the importance of English skills ?

Divide over English skills starts to close

2009-11-20

India is rapidly losing one of its clear economic advantages over China, with the number of Chinese able to speak English on par with its neighbour and rival.

A new study published by the British Council says China may already have more English speakers than India, a remarkable development, given the language legacy of British colonial rule in south Asia.

The study, English Next India, by David Graddol, reveals that India is likely to find it harder to compete with China, which already has better infrastructure and a more flexible labour market.

The study estimates less than 5 per cent of the Indian population speaks English. This would mean that by 2010 only about 55m people in India will be fluent English speakers.

The report compares this with an apparent 20m new Chinese speakers of English each year, a figure attributed to new education policies that require English to be a compulsory subject in China's primary schools. According to an earlier British Council study, China had 200m English users in 1995.

In both countries exact figures are vague and those cited often confuse the number of students enrolled in English classes with real proficiency.

Nevertheless, English Next India highlights the lack of English-medium education as one main cause of India's “educational failure”. It says this has hindered the spread of the language despite high demand for it from the employment sector.

Recent studies have shown that India's talent pool may be drying out. With nearly two-thirds of India's population under the age of 35, the country has the world's largest pool of young people but is lagging competitively because of a gap in employer expectations and realities.

Whether the Chinese population will surpass India's number of English speakers as a percentage of the population remains difficult to determine, as reports show progress in some sectors and not in others. For example, the bulk of China's growing peacekeeping mission, which reflects its desire to become a big power, lacks one necessity: good English skills.

报告：中国讲英语人数赶超印度???

2009-11-20

印度正在迅速失去其相对中国的一项明显经济优势：中国能说英语的人数已与其邻国加竞争对手不相上下。

英国文化协会(British Council)公布的一份新研究报告称，中国说英语的人数可能已经超过了印度。鉴于英国在南亚殖民统治留下的语言传统，这一变化颇不寻常。

由大卫·葛拉多尔(David Graddol)主持进行的这项研究名为“英语走向之印度篇”(English Next India)。研究表明，印度很可能会发现与中国竞争将更加困难，中国已经有了更好的基础设施，还有更灵活的劳动力市场。

研究估计，只有不到5%的印度人会说英语。这意味着，到2010年，只有约5500万印度人能讲流利的英语。

相比之下，能说英语的中国人每年增加2000万，这个数字要归功于中国新的教育政策，这些政策将英语规定为小学的必修科目。据英国文化协会早些时候的一项研究，1995年中国已有2亿英语使用者。

这两个国家英语流利者的确切数字都不清楚，因为相关数据往往混淆参加英语课学习的人与实际能够流利使用的人。

不过，该研究的结果突出表明，印度“教育失败”的主要原因是缺乏以英语为媒介的教育。报告称，这阻碍了说英语人数的扩张，尽管就业市场对这些人的需求很高。

最近的研究表明，印度的人才库可能正在枯竭。由于印度三分之二的人口年龄在35岁以下，因此它拥有世界上最大的年轻人群体，但由于雇主的期望与现实存在差距，印度的竞争力并不具优势。

中国讲英语人口的比例是否将超过印度现在还难以确定，因为报告显示，中国的英语教育在一些领域取得了进展，但在其它领域则没有。比如，中国维和部队的规模不断扩大，反映了它成为一个大国的渴望，但大部分维和士兵缺少一项必要技能：良好的英语能力。

译者/功文