More study English or Japanese for promotions

The survey conducted by the 1111 Job Bank — one of Taiwan’s largest online human resources companies — showed that 45.3 percent of local enterprises polled felt that foreign language ability, and especially English, was the skill Taiwan’s office workers needed to improve the most to meet companies’ job requirements.

These 1111 Job Bank said that in the second half of 2007, 34.4 percent of visitors to its Web site who sought information on continuing education opted for language courses, or 2.6 percentage points more than in the second half of 2006. Of those, 64 percent opted for English and 27 percent for Japanese, job bank officials said.

Only 8 percent searched for information on Korean courses, an indication that Taiwan’s white-collar employees choose to learn a foreign language mainly to meet their needs in school examinations, at work, and on international occasions, job bank officials said.

Citing a study by the U.S.-based Thunderbird School of Global Management of over 500 graduates who received foreign language training, the job bank said 82 percent of respondents indicated that good foreign language skills made them more marketable, while 39 percent and 32 percent said they were often asked to make overseas trips or to be stationed abroad, respectively.

Some 32 percent said they were frequently praised for their foreign language abilities, and 18 percent and 12 percent admitted that they received promotions and pay raises, respectively, because of their language skills.

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