, is the first truly global lingua franca.  People are currently learning English not to travel to an English speaking country or even to interact with English speakers.  They are learning it so they can speak with international counterparts whos language is also not English.  This requires some different teaching methods than merely teaching grammar and doing cultural literacy lessons as are contained in most English textbooks for adults.  While they are good for general practice, they do not train employees in the nature of international communication.  If an employee cannot communicate with his international counterparts he will blame his English skills.  This may be true, but even the best trained English speaker might not be able to penetrate an especially difficult accent.  This would even be true for a lot of native speakers, and they would not blame their language abilities.

I recently had the opportunity to hear one of these dead-end international conversations where the French employees blamed their English.  I was at the office of a technology company here in Paris.  Like most of these companies their production all takes place in China.  There must not have been any conference rooms for the two French employees to take a conference call with their Chinese production manager so they were obliged to do it in the waiting area.  They were discussing production parameters and the Chinese person on the phone was getting quite demanding about a deadline for when they were going to solve what appeared to be a software bug while the French were trying to precisely describe where the bug was to justify how long it would take – or at least to make an estimate.  The Chinese person just kept demanding “next Tuesday…next Tuesday.”  Both sides of the conversation had a decent level of English to be able to conduct the conversation.  The problem really, was that both sides could not communicate their needs effectively.  No amount of direct face-to-face native speaker training would have solved this problem.  What is needed is training in international communication with a special emphasis on cultural awareness, not language.  This same episode might play out where all parties are speaking their own native language.  It is just more complicated when operating in a language that is not your mother tongue.

To make communication easier and more effective English training must be simplified or altered on the language side and there must be greater attention to communicative effectiveness.  An employee communicating in English to an international ear must always ask himself: “how is my message being received?”  Not, “what obscure idiom should I be using to end this conversation?”  One does not need to impress their counterpart, unless it’s a job interview with a native speaker.  One just needs to communicate effectively.

The status of English as a lingua franca will fade the same way as French, Latin, Persian, or Arabic if we insist on linguistic perfection.  Luckily, English is a highly decentralized language with no real center and now real locus of linguistic power under a gilded dome or codified in dusty, ancient tomes that no one reads.  English accepts change very easily and it very subtly incorporates each secondary speaker’s (native or not) cultural background, vocabulary, and even grammar.  This is especially true in the United States and Canada where diversity of origin is celebrated.

What is necessary for international communication is to get at effective communication not to teach more grammar or more pure language.  This requires more outlay of money and effort than a mere hour a week English lesson with a native speaker often inexperienced in business communication.  If employers could be convinced that their employees would be far more productive (and waste less money on lengthy international calls) then a market for international communications specialists could be developed.  This would give employees real skills necessary to make their business truly global.

Here in Europe, and perhaps especially in France, people tend to view work and the pronouncements of their seniors and managers with a bit more skepticism.  Having a Blackberry (or even a laptop) just means that you will have work intruding into on more tiny corner of your private space.  It does not, above all, mean that the French are lazy – as many Americans would expect.  It merely means they have a different sense of what work and labor actually are.  Another thought in line with the above medieval reference, is that being handed a Blackberry and being forced to use it by a superior just reminds you where you are in the more hierarchical pecking order of European corporate society.  It is unclear to me whether the French enjoy hierarchy or not or whether they just accept it as a fact of life.

This may also reflect the fact that as a culture the French are much more skeptical of almost everything.  When faced with new technology the French might test it tentatively then warm to it.  Americans will swallow the marketing behind a new product and go at it with full enthusiasm – only to discover that after six months it is outdated or does not live up to their expectations.  Witness the iPhone crazes every year or so in the US.  The iPhone is just now catching a wider market here in Paris.  It takes longer to convince the French because of this apparent inborn cultural skepticism.

Then there is also the separation of work and pleasure.  In France, free time is valued.  In the US, free time is viewed as something to be filled with more activity.  In France – free time is alotted by statute.  In the US – free time is taken by similar statute.  The status of “exempt” and “non-exempt” workers in the US basically means “do we have to pay overtime?”  That same status in France means “how much free time do we need to allot you?”  The French “exempt” employee usually works 10 hours a day according to my informal survey of people I have been teaching English to.  Thus, if the French are presented with a Blackberry it is an invasion of that time.  It does not come from a place of laziness.