Europeans Say British Suffer From Weak Language Skills

A new survey of European nationals working in the UK has revealed that more than sixty per cent of those interviewed agree that their British colleagues do not have a satisfactory command of foreign languages.

Commenting on the findings, Trade Minister Brian Wilson said: "Many of those coming to the UK found that their colleague's language skills were worse than they expected. The figures confirm what we have long suspected - that language abilities are severely under valued in many of our companies."

The research conducted by MORI Online for the DTI found that, although more than half of the Europeans interviewed felt that their English colleagues see language skills as an advantage to their career, most regard learning languages as a chore and more than 82 per cent of Europeans said their colleagues expect everyone to speak English anyway.

"We cannot assume that everyone speaks English and we constantly put ourselves in a position of weakness by not developing language skills," continued Mr Wilson. "For the long-term we need to address these issues in education, but for the short-term we are doing our level best to raise awareness of this problem and to encourage businesses to at least incorporate language skills into their export strategies."

"For example, the DTI has launched the 1999 National Languages for Exports Awards to recognise companies which have incorporated a language strategy into their export programmes and the training and translation organisations that support these strategies. The closing date for entries to the awards is 10 April 1999."

"We have also produced a new guide to Overcoming Language and Cultural Barriers in business, which is available FREE to all UK-based companies. When more than 78 per cent of Europeans mainlanders working in the UK have experienced language or cultural misunderstandings in their place of work, as shown in our survey, you know its time to act."

Responses to the survey clearly showed that most European colleagues (78 per cent) think language skills will become more important over the next decade as the business world becomes even more international. And 86 per cent said, from their own experience, that even basic language skills provide more career opportunities in today's working environment.

Mr Wilson said:

"Our survey showed that the Netherlands, Germany and even France are clearly in the lead in terms of their attitudes towards encouraging the development of foreign language skills. We clearly have work to do in raising the status and value of languages in our own business environment if we are to compete effectively in lucrative export markets in Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific, where English is not the native language."

"Although it easy enough to find people who speak English in these markets today, our research clearly shows that a little effort to learn about local languages and cultures can go a long way towards gaining a competitive edge in business."

Technical details

MORI On-Line interviewed 200 native Western European/Scandinavia speakers and 100 native English speakers by telephone between March 8th - 17th, 1999. All were based in companies with a turnover of 16320 million +. The overall confidence interval on a base of 300 are accurate to -+ 6% at the 95% confidence level.