A recent feature in The Economist titled "E for English" described how the falling levels of proficiency in the use of the English language is hurting the Philippines economy. This former US colony has seen a steady fall in the ability of the Filipino people to write and speak English in a comprehensible way.

Three decades of benign neglect in the teaching of English and lack of investment in teacher training is now putting at risk the prospects of job creation in industries that demand good communication skills through the use of language tools. In 2004 only one in five teachers in the Philippines passed the English Language proficiency test. According to The Economist, the Filipino government is now "throwing money at the problem by organising remedial English language instructions for teachers".

This educational failure seems to be hurting the economic growth prospects of this country that is aiming to create one million new jobs by 2010 in the call centre industry. The Economist claimed that the call centre industry in that country is rejecting nine-tenths of otherwise qualified job applicants, mostly college graduates, because of inadequate proficiency in the use of the English language.

Is there something we can learn from this experience?

English language proficiency is a cornerstone of communications, business and the economy. Malta has always tried to attract direct foreign investment through the fact that English is one of the official languages of Malta. But many are now expressing serious doubts whether English language proficiency is indeed one of our competitive advantages.

Discussions on the ability of the Maltese to use the English language proficiently invariably give rise to heated controversy. Rather than discussing this theme from a cultural perspective, I prefer to be more pragmatic and ask whether our standards of proficiency in written and spoken English have fallen so much that we may in fact be less attractive for potential investors.

I certainly do not believe that we should expect the majority of our students and employees to be eloquent and have a good mastery of idiomatic English in their business communications. But I do believe that it should be our aim that all employees must be articulate enough to express their ideas in writing, or in speech, in a way that is comprehensible, unambiguous, and at the same time simple.

My own experience in the last several years of being involved in business life is that we are still very far from even getting anywhere near achieving this aim. One of the many reasons for this failure is an increasingly tolerant attitude to accepting that language skills are not essential to good communications. Many seem to argue that as long as we can make ourselves understood that should be enough because substance is more important than form.

The problem, of course, is that this complacent attitude is not going to help us impress entrepreneurs who need employees who can read, write, and speak good English if they are to be convinced to invest in our country. This is particularly relevant for the services industries.

The betting industry, call centres, tourism related businesses, and financial services companies are just a few of the new economy businesses that demand that their employees are proficient in the use of the English language and have the right communication skills to be effective and productive workers.

It is ironic that while many of our young people are becoming more IT literate they are losing language proficiency skills at a fast rate. This can indeed jeopardise their chances of finding suitable employment in the kind of industries where they aspire to work.

In the absence of professionally gathered statistics on how proficiently our workers communicate in English and Maltese, we can only appeal to the government and the businesses community to conduct a communication skills gap analysis of our workforce.

If, as I suspect will be the case, we find that our ability to use languages proficiently in business is deteriorating then we should take remedial action to reverse this trend. We once again need to make the good use of English one of our strengths. We just cannot afford a communication failure in our country's business life.

johncassarwhite@yahoo.com