This research aimed to explore the language issues in volunteer management of the three international sport events from the perspectives of organizers and volunteers; therefore, this chapter has four parts, (1) the management of language issues of organizers, (2) the difficulties of language management of organizers, (3) the experience of language management of volunteers and (4) the language barriers in communication of volunteers.
Table 4.1.
Recruiting and Selecting General process
(application and interview)
Difficulties Individual application or group application The affairs of schools
Interview is necessary or not
The excellent volunteers and limited quotas The limited human resource in sport associations
unpredictable situations in implementation
Feedback The recruiting system and talent pool The preferred characteristics of volunteers The international trend in sport industry
The experience of language management of volunteers
Recruiting and Selecting Motivation Simple application
Different language ability selection in schools (continued)
44 Table 4.1.(continued)
Issue Theme Item
The experience of language management of volunteers
Recruiting and Selecting Simple language ability selection The necessity of interview
Training Technical and functional help from training The argument of language training
The necessity of understanding about cultures in advance
Other language experiences Internal and External Communication for Organization
The Role of Language Factor in International Sport Events
What have been learned after the international sport events
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The Management of Language Issues of Organizers
This part is about how the language issues are managed in the volunteer management.
The sources of data in this part are mainly from document review and the interviews with organizers in the three international sport events. The findings of recruiting, selecting and training are presented because of the available data.
Recruiting and Selecting
General process.
In World Games, the government sought help from the national representative of international association for volunteer efforts in Taiwan (IAVE). In 2006 individual application was mainly adopted; however, it was almost replaced by the group interview from 2007. Association and government cooperated with organizations and certain departments in schools. There are two stages. The first stage was from 2008.09~2008.12. The second stage was from 2009.01~2009.02.
For individual sport events, the process of recruiting and selecting was simpler. It was one stage including online application and interview. The special point was that the tasks of volunteer affair were different according to the demands of the events. For example, in Tour de Taiwan, the safety and medical service are concerned much. In Figure Skating Championships, the time-counting and ice-making affairs are included. “It is special in competitions, Tour de Taiwan needs traffic and medical volunteers; in Figure Skating Championships, it is less dangerous and need some special volunteers.” (V)
Language volunteers.
In World Games, there were three main sources for language volunteers: schools, organizations of foreigners in Taiwan and international clubs. The first source was schools, which was the biggest source for language volunteers. There were 35 universities involved in the program. The details are shown in table 4.2. Table 4.2 merely shows few examples of the schools; the others are shown in appendix F. In the beginning, most of the schools are from
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south Taiwan because the venue is in south city of Taiwan. Afterward, Tamkang University, Chengchi University and Chinese Cultural University were included because they could provide rare languages. For example, Chengchi University could provide Yugoslavia, Arabic and Korean. Tamkang University has graduate institute of European studies; institute of Russian and Slavic studies. Besides, overseas compatriot students and international students were important groups for language volunteers, like Mongolian and Russian. Furthermore, the schools for oversea compatriots can provide language volunteers too, like Korean Overseas Compatriot School. Schools ranked the selected students and then association deployed people to suitable volunteer positions, for example, the students who have excellent language ability were belong to VIP reception.
Table 4.2.
Schools Supporting Volunteers in the World Games Area No University First
Kaohsiung 1 National Kaohsiung Normal University
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*Competition (C): Ceremony, foreign language, have recruited by department of education so none recruiting here
*Language(L): Including VIP reception, VIP room, team, pick-up, culture, information desk, ticket, logistic
*Information(I): score & time recording, accreditation
*Medical(M): medical services, accommodations
*Accommodation(A)
The second source was the organizations of foreigners in Taiwan. The foreign volunteers were found from social network and organizations, like churches, gatherings in exotic restaurants, English teachers, spouses of foreign nationality, Korean Overseas Compatriot Association, Taiwanese American Chamber of Commerce and so on. Some of them were recruited as international promotion ambassador in World Games. The third source was international clubs. There are Rotary International Taiwan, Taiwan Junior Chamber, International Women’s Club and others to support language volunteers.
