Welfare minister Jim Murphy has proposed cutting unemployment benefits for claimants who refuse to learn English.
From April, some 40,000 jobless people who say not speaking English is a barrier to finding work could face sanctions.
Murphy was expected to tell a Work Foundation seminar in London that unemployment rates among ethnic minorities are unacceptable, and that £4.5m is being spent on translators in job centres that could be better spent on language teaching.
He will also say action is needed to increase pay for ethnic minorities, who earn on average one-third less than white Britons.
"We must utilise the resources we have to
redress the balance: to put the emphasis not just on translating language to claim a benefit, but to teaching language to get a job," he was expected to say.
"Not just for the sake of employment rates, but for the benefit of the individual, their community and society as a whole."
And Murphy was expected to add: "Wherever possible, we would like them to participate in a work-focused language course, where they exist.
"People will be able and expected to look for work while they undertake any training, and in many cases there will also be the provision to carry on with the training course after they have got a job."
