English Language Proficiency & Communication Skills Program

Skills Development Program (SDP) –Center for Executive Education designed and conducted a month program from June 22, 2015 to July 16, 2015 for Pakistan Petroleum Limited Asia E&P B.V. The program was conducted at Mövenpick Hotel, Karachi. All 20 participants were Iraqi nationals whose native language was Arabic with very basic understanding of English language. The objective of the course was to improve the executives’ English language skills in all areas i.e. Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking & Grammar. The program also covered Business Communication Skills.

The course was designed to provide them adequate skills set that could help them understand their next level technical training and communicate comfortably with their facilitators and Pakistani colleagues.

The course was conducted SDP’s experienced trainers Syeda Faiza Hassan and Farhan Uddin Raja. Faiza Hassan worked on their reading & listening skills, building their vocabulary bank, sentence structure, pronunciation, writing emails, memos, etc. while Farhan Uddin helped them improve their writing and speaking skills with focus on Grammar & presentation skills. Participants’ improvement was assessed through weekly quizzes and frequent assignments.

“If I want to say something about Ms Faiza… it’s one word ‘Amazing’”
…..Ahsan M. Saeed (Geologist)

“I wish Mr Farhan was my teacher from beginning”
…..Zaydoon Hameed (Chief Engineer)

Two interpreters were also hired especially for this course. During the first week, interpreters’ role was very important since participants could not make their point to the trainer and trainers also had to explain things in Arabic. But as the course continued, participants were encouraged to speak in English only and not take help of interpreters. However, both interpreters were there for the entire course to assist IBA trainers and PPL Iraqi participants in the best possible way.

Certificate distribution ceremony was held on July 16, 2015. Mr. Wamiq Bukhari (MD/ CEO PPL), Mr. Izhar Hussain (Director CEE-IBA), Ms. Naveeda Mehmood (Manager L&D PPL) and other team members of the project attended the ceremony. Participants were also given small hand crafted giveaways from IBA.

We got a very good feedback from participants as well as PPL management for not only trainers but overall design & execution of this course.

We would like to thank our trainers; CEE staff, Pakistan Petroleum Limited and IBA administration to help us in making this program a success.