ENGLISH: Ticket to the Future
by Art Villasanta

Twenty years ago, the American Historical Collection (then a part of the United States Embassy) sponsored a thought provoking essay contest.

The topic, “What if Dewey had left?” sought sensible arguments as to which nation would have colonized the Philippines had Commodore George Dewey left immediately after the United States Asiatic Squadron annihilated the Spanish Squadron of the Philippines at the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898.

The correct answer, said the Americans upon announcing the contest winners, was that the Germans (or more specifically the German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck) would probably have taken the Philippines from Spain. Not the French, Japanese, Russians or the Dutch.

That tantalizing assumption is a fascinating “What if” that would have profoundly altered German history in the 20th century had it occurred. And Philippine history, as well.

And it goes to show that except for Dewey’s obstinacy in standing fast at Manila Bay, Filipinos would probably be asking “Liebst du mich?” of their loved ones, and arguing about Rainer Maria Rilke’s genius instead of being residents of a country whose top competitive edge is the English language skill of its workforce.

But it was an American Philippines from 1898 to 1946, and American English remains the most enduring legacy of that era.

It is this same language that the Philippines of today looks to as a ticket to its future prosperity in a world economy increasingly dominated by service industries such as call centers, BPO, tourism, global logistics and healthcare. Only with English will the Philippine economy realize the full potential of these billion peso industries, and profit from their power to lift the poor out of poverty.

An Edge with English

The Philippines does have good reason for its optimism in using American English as a passport to better times. American English remains lingua franca of business and high level government. It is again a medium of instruction in all school levels; is gaining popularity among the young because of the Internet (which is mostly written in English) and is being subtly spread among the masses through millions of cheap VCDs of Hollywood movies.

This resurgence of English (one hesitates to call it a renaissance) has caught the Philippines off guard, however. The unwise de-emphasis of English as a medium of instruction by the government of Cory Aquino and the dominance of Filipino as the language of free-to-air TV has bred a new generation mostly unskilled in tolerable spoken English and almost totally unsuited to writing passable English prose.

National proficiency tests such as the High School Readiness Test (HRST) for elementary graduates and the National Achievement Test (NAT) for high school graduates both point to serious deficiencies in science, mathematics and English in graduates of the public school system.

The meager passing percentages in these tests (0.64% in HRST and 2.1% in NAT) have goaded the Department of Education (DepEd) into taking immediate remedial action. This time, under new secretary Florencio Abad, the DepEd solution is to add kindergarten as a requisite for elementary education and a fifth year in high school.

Both proposed solutions have drawn praise, particularly the addition of a fifth year. The complete fifth year plan calls for a specialization or “streams” in 4th and 5th year education, which is much like having a college major.

One stream would be science and engineering; a second, humanities and language (English) and a third, social studies. On the other hand, 1st to 3rd year students will have biology, chemistry, physics and earth science every year.

The heavy slant towards the sciences is a welcome development that mirrors the real world need for scientists, technicians and knowledge workers who will, of necessity, communicate in English as they work here or abroad.

A surprising statistic is that English language skills tend to diminish over time in the public school system. One of DepEd's recent diagnostic exams for public schools showed that Grade 4 pupils had a national average of 42% for English. For high-school students, the average was 30%.

This means the English proficiency of public school students will tend to get worse instead of better as they progress from grade school to high school. And, if logic be a guide, that proficiency will diminish further in college and in the vocational courses.

Today, however, the public school system’s weakness in English is making it tough for some call centers to recruit Filipinos fluent in spoken English. And then one has to consider that English is also the language of the tourism industry which is poised to surge with medical tourism, English as a second language tourism and adventure tourism.

English in the real world

One of the Department of Tourism’s (DoT) hits is its “Philippines ESL (English as a Second Language) Tour Program” launched in 2003. The ESL Tour Program is a tourist activity in which the study of English as a second language forms part of a structured tour package.

The duration of English courses depends on the need and objectives of the student. Modules may range from one week to one month depending on the level of proficiency of students. Besides learning English, participants get to see the beautiful Philippine countryside and immerse themselves in Philippine culture.

New tourism secretary Joseph Durano said Koreans are the top patrons of ESL tourism. DoT hopes to draw 500,000 Korean tourists this year with ESL tourism being a major magnet.

“ DoT has been successful in promoting the Philippines as a diverse destination . . . ESL is a new product fast becoming popular,” Durano said. He also noted that medical tourism was attracting more visitors.

