The Language Teacher
October 2002
The Corporate English Program:
Being Part of the Company Community
Jonathan Fischer & Jacob Schnickel
TDK-MCC, Akita
For ten months, we have worked together as curriculum designers and instructors for the in-house English program at TDK-MCC, an electronics-parts company in a small town in Akita Prefecture. The program did not exist before we arrived, so there has been much to take care of in all regards. On top of the familiar challenges of overall design, scheduling, and teaching have been those of adapting to the company and trying to help the company adapt to us. As the only two non-Japanese in a factory of six hundred, there is no escaping notice, yet it would be easy for the English program to exist essentially outside the company community. We and the program could be peripheral attachments with little relevance to what fellow employees believe the company needs to do. We felt that if this happened, however, our company would risk wasting its investment and that we might find ourselves uncomfortably marginalized.
In assessing the degree to which we have become integrated into the life of the company, we feel our attendance records provide valuable information. Attendance is always an issue in company classes due to trainees' heavy workloads, meetings, and deadlines. High attendance suggests that some people in the company structure, the trainees themselves or their section managers, regard the English program as important. Low attendance seems to indicate that the English program is seen as optional or insignificant. Obviously, the English program is not as vital to the company as the production process, but English is increasingly relevant. Our company has many foreign clients and is constantly seeking more. We feel that integrating our program into the company community will contribute greatly to learners' success in English and consequently to our company's success internationally. Further, we hope that taking steps to increase the awareness of our program among all employees will help solidify the sentiment that the company has taken an important and worthwhile step in initiating an English program.
Establishing a Foundation
Integration will naturally begin in classes, for if the program does not succeed in helping trainees learn English, there is little hope for, or benefit from, a larger significance to the company. Needless to say, we attempted from the start to design quality lessons aligned with the company's stated goals, but accelerating the process of getting to know trainees' personalities and learning characteristics, informally and via surveys, seemed nearly as important.
After this period of adjustment, we were prepared to personalize learner evaluation. Quantitative evaluation has its place, and it is a means of responding efficiently. Qualitative evaluation, though, has elicited the most invested and seemingly valuable reactions from trainees. For instance, we asked trainees to prepare and deliver a brief one-to-one presentation at the end of our fall term. We felt that the presentation assignment would prompt the trainees to select for themselves the level at which they were comfortable speaking, allowing them to do what they were able and finish the term with a positive experience. We chose to send our feedback via email and prepared individualized assessments of each trainee's presentation. It is not surprising, in retrospect, that most of the trainees responded to our assessment emails with a message or a visit to the classroom. We felt the trainees gained some useful language information, but we also sensed that they felt their individual aims were being considered.
We are always thinking about how to best incorporate learner suggestions into our planning. Regardless of similarities in background, our trainees have decidedly varied needs and learning styles. We wanted to accommodate those individual goals and styles, but we did not want classes to operate without focus. We first changed from business-centered materials to materials based on daily functions, as we and most of our trainees thought a broader and more basic approach more suitable. Now we are trying to involve more learner-selected materials, with journals as part of our writing practice and graded readers of assorted styles and subjects. Later, we would like to include short, topic-centered discussions, with students choosing the topics.
It also seems plain that trainees' English, as well as the relationship between the company and the program, will improve if trainees drop in during our non-class time to speak with us, with or without specific concerns. To that end, we have advertised our schedules and repeatedly invited visits. The number of visitors has improved steadily, and so has the trainees' comfort level during such visits. We use email to spread English-related news, and we encourage trainees to write us email as well. By these avenues, we feel we are helping to make English, and our program, more a part of our trainees' workdays.
Interactions Outside of Class
Outside of class, there was no familiar model for interaction. Were we to speak in English or Japanese? Would it be okay to join other employees at their lunch tables? Would it be appropriate for other employees to join us? We were surprised to see that the Japanese members of the company seemed uncertain about these issues, too. Having now been here for most of a year, we find that greetings and conversations are common in both languages at the workplace. As our knowledge of the company and region grows, these conversations become fuller.
Of course Japanese ability helps in these interactions, but the benefits of educating ourselves in the language have gone a lot farther. Discussions with our administrators have become smoother, both because they are students in the English program and because we have been studying Japanese. It seems the option of switching to Japanese, though less and less necessary all the time, greatly reduces the potential for stress. Predictably, our meetings have become much more efficient, too.
Extrapolating from our meetings, we also think it useful for us to make ourselves available to foreign visitors. There is one engineer in our company whose English is of near-native competency, and there are a handful of others who speak very well. Each of them is capable of dealing effectively with an English-speaking visitor, but to bear that responsibility individually, on top of regular duties, can result in quite a lot of stress. Likewise, foreign visitors may feel isolated if they interact with just one person, especially as some stay for a week or more. Our taking a moment in the hallway or cafeteria to talk with these visitors might relieve some stress, as well as help spread awareness of our program to our company's partners.
Into the Company Structure
To this point, we have tried to interact with coworkers in a way that will benefit the program. We would like to find more opportunities to do so, but we would also like to extend our program's base. We hope to start a small all-English newsletter, to which trainees will contribute. We are also working on an English site for the company's intranet. In sum, we hope that employees will have more and more encounters with English and with the program, even if they do not see the two instructors at all.
Conclusion
As one would expect after ten months, we are still working through the issues discussed in this paper. There are definitely job-security aspects embedded, but more than ensuring that the program lasts, we hope that establishing roots within the company will enhance learners' progress in English and help them to see the language as integral to their lives.
While we have lost some trainees to the demands of full schedules, we are pleased to see that a core group has emerged from our first ten months. Within this group are a variety of success stories: clear improvement in communicative power, gains in self-confidence, and leaps in TOEIC scores. We are pleased by the success of these trainees; however, we do not yet feel that our program has been fully accepted into the company community. Our attendance has improved, but our records suggest there is work left to do. In the coming months, as we establish a presence on the company's computer network and begin to offer English content to those employees not enrolled in our classes, we hope to promote further interest in English and a broader awareness of what goes on in our classrooms. We feel that an effort toward integration is an immediate step we can take in helping our company compete more effectively in the world market. We cannot contribute directly to our factory's production, but we do hope to contribute to employees' productivity.
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