Bigfoot grants online English course accounts

Alarmed by the widespread impression that English proficiency is deteriorating in the Philippines, Bigfoot Global Solution's affiliate Cleverlearn Ltd., has moved towards saving the country's strongest competitive advantage.

This global company, which is based in Cebu, has spent about P20 million to give out 20,000 English Online Course accounts to over 100,000 high school students, and thousands of elementary pupils in Cebu province.

Bigfoot chairman Joe Mercado said yesterday that Bigfoot has seen the declining supply of good English speaking manpower pool, specifically in Cebu, as his company is also running a call center operation here.

"You only have to look around to see that the Philippines has become a favored destination of many multi-million-dollar business process outsourcing companies. And yet, socio-economic experts have been warning that the English proficiency of Filipino graduates, and consequently our workforce, has been deteriorating for years," Mercado said.

Through the company's charity arm Bigfoot Asia Pacific Foundation Inc., the about P20 million worth of CleverCourse accounts will be given to the Department of Education (DepEd) in for the entire Cebu province, in order to sustain the foundation for English proficiency and IT skills to the next generation workforce.

Cleverlearn, a technology company, has invested dollars to develop its own English learning system. It tapped language experts to design and develop CleverCourse, which is currently being used by hundreds of subscribers in Asia, Europe and other parts of the globe. Each CleverCourse account in Germany for instance, is sold for 20 Euros or P1,200 a month.

According to Mercado the entire 20,000 course will be availed by students in batches, as this online course is designed for individual online teaching.

Developed by language experts, CleverCourse features the largest library English lessons online. It offers General English course, as well as industry-specific Business English Courses, like marketing, manufacturing, business travel, finance, customer service, information technology, human resources, and even business presentations.

"We have been teaching English as second language to different countries like Germany , Korea , China, Hong Kong," Mercado said adding that the company has now decided to give it off to its home-ground in Cebu.

Although, there is a possibility that the course will be offered by the company in a nationwide scope, but Mercado stressed that the company has to prioritize Cebu, as there are also a lot of entities, which are wanting to help in Luzon and other provinces, especially in Manila.

"We hope this will help our students to attain their goal of achieving higher qualifications especially in an English-driven market," Mercado said.

Since this course is technology base, a school will have to have an Internet connection. In this concern, Department of Education (DepEd) executives in Cebu province will have to coordinate with another private sector initiated program called Gearing Up Internet Literacy and Access for Students, or GILAS.