Language training for the workplace

Instead of standard English as a Second Language programs, Enhanced Language Training seeks to meet business needs

If Canada is brimming with highly skilled immigrants who aren’t able to reach their potential in the labour market, it’s often because they lack the necessary language and social skills, even after completing English as a Second Language (ESL) training.

Newcomers might not be familiar with the North American jargon used in many trades and professions, making them more likely to be screened out at the very first phone call with a recruiter. But a new type of language training is being introduced across Canada to remedy that. Called Enhanced Language Training (ELT), it’s training that provides job-specific English instruction to help newcomers gain and retain work in their fields of expertise.

Since Ottawa’s recent announcement of $20 million in funding for such programs as part of the Internationally Trained Workers Initiative, a host of ELT-type projects have popped up across the country.

In Mississauga, Ont., Judith Bond of Workplace Training and Services Inc. is becoming known as a specialist in engineering-specific bridging programs. Along with business partner Marni Johnson, she has been working in and around Toronto to train skilled immigrants through an ELT-funded initiative.

Their project, called Options, combines language training with the professional certification process. The training was developed in conjunction with the Ontario government’s Centre for Language Training and Assessment and the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists. Participants are taught to become independent jobseekers by gaining language and employment-readiness skills, contacts and networking opportunities.

“I’ve been in ESL since the early 1990s and there is a real difference between it and ELT,” explains Bond. “Because with ESL, a lot of it is about settlement.”

“ELT has the focus on being successful in the workplace. The Canadian workplace is very different from many other countries. Even for international professionals who may have studied in English, the nuances of business language are difficult to get.”

It’s about picking up on things, being able to read between the lines, knowing how to use slang and business jargon that’s appropriate to particular moods and settings. It’s also about being able to make small talk to build relationships and knowing how to use language in tactful, subtle ways.

“It goes beyond the settling in phase of settlement like finding a bank or getting your kids in school. It’s focusing in on the individual as a professional and how to fast-track that professional into their career. It’s about recognizing and valuing what people are bringing to the table and making sure that they have the skills and ability to use it and to show it off and to demonstrate it.”

Options is made up of three streams. One stream helps learners prepare for their engineering technician and technologist certification, the second trains them in language and communication, and the third focuses on employment readiness. It’s meant as a prototype of training that integrates the certification process with language, education and skills assessment, as well as a job search component. Bond and Johnson are now working to build awareness among employers of the benefits of this type of enhanced certification system, and to encourage them to play their part by providing placements, mentoring or internship opportunities for the program’s candidates.

“In terms of the benefits to employers there are a ton,” says Bond. “ELT helps people fit. When we talk to our corporate clients and we ask them about why they called us in and we ask why certain individuals who were internationally educated may not have been successful in the organization, what we hear is, ‘Well, they just don’t fit.’ So what we’ve done over the years is ask questions to find out what that fit actually means. And it’s all of the things that people need to figure out in an organization.

“All of us, when we’re entering a job, enter an organizational culture that we probably know little about. We don’t know the insider information, we don’t know all the rules. There’s a jargon and a language involved that we may not be attuned to. It’s a similar type of thing. What we’re working with is enhancing the skills that they bring to the table in a way that meets the expectations of an organization and their needs.... it’s helping people with that fit.”

In Nova Scotia, the Halifax Immigrant Learning Centre (HILC) — along with the Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association — is providing ELT training that includes language assessment, mentoring and employment placement programs, as well as classes such as, ‘English for Work and Business,’ ‘English for Internationally Educated Health Care Professionals’ and ‘Orientation to the Canadian Health Care System for Internationally Educated Health Care Professionals.’ Future programs will include one on the pathways to licensure in Nova Scotia, with brochures for physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists and medical lab technologists.

Since last September, reports Gerry Mills, executive director of HILC, about 146 immigrants have accessed one or more of the ELT services provided through the centre. Within three months, 80 per cent of those who had taken part in the six-week unpaid employment placement program were working or doing full-time schooling in their fields.

“All feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive and we have some wonderful success stories,” says Mills. “Not only has it allowed us to provide services to newcomers but it has been the catalyst for discussions with professional associations, regulatory bodies and employers about bridging the gap to employment for immigrants.”

In addition to these few examples from the pool of engineering- and health-care-specific ELT programs developed and delivered across the country, there are several adult learning centres, community colleges and language training providers that offer classes to skilled immigrants ranging from truck drivers and hairdressers to accountants and IT specialists.

In Ottawa, diversity consultancy Graybridge Malkam has teamed up with the Ottawa Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police to launch classes for immigrants interested in a policing career. This pilot program — which is partially sponsored through federal ELT funding and the government of Ontario — focuses on job-specific vocabulary and advanced language skills. Of the first 11 students who completed the program in mid-May, seven have moved on to take police service tests, says Stanica Karadzic, manager of language programs for Graybridge Malkam.

Many immigrants have the skills and education needed by Canadian employers, she says. “We have these wonderful people on one side, and on the other side we have a certain reluctance to employ them. I think in many cases it’s the language skills that hold them behind. It’s a question of having the right vocabulary to explain what and how much they know and how much they can do. It’s also the job-related jargon they don’t have.”

Kristan Wolfe is a Bowmanville, Ont.-based freelance writer.

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