In the beginning of World Games, great amount of volunteers who have English ability were involved in the warm-up competition. Until 2008, the different language systems were concerned. World Games have 19 language systems provided by volunteers and translators.
Volunteers can provide Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Spanish,
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German, Vietnam, Thai, Indonesian and French and others. For languages that volunteers cannot provide, there were translators who can provide Austrian, Italian and so on. Foreign volunteers also played an important role in language volunteers. Most foreign and social volunteers were assigned to accreditation center because the tasks in the center involve law, like insurance and qualification, which need more responsibilities and social experiences.
Although some of the languages were only one person can be professional. Overall, for special needs of the participants, like Russian judge, the certain human resources were found to confirm the service quality.
Although World Games can provide several language systems, the main language was still English. IVAE spent much time on the standards of English abilities which is shown in table 4.3. The standards helped schools and organizations to find the required volunteers. For other languages like Germany, Japanese and French, the tests were also found to confirm volunteers’ abilities. According to different requirements of volunteer affairs, the levels of language ability and special abilities were decided, which is presented in table 4.4.
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Table 4.3.
The Standards of English Ability of Volunteers in the World Games
GEPT TOFEL ITLES TOEIC FLPT CSEPT CEFR Main Suite BULATS
Note. Adapted from The Language Training & Testing Center http://www.lttc.ntu.edu.tw/englishcomparativenew.htm https://tve.npust.edu.tw:8080/NPUST/Personnel/personnel/honor%20roll.files/honor%20roll/table.pdf
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Table 4.4.
The Requirements of Abilities of Volunteers in the World Games
Required Ability
Language VIP reception 3
Need to be trained
Medical services 1 Simple and
convenient medical ability Accommodations 1
Index of ability
Professional ability The standards of level A. Language
Professional certificates, volunteer service experiences, being leader in organizations or over-sea exchange experiences
*language ability was according to GEPT, the same language standard can take reference at Required English Ability of Volunteers in the World Games
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In the individual sport events, Tour de Taiwan is hold annually. Four Continents Figure Skating Championships was the first time in Taiwan so there was no prior pattern to follow.
In early Taiwan, the associations often sought helps from teachers to find volunteers.
Teachers asked students to help the individual sport events as the tasks in courses; however, the concern was that the quality of language and the spirit of volunteering cannot be confirmed. “We need to find the active volunteers and quality should be the same. The English abilities of students were different.” (W) The formal recruiting was adopted in the two case events. Because the main language is English, the standard of English ability was set which is presented in table 4.5. The standards were different according to the tasks of volunteer affairs which are shown in appendix G and H. As for other languages, if volunteers have second and third foreign language, they were asked to fill in the online application, like French, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. Before the dates of events, if it was known that the special participants will come, like French guest and Korean athletes, the volunteers who are good at the languages will be assigned to receipt them. Generally, in a group of volunteers who have good English ability, volunteers who have second foreign language abilities will be deployed inside.
Table 4.5.
The Standards of English Ability of Volunteers in Individual Sport Events
Volunteer affairs TOEIC scores Volunteer affairs TOEIC scores
VIP reception 750 General 450
Recording 550 ST 750
Competition 650 Transportation 550
Anti-doping control 750 Facility 550
Announcer & Music 750 Information desk 750
Hotel reception 650 Field control 550
Accreditation(on the spot) 650 TV 550
Accreditation (make) 650
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Training
General Training.
In World Games, there were four kinds of training: (1) central training (2) leadership training (3) venue internship (4) special training. The goal of central training was to make volunteers understand World Games more and enhance the volunteering attitude. Leadership training was only for volunteer leaders and supervisors. The goal was to enhance their leadership and volunteer service quality. As for venue internship, it was to promote practical experiences and volunteer service quality. Special training aimed to promote professional knowledge and skills in different fields; besides, the team cohesion was also encouraged in this training. In all the training, the volunteering service and international etiquette courses in central training were most related to cultural training. The contents includes
1. Explaining volunteers’ work concepts, attitudes, ethics and roles.
2. Pointing out further information of volunteer affairs
3. Understanding custom and tradition of different nations (including diet, culture…);
explain and introduce special national cultures of the warm-up competition.
