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  3. Despite outcries over the lack of foreign language skills in the U. S. workf

Despite outcries over the lack of foreign language skills in the U. S. workf

游客2024-08-18  44
问题     Despite outcries over the lack of foreign language skills in the U. S. workforce, multinational corporations aren’t worried about employees’second-language fluency—or lack of it. English is still the lingua franca.
    While many global companies do offer some level of support for foreign-language training for employees who can demonstrate a business need, either by taking an expatriate assignment or working closely with international teams, many multinationals are not making a concerted effort to train their employees in languages other than English. Even so, Procter&Gamble, IBM and Intel are a-mong the companies that offer compensation for employees who opt to learn a foreign language for business-related reasons, often an expatriate assignment. Despite headlines over the past couple of years decrying Americans’ lack of foreign-language skills and hyping the dire need for speakers of critical languages such as Arabic and Korean in the armed forces, multinational corporations aren’t feeling the same urgency.
    In fact, as diverse cultures inch closer through global commerce and technology, training executives and managers to communicate locally is, surprisingly, a very low priority. Unlike military forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, American corporate expatriates have the luxury of communication that comes to them easily. Their native tongue is English, and English, experts say, is the undisputed language of business. Because of this, most multinationals are not finding a major business need to train their employees in any other language, even though U. S. -based companies are entering more and more foreign markets. "English is the language of commerce, ”says Chris Van Someren, president of global markets at Korn / Ferry. "There’s very little commercial application for foreign-language skills. Because of that, the need to help expatriates learn local languages is not high on the corporate agenda. "
    But even though English may be the primary avenue of communication across cultures, some say that expatriates unschooled in the local language are at a distinct disadvantage. Nancy Lock-wood , a human resources content expert at the Society for Human Resource Management, recently completed interviews with 30 international human resources professionals on the effects of foreign-language ability on the work of expatriates. While there are no hard facts and figures to prove her theory, her research indicates that American professionals positioned in overseas assignments who can communicate in the local tongue are more effective. They can build relationships more easily and earn the respect of their counterparts more quickly, thus paving the way for smoother business dealings. She says that because the benefits of foreign-language ability are hard to quantify and play out in relationship-building rather than in hard numbers, the business advantages of expatriates who can communicate in the local tongue can be undervalued because the repercussions of not knowing the local language are not readily obvious.
Summary:
    Because of the status of English as【61】in business, many multinationals are not worried about their employees’【62】in foreign languages. Although some corporations, such as IBM, do offer compensation to those who choose to learn a foreign language, they do not give【63】to training executives to communicate in local languages, partly because【64】of knowing foreign languages cannot be easily quantified and【65】of not knowing them cannot be easily seen. [br]
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解析 (repercussion影响，反响，反应。)
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