Earlier this year (Apr 2007) a leading European consulting firm Pleon [1] completed a pan-European survey which revealed that continental European business professionals use about thirty different English words every day. Presumably, this figure represents the average across the eight countries included in the survey - I wonder whether the average professional in Spain uses thirty different English words each day. Pleon's CEO commented: "The English language is one of the most dominant in the world, second only to Mandarin, and this survey proves that English plays an important role in business communication."

I suspect that it is common knowledge, and certainly evident from my personal experience working both with EEN and elsewhere, that Spain's proficiency in English lags significantly behind many European countries and various other parts of the world (Latin America comes to mind) where English is not the primary language yet proficiency in English, among professional people at least, is relatively high compared with Spain. I should also say that I am well aware that historic events and limitations in the education system led to this situation, and that current and recent governments have already begun to address the problem. Furthermore of course, I must concede that the average proficiency in English here in Spain is almost certainly no worse than the average Englishman's proficiency in Spanish or any other non-English language. Nonetheless, commercial reality is such that this situation is far less of a problem in England than here. English is probably not the best language in the world but for it's many faults, much like a widely used PC operating system which I shall refrain from naming, it remains overall, arguably, the most practical solution that we have today.

Back in 2005, the educational arm of The Guardian (a leading English newspaper) reported that only 1.4% of Spanish university students graduate with sufficient proficiency in English to find employment in multinationals. The article then referred to research done by a Spanish university indicating that 90% of companies in Spain wanted graduates to be fluent in English as a basic requirement of employment."
The Guardian also said "Recent surveys have highlighted the economic opportunities being lost because of Spain's English-language deficiencies and its failure to compete with other EU countries that are more proficient in English." [2]

So, it would seem at there are two obvious conclusions:

* Young professionals in Spain today need to drastically improve their level of English in order to secure the widest choice of employment opportunities.

* The country as a whole needs to considerably improve proficiency in English in order to compete effectively in European and wider markets.

Well, help is at hand, at least in the medium and long term. In recent years, Spanish governments have implemented measures to improve the standard and availability of English language education in primary and secondary schools. I hope that their promises will become reality and that indeed all children will have the opportunity to become fluent in English by the age of 16. If I assume that this process is indeed now in place and effective, then it would seem that the market for my professional services will begin to decline significantly some ten to fifteen years from now. So I shall, as the Americans say, "Make hay whilst the sun shines." In the meantime I ask, regarding the use of English in competitive business, can Spanish company's afford to wait ten to fifteen years before they are able to compete on equal terms with other parts of Europe?

In EEN, my aim is to lead students to effective communication in English as a primary objective, and to help to improve accuracy in English as a secondary objective. The reasoning behind this approach is simple enough: Imagine, for example, a competitive negotiation in English with a prospective client elsewhere in Europe. Should you win the negotiation through effective language use and skilled negotiation unhampered by lack of fluency, most likely you will go home content. On the other hand if limited or failed communication contributes to failure in the negotiation, then the knowledge that you made no grammatical errors and correctly used the present perfect continuous tense on at least six different occasions during the meeting is unlikely to offer much consolation.

References:
[1] http://www.pleon.com/English-language-essential-to-business-in-Europe-survey-rev.2547.0.html
[2] http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,5500,1410229,00.html