Re: TOEFIC
Aliyish,
nice post. it is nice to see more enteries in this section because it directly links education with economic stability for professionals of the country - whose communication ability is valued as a requirement to be simply more well equipped when it comes to conducting cross national exchange of human capital and its intellectual wealth.
ability for scientific or intellectual inquiry in based on the assumption that the seeker of knowledge is a literate individual, learning cannot take place without use of language.
i don’t know what the curricula is like for the specific subject of international communication , but i presume and hope that it has more to do with the particular terminology of a field of specialty in work rather than simple grammatical proficiency at graduate level.
critical thinking skills, problem solving, scholarly writing - all of it entails a certain degree of eloquence and knowledge of the appropriate use of words and reasoning conveyed in a professional's communication with colleagues and clients.
HEC is on the right track, but the hope is that the over emphasis on handed down curriculum is prevented and local academics can plan on designing curricula which can prepare students for international acumen.
to the extent that this will make current graduate student body able to converse professionally in the world most popular language in work field, academia and businesses, it is a good thing that this regulation has come about.
there is more that needs to be done in the way of being business wise and being internationally culturally aware of the practices at work, protocols of communication, collaboration etc through written and verbal communication, which should be made a primary focus in delivering education on such electives as international communication.
being in education research, i would say though that indigenous languages must be viewed as useful as well to keep the multi linguistic approach in mind which can benefit the clients, in case they do not have the proficiency in English language.
it is a good step that HEC has taken, but it will be interesting to know what has pushed the HEC to do so? was TOEFL not sufficient, if so then in what ways? does this test has a background policy to filter students who are not fully versed in English language? how useful is this post graduate passing out regulation in the context of employment? And so on and so forth. More standardized and norm referenced testing is not a bad thing – it is a compliment to the years of studying and training of students, but its value has to be ascertained in terms of all students who may or may not work in setting where their main language at work, will be English.
needless to state that the knowledge one has can be in any language, and its quality is not affected by what language it is in. but for the sake of interacting with speakers of another more popular and commonly used international language, the requirement of sharing that knowledge in that language in an effective way will come with practice and confidence in one’s ability to meet the standards without feeling awed by it or feeling inept merely because one is not as vocal because of difficulty in spoken language ability which in turn can be a huge hindrance for a professional when he/she has to speak in public with a diverse audience of fellow professionals and young learners in the respective field.
while there is emphasis on learning the most used language’s basic written and comprehension oriented grammatical proficiency to be obtained by second language learners, perhaps as seen in cases of many immigrants - their choice of words, sentence construction, verbal or written intonation and accents are essential to sound understandable in terms of international communication, which can help them in conveying their thoughts more convincingly and in a more sensible manner, literally.
Dushwari