The Impact of English in Maritime
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) actively promotes English as the primary language in the maritime sector under the Standards of Training Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW). This initiative is essential to reducing accidents caused by communication failures, especially for the significant 80% of the world’s maritime crews who do not have English as their first language. Therefore, seafarers must possess a strong command of Maritime English to perform their daily duties at sea safely and effectively.
The Need for Effective Communication
To facilitate this, IMO Model Courses, along with Standard Maritime Communication Phrases (SMCP), are used for seafarer training. These tools ensure that maritime professionals can use Maritime English effectively in various situations, including safety, security, emergencies, customer service on passenger ships, and communication with maritime authorities. However, it’s unfortunate that many maritime accidents occur due to seafarers’ inadequate linguistic communication skills. This often happens because established rules and standards are not consistently followed.
The PraC-MARENG Project: Bridging the Communication Gap
The PraC-MARENG project seeks to:
- Identify specific activities and tasks that seafarers perform daily on different types of vessels.
- Develop an online training program tailored to different ranks, allowing access to real activities and tasks on various vessel types, incorporating the latest maritime sector technologies.
- Create a learning and assessment tool that grants users genuine certificates based on experiential knowledge.
Features of the Training Platform
The platform incorporates:
- Real communication at sea using SMCP.
- Meaningful activities to motivate students to sustain effective communication for specific goals.
Empowering Seafarers with Better Communication
The PracMerEng Training Platform offers customized programs for various ranks, considering different types of vessels. Users can choose competence levels based on their desired rank. This platform will significantly enhance seafarers’ English competence, leading to better decision-making, improved understanding and interpretation of tasks and activities on board vessels, and ultimately, stronger communication skills.
For more information, please visit our website: www.prac-mareng.com.