Chingheng Chang
From my experience, I guess I have something to tell about the transcultural working context.
The first thing is about a person’s ability to accomplish a task. I am pretty sure that a person’s English language proficiency is not equivalent of the ability to do a good job in the workplace settings. I could still recall my experience working as a part-time server in a world trade centre in Taipei. When I was an undergrad, I grabbed every opportunity to work and learn something outside of the class because I knew it’s important to accumulate working experience and accommodate to the workplace environment. I will always remember one of the co-workers on my group, which consisted of more than 50 people. She was a student from the best university in Taiwan, and I overheard other co-workers’ conversation that her major was foreign language and literature. So, I guess her English was not a problem at all. However, she was the only person who got into big trouble, and our manager even yelled at her in front of everybody for her arrogance, awkwardness in doing something, and repetitive mistakes. To simply put, although English is definitely a must in such a workplace setting, a “pure linguist,” as mentioned in Kubota’s article, does not necessarily meet the demands of any job.
Continue reading “Reflecting on my experience and Kubota’s article—language is only a tool”