29-12-2010
Prof. C.R. Visweswara Rao, honourable Vice-Chancellor and Chief Guest of today’s function, Prof. T. Sudha, Dean, College Development Council, and the President of the function, very learned Prof. S. Mohan Raj, EFLU, Hyderabad and the Guest of Honour, Prof. Jaya Shree Mohan Raj, EFLU, Hyderabad and the Guest of Honour, respected members of faculty from other colleges, participants from the select colleges, members of faculty of the University, invitees, friends from Print and Electronic Media..
A Very Good Morning to one and all!!
It gives me very great pleasure to be the Coordinator of this One Day Workshop on Soft Skills for Professional Success intended to provide the opportunity to the students of various professional streams in the select colleges of Nellore, to know the skills expected of them by the ever-expanding global market. The changing industry environment demands a wide variety of skills — academic knowledge and industry-relevant talent. Gone are the days when just a graduation could fetch a ’job’ and the individual could afford to sit back and relax after graduating. As a Consequence, the importance of skills other than the regular academic knowledge has increased manifold over the past few years. These skills are of growing importance in a world where business is marked by 'hot' buzzwords such as globalization; decentralisation; and lean management. Of course it is a truism that in real life soft and hard skills (such as subject competence, resource handling, and market knowledge) go hand in hand.
At every NASSCOM meet, it has been emphasized that there is a wide gap between the set of skills that are imparted to the students in their colleges and universities and the set of skills that the industry looks for in a prospective employee.
Soft Skills are behavioral competencies, a cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, that characterize relationships with other people which form the base for the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities. As regards the future of work, soft skills are fast becoming the deal breaker in many of today's hiring decisions. Executives, after all, are rarely measured according to how well they can re-iterate the technical specifications of their products and services, but rather on their ability to motivate an organization, to assess the performance of their staff, to make clear and well-balanced decisions, and, first and foremost, their ability to develop and communicate ideas and visions.
Let me remind you of Confucius who said, “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be a failure.” The workshop is aimed at providing the precious training or the expert inputs that help the students to check the failure rate for the advancement of their career.
· The workshop aims at driving away the inhibitions in the students regarding the ability to interact in a positive way and making them socially graceful to become the qualified work force.
· To further their knowledge Language and involving them in tasks of teacher-guided learning; and encouraging them to set up, implement and realize their individual learning strategies.
· Taking the cue from Social Theorist Erving Goffman who made very clear with his theory of 'FACE' and its twofold workings: In human interaction, – Positive face (PF) and Negative Face (NF) which forms one of the key ingredients of Interpersonal Skills and also involves cross-cultural aspects.
· The workshop will also address the Effectiveness of Communication and dwells at length the barriers to communication which are at the core of Second language learning.
· To make the learning process for the students fundamentally social, interactive, and self-directed and prepare them to set tasks that involve reflective assessment and active training of one or more of the soft skills.
· to enhance the students' linguistic competence; and to pave ways towards (inter)cultural competence, i.e. to prepare them for the extra-linguistic demands that 'handling language aptly' via soft skills will undoubtedly put on them in their careers
David Crystal in his “English – Which Way we know says,
"Language is an immensely democratizing institution. To have learned a language is to have rights in it" (Crystal 2000: 56). This statement has immensely increased the responsibility of the teacher as a facilitator and authoritative contributor. This Workshop explores a golden mean of between releasing tension, encouraging self-exploration, and providing both challenges and strategies.
What counts in soft-skills-framing are the qualities of intellectual and interaction, stimulation, the use reasoning and evidence.
I hope that this workshop gives a new kind of learning experience for the enthusiastic participants who came from far locations to know the advantage of gaining strategic skills the notion of holistic, situational problem solving, and the willingness to continuously revise one's own sense of meaning.