Motivation of the Study

Taiwan Automobile Technology skill area ranks extraordinary performance in WSC, with good results to drive people’s attention. Taiwan hit the 6^th place in 2007, and 4^th place in 2009 and 2011 in a row (WorldSkills, 2015). It’s not easy considering the development status of Taiwan Automobile Industry. It was 1953 that the Automobile Industry started in Taiwan, which is 70 years behind European countries, like Germany. Even compared to its neighbor, Japan, Taiwan still lagged behind for 20 years or so. One factor has to be understood, that at the time of 1950’s, Taiwan put most of its efforts and emphasis onto building up economy for agriculture, consumer goods industry, for example tea business, textile manufactory, plastic products, etc. (Huang, 1984).

Industries related to support the Automobile Industry: like petrochemical, steelmaking, and oil-refining weren’t well established nor ready until the 1970’s. The relevant supports for the Automobile Industry are not friendly in comparison with Taiwan star industries: IT, high tech, biotechnology fields. The Automobile Industry is considered stagnant at the phase of assembling or O.E.M. model. As a result, Taiwan was short of well-developed conditions to establish a successful Automobile Industry, with the hardship for over half century up to now. An external reason to foster professional and dedicated manpower for the Automobile Industry is stressed the importance more than ever for a vocational education and training system. After all, automobiles are an essential part of the transportation infrastructures. For example, the registered number of automobiles in Taiwan in 2014 is 7,554,319 and growing (Ministry of Transportation and Communications R.O.C. website, 2015). As such, the Automobile Technology market has a great human resource demand.

It is a fact of life that technology has become the livelihood of society, particularly in the workplace for many decades. Technological advancements involve the integration of technology into a process for changing inputs into outputs. They are also used to provide better, more useful information. As Dr. Li mentioned, Automobile Industry is involving in the turbulence of technology development

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without exception, from auto design, development, manufacturing, and assembling, even after-sold service. For instance, most of modern cars today have a built-in computer circuit that a technician can plug into to determine operating problems, saving countless diagnostic hours for a mechanic, in order to keep holding a competitive ability (Li, Hor, & Wu, 2009). As a result, we can learn that the purposes of skills enhancement are to promote and elevate overall professional base to provide a more comfortable living environment with the support of sophisticated technological skills.

1.2.2 Incentives to Taiwanese WSC Winners

Taiwan participants always have excellent performance in the previous WSC over the years. Especially in 2015 for the 43^rd competition which was held in São Paulo, Brazil. Forty-one competitors were sent to compete in 39 skill areas, where they received tough competition from 63 member countries/regions with 1,189 participants to compete for the great honor. The results for Taiwan are surprisingly good, to mention the top scores of the last 17 years: players brought back 5 gold awards, 7 silver awards, 5 bronze awards and 19 medallions of excellence, and being rated as the 3^rd place (WorldSkills, 2015). In order to show the government’s commitment to value and urge the brilliant record to go on, Workforce Development Agency, Ministry of Labor, ROC, raised the gold award prize to Taiwanese WSC winner from NT$500,000 to NT1,000,000, the silver award prize from NT$400,000 to NT$500,000. The bronze award prize and the medallion of excellence remain NT$300,000 and NT$60,000 respectively in 2014 (Workforce Development Agency, 2014). In addition, Workforce Development Agency is working to create more incentives to attract and encourage young professionals to join the program. For instance, the coordination with Ministry of Education to recommend winning competitors for admission to college. Once and again it shows the great outcome is made by team work.

1.2.3 The Vision of WSC

WSC aims for skills excellence and development in vocational, technological and service oriented careers around the world. Over the 65 years,

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it has successfully raised awareness and understanding among member countries/regions worldwide. At the same time, individual members advocate the same goals to cohere with the WSC vision to commence with national competition in order to create mutual learning by competition and dialogue with each other. The expectation is to have more opportunities for the young professionals, as well as their parents, teachers and enterprises to interact and so stimulate more innovative and creative ideas. Once the vocational education and training system is well built, the professional skills can be elevated correspondingly.

1.2.4 English – the Official and Working Language of WSC

English is the official language for WSC. According to The Report of the 42nd WorldSkills Competition, ROC, there is still a gap to overpass in English language capability for Taiwan participants (Skill Evaluation Center of Workforce Development Agency website, 2013). Take the example of Fu, a young candidate who is interested and very good at beauty therapy, yet failed in the local competition and was not able to be selected as Taiwan representative for the WSC in 2011 because her English wasn’t good enough (Taiwan Labor Quarterly, 2013). However, she didn’t give up. Before she eventually won the privilege to represent Taiwan and successfully brought back the WSC gold medal from Leipzig, Germany in 2013, it has been six years of hardship breaking her back working from early dawn to late night every day. Besides her excellent professional skill, she made remarkable progress in terms of English communication skill as well. Prof. Hou, the WSC International Jury for Carpentry from Taiwan, mentioned, the English proficiency of the participants should be well developed. In competitions, it requests a certain level of communication competence that would help participants to be responsive and able to improvise when encountering the unpredictable situations (Taiwan Labor Quarterly, 2013).

1.2.5 The Language Gap to Overcome

It’s common for Taiwan students to learn English as a foreign language.

On average, students start to study English at the 3rd grade of elementary

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school, which is at the age of 9. That means by the time of becoming a WSC competitor, the participants have about 10 years of English learning background. Teenage students tend to be more comfortable to deal with reading and writing in English learning. When they are requested to give a presentation or express themselves in English orally, not many find it easy to speak up.

Some will feel embarrassed and start to stutter when speaking, like getting a swelling tongue all of a sudden. Thus it should take some efforts and measures to help young professionals that are just the same age of WSC competitors in oral communication skills. For most young people, it isn’t easy to speak in an unfamiliar language with strangers, let alone joining an intensive competition in a foreign country when they have to face the “terrifying” jury, peer competitors, and working staffs. And according to The Report on the 42nd WorldSkills Competition, ROC, there is a gap in English language capability for Taiwan participants (Skill Evaluation Center of Workforce Development Agency website, 2013).

So far, there are not many studies done to explore the training process and strategy for Taiwan Automobile Technology competitors for WSC on English oral communication. So this paper would take the opportunity to review the WSC organization, competitors qualifications, and language training program, etc. Hopefully it can be the future reference for parents, teachers, trainees, enterprises, and the government to have better performance for the international Automobile Technology skill competitions.