"We saw firsthand the fact that, this simple daily practice was quietly reshaping the way they spoke, debated, and engaged with the world!" ❤️

Happy Arguing! 😊

The Rising Importance of English Proficiency in the AI Era

My Classroom Experience with the Newspaper in English

#newspaperinlearning

10th March 2026

I happened to read a very informative article in today’s The Times of India, Chennai Edition, (page 11) on the rising importance of English proficiency.

An overwhelming 97% of Indian employers consider English proficiency more important today than it was five years ago, outpacing the global average of 92%.

A recent global survey has highlighted that the demand for English language skills in the workplace is surging, driven heavily by globalisation and the rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Moreover, language skills are becoming a standard metric in recruitment. In India, 80% of companies now use English assessments during candidate screening, slightly above the 78% global average.

Means to say that, employers across the nation value the human ability to communicate clearly, critically, and accurately in English!

This apart, one thing is quite clear: Even to extract value from AI, professionals need high-level English to write nuanced prompts, navigate complex AI outputs, and critically evaluate those results for accuracy.

In this regard, I would like to suggest one insightful book by Jay Heinrichs, titled, Thank You for Arguing.

Well, this particular book is quite different from other books in the genre, as it jumps out of the monotonous theoretical frameworks, and helps to reframe the effectiveness of arguing in a highly practical and highly accessible way – pitching it as an everyday survival skill.

It doesn’t just explain classical concepts; it demonstrates them in action.

Sample this excerpt from the book for us all -

It is early in the morning and my seventeen-year-old son eats breakfast, giving me a narrow window to use our sole bathroom.

I wrap a towel around my waist and approach the sink, avoiding the grim sight in the mirror; as a writer, I don’t have to shave every day. (Marketers despairingly call a consumer like me a “low self-monitor.”)

I do have my standards, though, and hygiene is one. I grab toothbrush and toothpaste. The tube is empty.

The nearest replacement sits on a shelf in our freezing basement, and I’m not dressed for the part.

“George!” I yell. “Who used all the toothpaste?”

A sarcastic voice answers from the other side of the door.

“That’s not the point, is it, Dad?” George says.

“The point is how we’re going to keep this from happening again.”

He has me. I have told him countless times how the most productive arguments use the future tense, the language of choices and decisions.

“You’re right,” I say.

“You win. Now will you please get me some toothpaste?”

“Sure.”

George retrieves a tube, happy that he beat his father at an argument Or did he? Who got what he wanted?

In reality, by conceding his point, I persuaded him. If I simply said, “Don’t be a jerk and get me some toothpaste,” George might stand there arguing.

Instead I made him feel triumphant, triumph made him benevolent, and that got me exactly what I wanted. I achieved the height of persuasion: not just an agreement, but one that gets an audience - a teenaged one at that - to do my bidding. No, George, I win.

Any parent should consider rhetoric, the art of argument, one of the essential R’s.

Rhetoric is the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic. And it harnesses the most powerful of social forces, argument.

Whether you sense it or not, argument surrounds you. It plays with your emotions, changes your attitude, talks you into a decision, and goads you to buy things.

Argument lies behind political labelling, advertising, jargon, voices, gestures, and guilt trips; it forms a real life Matrix, the supreme software that drives our social lives. And rhetoric serves as argument’s decoder.

By teaching the tricks we use to persuade one another, the art of persuasion reveals the Matrix in all its manipulative glory.

The ancients considered rhetoric the essential skill of leadership - knowledge so important that they placed it at the centre of higher education.

It taught them how to speak and write persuasively, produce something to say on every occasion, and make people like them when they spoke.

After the ancient Greeks invented it, rhetoric helped create the world’s first democracies. It trained Roman orators like Julius Caesar and Marcus Tullius Cicero and gave the Bible its finest language. It even inspired William Shakespeare. Every one of America’s founders studied rhetoric, and they used its principles in writing the Constitution.

Heinrichs hence points out that the most productive arguments - the ones that actually solve problems - happen in the future tense.

In short, controlling the tense of the conversation is a master key to controlling the argument itself!

Lovely, ain’t it?

Well, the book is available for grabs on Amazon. Do grab a copy for yourself. Here’s wishing you happy arguing – the ‘English’ way! 😊

And finally, on a personal note – 😊

I’d like to share from a personal experience in my classes, from over 15 years ago, (in my language classes to be specific), when I made sure that each of the students took turns in reading out aloud news articles from the day’s newspaper in English.

This read-out-aloud exercise in class made students aware of the importance of reading the day’s newspaper - one of the most effective ways to enhance both written and verbal communication skills!

That’s because veteran journalists and editors employ a vast, precise vocabulary to convey complex situations clearly and concisely. Hence, a regular exposure to such high-quality journalism helps the student in acquiring new terminology, idioms, and varied sentence structures.

We found out the lovely truth that, there is a profound difference between understanding a text silently and owning it vocally! 

Indeed, great communicators don’t just speak well; they know what to speak about. Keeping up with international affairs, cultural shifts, and economic trends provides a deep reservoir of relevant examples, metaphors, and analogies.

And yes! The results have been transformative.

Watching our students navigate the morning headlines vocally has proven to be a masterclass in spontaneous communication. We saw firsthand the fact that, this simple daily practice was quietly reshaping the way they spoke, debated, and engaged with the world!

That’s because, when reading silently, it is incredibly easy to skip over a difficult word or gloss over an unfamiliar term. However, when reading it out aloud, the students are forced to actively sound out complex vocabulary, parse intricate journalistic phrasing, and negotiate the pronunciation of global names and places.

We also found out that, it helped a lot in bridging the gap between passive recognition and active usage, expanding their spoken lexicon day by day.

And perhaps the most immediate benefit has been the quality of our classroom discussions. We found out that, it made them active contributors to classroom discussions on trendy issues in society.

A practice that we’ve been following for decades now – making available the day’s newspaper in English for the student!

PS: For all ye current students, who do not have access to the day’s newspaper in English, our office of International Programmes has copies of the day’s newspaper (The Hindu & Times of India) in our office right from 8 am all through the day, on all working days! You can avail yourself of them free of cost, (one newspaper per student) on a first-come-first-served basis.

Here's wishing y’all a happy reading and a happier arguing! 😊

You may want to listen to our students from a language class (from over 15 years ago)  😊reading out aloud from the day’s newspaper - audio recordings - HERE on our past blogpost.