DOT has enlisted partner English training centers accredited by the Bureau of Immigration for its ESL Tour Program. Among these schools are Philippine Women’s University and Miriam College Foundation, Inc. Miriam charges US$450 inclusive handouts and alternative activities and US$1,000 inclusive of handouts, activities and board and lodging.

It is beyond question, however, that the call center industry more than any other is fueling the resurrection of English as the must learn language. Call centers are the hottest employment tickets today.

By the end of this year, the industry expects to employ more than 80,000 people. Employment growth is expected to be in the high 50% for the next few years.

The U.S. company, People Support, is one of the top three call centers in the country. It employs over 3,500 people and is based in Makati.

Becoming a good call center agent demands only one thing—practice in speaking English—said Rowena Ricafrente, People Support vice president for human resources.

“We have an english@work policy where everyone is required to speak in English in the center,” she revealed.

“We provide English communication training during the first week of initial training/new hire orientation. We have a Quality Assurance team that monitors and evaluates calls, and gives feedback to the agents on their call handling and communication skills. Supervisors continually coach their agents on this as well . . . The best training though is when our agents talk to American customers 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Practice makes perfect.”

Ricafrente said the typical People Support agent is a college graduate in their mid-20s and single. The company has slightly more women than men. This high educational standard is industry-wide and compares favorably with American call center agents who are generally either high school graduates or drop outs.

But People Support also casts an anxious eye to the future and is investing to ensure a continuous supply of its main raw material—English speaking Filipinos.

Ricafrente said the company is partnering with schools to provide input on their curriculum, and call center introductory courses that include English communication training.

She noted that the company president, Bong Borja, actively works with the government and the academe to implement programs that aim to improve the level of English communication skills of our students who will be our future labor force. Borja is also Chairman of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) and the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP).

“Universities and colleges graduate approximately 380,000 students a year, which provides a healthy pipeline for call centers since this type of work is a great entry-level opportunity,” Ricafrente explained.

“While competition is getting stiffer, call centers have expanded their recruitment or operations to the provinces to widen the applicant pool, in addition to implementing programs to polish the English skills of new hires.”

The company emphasizes and reinforces English communication skills during the recruitment process, new hire orientation, initial training, and finally when agents are “live” on the floor. Ricafrente also said the need to constantly improve communication skills is hammered into agents since the success of the company as an offshore outsourced BPO provider relies on this.

Despite the good pay, the job of a call center agent is verbally tough and psychologically demanding. When not live, agents let off steam by talking to each other in Filipino and Taglish. It’s as if talking in one’s own language was a form of therapy.

An executive in another call center said that their company mandates English only at the company canteen two nights a week. Those nights are very quiet nights, he noted. But, on the other three nights of the workweek, the canteen is alive with loud voices—speaking in Taglish and Filipino.

Love of a language begins at home. For English to progress as a language a lot more families will have to use it at home. That looks like a tall order, but call center executives are confident that the economic benefits from call center work will motivate more families to take up the language.

Belinda Herrera, vice president marketing for leisure property developer Belle Corporation, believes strongly that an affinity for English begins during the most impressionable years of a child’s life.

“English proficiency is formed during elementary and high school and at home,” she pointed out. “The results of this proficiency or lack of it show during college, and during a student’s job hunting days.”

English is the language of choice at Belle considering the company promotes a leisure resort (Tagaytay Highlands) to Filipinos and foreigners. About 10% of The Highlands’ members are foreigners, including some Europeans.

Where to begin with English

Academician critics of President Arroyo’s order directing DepEd to return English as primary medium of instruction in all school levels claim this move flies in the face of 40 years of research that consistently show a child learns faster in his or her native tongue (not necessarily Filipino).

Another finding is that a child easily learns a second language (not necessarily English) if he or she is already literate in the native language. There are 87 dialects spoken in the Philippines counting Tagalog, which is the basis of Filipino (with an “F”), the national language.

They propose that President Arroyo seriously consider the use of Filipino as the sole medium of instruction in the primary level of education and English at the intermediate level. They say this will effectively and democratically implement the true spirit of the bilingual policy in Philippine education, and employ the optimum learning principle.

The always emotional debate on English, however, must ultimately be decided in favor of its impact on the economic well-being of Filipinos. Language is a tool and the more effective tool must, of necessity, have priority in any competition for survival.

And distasteful as it sounds to patriots, English is, hands down, the more effective tool in today’s information driven markets.

Those markets include call centers; BPO; IT enabled services; wellness, healthcare, medical and retirement services; global logistics; tourism and the merchant marine.