4. Explaining the etiquettes and skills when receipting foreign contestants.
Other training seems have no relationship with language and cultural training, but actually they can decrease the communication barriers during World Games. Table 4.8 presents courses for other training. Other details are presented in appendix I.
However, it was indicated that the volunteers have had qualified language abilities through the recruiting and selecting. The cultural training is more important for the volunteers.
For example, they have to know how to get alone with Indian, French and German. In the individual sport events, there is no language and cultural training. For general training, the Taipei Skating Union provided one to two days training, including
1. Introducing Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2. Understanding figure skating
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3. Introducing the sites for championships
4. Individual training for each affair and venue survey.
The Taipei Skating Union even made training manual for volunteers which includes organization introduction, service norms, work contents and preparation for work.
Table 4.6.
2009 World Games Volunteer Training Schedule Training Category Course
Central training Understanding of Kaohsiung World Games
Introduction of sites and explanation of competition items Scenario management of competition service
Volunteer services and international etiquettes Motivation of team
Leadership training Skills of team leading
Skills of dealing with medium Training of dividing tasks
System and application of crisis management
Site internship training
Introduction of sites
Introduction of competition items in each sites Scenario planning
Building of team consensus and communication
Special training Training course of professions Training course of team cohesion
The Difficulties and Feedback of Language Management of Organizers Difficulties
Individual application or group application.
In the beginning of recruiting in World Games, the online individual application was adopted; however, downloading and reviewing resumes one by one cost too much time.
Besides, without interview, you have to take a long time to understand the person. Individual
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application was viewed an unscientific way when 4000~5000 volunteers were needed. It was the main reason why IAVE began to cooperate with schools and organizations. “The kind of recruitment is too slow, it’s impossible to take a long time on the inefficient things, which is the reason we set the standard and give responsibility to schools.”(X)
The Affairs of Schools.
First, in World Games, confirming willingness of schools and finding the suitable contact window in schools was very time-consuming. School managers may think the responsibilities come to departments of physical education or extracurricular activities division, but language ability will be a big concern. The final solution was that “Office of Student Affairs” served as the formal contact window. To confirm the responsibility, the contracts were signed with the presidents. Second, most volunteers were students. It was better to understand their schedule in schools. “You have to consider about their time, holiday and then inform schools. Students also have different requests and you have to pay attention to them.” (W) The association should believe in students.
Interview is necessary or not.
Whether the interview is needed or not remained as an uncertain question. In World Games, because of the great amount of volunteers, the selecting responsibility came to schools. Depend on volunteer affairs or schools, the interview types were different, or even no interviews. In the individual sport events, interview seems available because the demand of numbers of volunteers is not as many as World Games. However, 2011 Tour de Taiwan did not have interview; actually the medical service volunteers and reception volunteer contacted language frequently. It seems that the types and levels of interview depend on the events and the organizers should find the balance. “In 2012 Tour de Taiwan, the interview and training were adopted; although the effectiveness was affected by many things; I found that more volunteers were be attendance on the events.” (V)
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The excellent volunteers and limited opportunities.
In Taiwan, there are more and more people participating in volunteer services; however, the quota is so limited. Take Figure Skating Championships for example, there were more than 1000 applications and after the filtering, 300 people were interviewed. Although many volunteers were excellent, they could not join the events. Furthermore, there were volunteers who have good English ability but were deployed to the affairs which are not related to language. These made some volunteers feel upset or disappointed. “Some have lived abroad for a long time and they doubted why they cannot be accepted, but we cannot help and suggested that there are still many opportunities in the future.”(V)
The limited human resource in sport associations.
