Better English but lack of confidence.

This was on The Star dated 19 Sept 2011.  Interesting to find that our fresh graduates are showing better grasp of English  but at the same time lack of self-confidence. Something must have gone right with our education system that the level of English Language has improved over the years. Perhaps due to the emphasis (sometimes overemphasis by schools, parents, employers, etc) for students to master the English language. It seems that the message was loud and clear that be proficient in English or loose in the job market.  Unfortunately, language proficiency alone will not guarantee that the student will be candidate of choice to fill up job vacancies.  What we are not "teaching" our students is that competence, among others is also a critical qualities to be successful in securing a job offer.

In my days as HR practitioner, specifically playing the role of a recruiter I was more interested to assess candidate language competence rather than English proficiency. English proficiency can be detected during the job application process in their cover letter or resume. Of probably thousands of applications I received and reviewed, only a handful could be considered having good English proficiency. What would you make out a candidate who wrote "I'm graduated from U_____." or "I was graduated from U_____"?  Given the cut and paste, template-driven culture, this grammatical mistakes often times appeared in applications from candidates of the same University! Enough of this as I do not intend to give an English Language lesson. I'm more interested to talk about language competence.

By "language competence" I mean the ability to use language for communication purposes. Someone with language competence would appear to have better self-confidence when communicating, Or is it the other way around that someone need self-confidence to portray better language competence. Chicken and egg situation? Not really.  I'd seen candidates with high self-confidence portraying low language competence as well as candidates with high language competence displaying low self-confidence.  Language competence do contribute to high self-confidence but at the same time being competence in the subject matter would influence better self-confidence.

So what should be our focus? Should we focus on language proficiency or language competence?  I'd say both.  unfortunately the focus of our schools is on proficiency and not competency. A student with grade-A for English means he/she is proficient in English not necessarily competence in English. Very much the same for other subjects - mathematics, science, geography, history, etc....what our children learn at school is make them more proficient in the subject but not necessarily competence.  To be competence in the subject matter, one must be able to use one proficiency in the subject matter. I conclude that there is a need to develop subject competence. If schools failed or not designed to do it, then another development avenue is required to ensure our children develop their self-confidence by being both proficient and competence.