It is worthwhile noting that one in five of the world’s seafarers is Filipino. Their European employers rate the Filipinos’ facility with English as the main reason for their being hired. On purely economic grounds such as salary levels, Filipinos would lose out to the Bangladeshis, the Chinese and Indonesians.

Except for the merchant marine, the remaining markets are in their infancy and have yet to reach their full potential. For that they will demand Filipinos with good, even excellent, command of English. Both spoken and written English the better.

These are also the markets that the government is supporting in the hope that these will lead the Philippines into a growth pattern that will, at last, uplift the living standards of even the poorest Filipino.

Agriculture and manufacturing can no longer be relied on to power the Philippine economy single handedly. Not in the global information era. Pushing the economy into a sustained high growth cycle will demand high growth from the services sector, particularly from IT enabled services.

Making a start now

Speak English campaigns in several schools such as the University of the East and the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (Manila University) are laudable yet belated attempts to ensure that young Filipinos eventually benefit financially from an average command of the English language. And regain for the Philippines the distinction of being the third largest English speaking nation in the world, a claim rightfully made by their grandfathers and fathers.

It will probably take another generation, however, before Filipinos once again become comfortable with spoken and written English. But a re-start has been made and that’s a good thing, said Nestor Cuartero, a professor of journalism at the University of Santo Tomas’ College of Arts and Letters, arguably the best of its kind in the country.

Cuartero said this re-awakening should begin the process of improving the standard of spoken and written English that he noted has declined since 1974 (which is when he graduated from the same college in which he now teaches).

“Written and spoken English aren’t as good as they were in the 70s,” he said bluntly. “I guess that’s because there are more distractions today such as video games. Kids today don’t like reading. They don’t even read newspapers. They’d rather watch TV, which is mostly in Filipino.”

He recalls that reading English literature was quite popular during the disco decade o f the 1970s. And as for entertainment back then, one had few options to watching black and white TV other than going to the movies with your “barkada” or hanging out at ice cream parlors (Ayala and malls didn’t yet exist as entertainment meccas). Video games were still in their infancy and simple Atari games such as ping-pong were the rage.

Cuartero, who holds a second job as entertainment editor for the daily newspaper, Tempo, said his students tend to recite in Filipino or Taglish in his English classes where one is supposed to communicate in English.

“Only a few (students) are really good English speakers,” he pointed out. “Most start speaking in Filipino or Taglish, then wind up speaking in English and Taglish.”

What his students like to write about appears to reflect the times they live in. Cuartero noted that a number of his students wrote about their sexual experiences when given the choice of topic.

“One girl wrote about what it was like to make love to a call boy,” he said with surprise.

And when asked to create a magazine, the boys came out with an FHM clone; the girls with a Cosmopolitan look alike and gays with a magazine for gays.

Careers in English still lie with the media if you’re not in call centers, Cuartero noted.

“The newspapers are still in English. So are magazines. Advertising and public relations are traditional employers. Broadcast generally pays more than print. But to survive on English writing, you go to other media such as PR,” he explained.

For it to be called a renaissance, however, any revival of English must start from the elementary grades. On the national level, each region must give emphasis to English alongside its regional dialect, Cuartero said.

Sustaining English also means ensuring a supply of capable English teachers. Sadly, the country’s best is being siphoned off by the United States. Until 2012, post secondary teachers will be the second most in demand profession in the U.S. behind registered nurses.

Media geniuses

But it is the media, especially the free-to-air TV networks, which will complicate any move to return English to prime time. Geniuses at mass marketing, Channels 2 and 7 have succeeded in dividing the viewing public into the prime timers (Class C, D and E) and the “once upon a timers” (Class A and B).

Needless to say both networks have no English language shows on prime time. Filipino is king and that’s OK if your aim is simply to make lots of money on the cheap. One is left wondering, however, if network bosses know what a higher calling means.

So, everyone who watches these stations is left to endure demeaning reality shows; talk show hosts and hostesses screaming in Taglish and shout-as-loud-as-you-can news readers who debase Filipino as a language by inventing nonsense Taglish and passing these off as real Pinoy Filipino.

Filipino is a noble language. It shouldn’t be mangled for the sake of ratings.

Clearly, the requirement for a command of English has never left us. In fact, it’s become more important in the job market. But shortsighted nationalists and populists seem to have forgotten that.

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Originally published in the European Chamber of Commerce Business Review on February 2005, pages 24 to 28. This article led to the English is Cool campaign. Reprinted with permission.