The organizers in sport associations of Taiwan mentioned that their human resource is very limited and the work loading is very heavy for everyone in the association. That is one of the reasons to outsourcing some work contents in volunteer management. Although they have willingness to do a lot of things in the recruiting, selecting and training, they feel exhausted. “Association mainly wants to complete tasks because they have limited human resource. For them, it’s also important to trust the resourcing units.”(W)
Unpredictable situations in implementation.
In World Games and individual sport events, there was a common concept for training:
the difficulty for training was that you cannot predict the real situations. Actually the real difficulty was in implementation. In World Games, although there were a variety of courses, the real situation was more complicated, especially reception and team volunteers because what they faced is “people.” According to organizers, there were several solutions for the difficulties. First, volunteers have to report the situations to centers every day to prevent these problems happening again. Second, the call-system allowed volunteers to communicate with supervisors as soon as possible to solve the problems. The language volunteers worked hard because they faced most problems; therefore, they contributed much to the international
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events. “The training itself is not difficult. Training is difficult because that we cannot predict the real situation; besides, the evaluation actually depends on the results.”(V) ”the difficulty is not in training; we have more difficulty in unexpected situations, which is not included in training contents.”(X)
Feedback from Organizers
The recruiting system and talent pool.
The good spirits in the recruiting systems of the events should be passed down and expanded. These systems have combined various experiences. Taiwan may have opportunities to hold international events in the future; according to certain events, the good system could be modified and adopted. If the data of volunteers is allowed to use in sport events and for other purposes, the talent pool should be built and utilized. “We do not lack of volunteers; we lack of leaders in volunteers. I will save contact information of excellent volunteers; the concept is like talent pool.”(W) “The volunteering spirit should expand into community. We can combine youth talent pool and community talent pool. They have been trained by government. The talent pool should be built.”(X)
The preferred characteristics of volunteers.
The organizers mentioned several characteristics of volunteers. First, in international sport events, it is better that the volunteers in crucial positions have cultural ability more than language ability. The culture interaction between volunteers and participants is more important. Second, the basic factor for every volunteer is the attitude. “Attitude is more important, what we focus is not professional knowledge but the implementation of tasks.” (W) Volunteers should take responsibility for their work. Third, the characteristic of volunteers should be extroverted, easy-going, active and flexible. Forth, English ability is not the only important part. “Good English does not represent global perspective; language ability is the basic part for international talents.”(W) In the end, the organizers in individual sport events mentioned that the volunteer can be found abroad. It is available to find international students
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in Taiwan but it is different from international teams; however, the possibility depends on the characteristic of events. For example, the events which volunteers stay merely at one venue are more suitable for the international volunteer teams.
The international trend in sport industry.
For Taiwan, more and more international talents are needed in sport affairs. If there are more international talents, Taiwan can have more chances to be seen in the world. People in sport affairs should change from mind, not from system “Take Yen-Hsun Lu for example, at first when he came to restaurants, he could just order the meal randomly, but now he can interact with them well.”(W) Taiwan can hold more individual sport events not mega- events.
The individual sport events will not cost too much resource but can invite excellent athletes to Taiwan. Take figure skating and billiard for example, Taiwan definitely have the facilities to hold the events. For language management in these events, although it is a new issue for the sport affairs, association should spend more time on it. First, the standard of language ability for different position should be set. Second, the language and culture training are necessary. The culture training can emphasize on the mistakes without purposes and the tips about how to introduce Taiwan.
The Experiences of Language Management of Volunteers Motivation - the Language Factor
There are more and more international sport events holding in Taiwan recently, these provided opportunities for volunteers to immerge in an international setting. For volunteers, there were various motivations for them to participate in an international affair. During the interviews, kinds of reasons are explored which is shown in table4.9.
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Table 4.9
Motivations of Volunteers
Reasons of participating in the sport events interviewee
1. Time is available G, R,L,C,I
2. Career path G,O,A,B
2. Career path G,O,A,B