The Central Personnel Administration announced on Saturday that starting Sept. 1, all public servants would get extra credits for promotion if they pass various levels of the General English Proficiency Test or seven other major English-language proficiency tests.
This is a positive step that will encourage public servants to improve their English. Although response has not been uniformly supportive, this policy deserves people's support and it will encourage self-improvement, language study and a global perspective among Taiwan's public servants.
Those who oppose the policy may argue as follows:
First, most civil servants rarely use English in their work. Instead of improving their English, it would be more practical for them to learn local languages such as Taiwanese, Hakka and Aboriginal languages, which would be more useful in the course of their work.
Second, English proficiency is not the only path to internationalization. Japanese, French, Spanish, German and other mainstream foreign languages are all useful. Why can't public servants get credits from passing proficiency tests in other foreign languages? This is clearly a violation of the principle of fairness.
In Taiwan, once people are employed as public servants, they are entitled to all sorts of benefits provided by the government. The government cannot sack these public servants, even if they have been indolent, unless they have committed gross misconduct. Job security is such that many public servants are satisfied with focusing on their daily routine and will not bother with professional development or broadening their knowledge. This has caused the bureaucracy to stagnate.
Taiwan is a foreign-trade-oriented nation. In the past, proprietors of small and medium-size enterprises created Taiwan's economic miracle by travelling across the globe with their briefcases seeking business opportunities. The government, because of its inertia and inefficiency, was seen by many businesspeople as an impediment to development on an international scale. Economically, China has become an economic magnet for international trade and to avoid becoming a vassal state of China on the economic front, Taiwan must internationalize itself.
The prerequisites of globalization are a certain international perspective and the ability to interact internationally. Language ability is one of the foremost conditions for this. If all our public servants had a basic foreign-language capability, they would have access to information in foreign languages and this would assist in Taiwan's globalization. In reality, Taiwan is not a cosmopolitan society and is not greatly concerned with international affairs. This is a stumbling block in Taiwan's development. Although foreign-language ability in Taiwan is improving -- and there has been an increase in the number of foreigners coming to Taiwan to do business, study or live -- the public service has not kept pace with the internationalization of this environment. If this does not change, the public service will become the greatest obstacle to Taiwan's internationalization.
The goal of government policy is to prioritize different agendas. Faced with current political and economic challenges, internationalization is a more important goal than localization and the study of local languages. If public servants are given some incentive, this will encourage those already employed in the public service, and those who wish to join the service, to improve their language skills. This will in turn stimulate the private sector.
When English has become a basic skill both in government and throughout society, abilities in other languages will be especially prized and incentives to study other languages will appear naturally. Only then will Taiwan become an environment in which the required skills for internationalization are uniformly distributed.
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