English for Crop Science in Vietnam: Taking Perceptions from the Workplace to University Teachers

Abstract

<p><b>The English language needs of students in their future work domains is an issue of major concern in the design and development of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). There has been little empirical research on how English is used in workplaces employing crop science graduates, as well as the responses of educators to the result of the needs analysis. Some research also suggests that the effectiveness of ESP courses in tertiary institutions in Vietnam has been relatively limited (Do & Cai, 2010; Dong; 2011; Nguyen, 2013). This qualitative case study research adapted the needs analysis framework of Brown (2016) to: (1) explore the language needed in workplaces by the former students of an English course for Crops Science at an agricultural university in North Vietnam, (2) determine the learning strategies used by these alumni to bridge the gap between what they were taught at the university and workplace use of English and (3) investigate the responses of the university’s teachers to the feedback from the work domain. Accordingly, the combination of Brown’s three conceptualizations of needs, namely democratic, discrepancy and diagnostic were used to examine the necessities, lacks and wants of stakeholders in the ESP program.</b></p> <p>To establish the language needs at their current work places, 20 former undergraduate students of the Crops Science major, three of their employers, five ESP teachers and five subject specific teachers from the agricultural university participated in this research. The data were collected in two phases. The alumni and their employers were firstly interviewed to examine the common purposes of using English in crop science professional contexts, as well as the significant language demands the new graduates encountered and their strategies to improve their language. In the second phase, the findings from the interviews with the graduates and their seniors were presented to the language and subject instructors to capture their views and the perceived implications of these workplace findings for teaching and course design. All the interviews were semi-structured and conducted on Zoom. The transcribed texts were imported in Nvivo-12 for coding and thematically analysis.</p> <p>The findings confirmed the necessity of English for the employability of graduates. English was needed most for reading technical documents and written communication such as writing emails, reports and memos. The alumni also relied on informal and independent learning to meet the language needs of their professions. Despite of a number of constraints mainly in terms of the course length, teaching materials and students’ learning motivation, most of the teachers said that this feedback informed potential pedagogic changes such as the integration of oral and written communication activities. Closer cooperation with subject teachers was also recommended.</p> <p>This study established a strong and on-going connection between the work domain and the educational institution. Diagnostic, discrepancy and democratic views of needs analysis were used to, firstly, gain an understanding of the kinds of language needs in actual workplaces. In response to these needs, teachers reflected on possible pedagogical responses, taking into account the perceived needs of the target groups of students in Vietnamese Medium of Instruction (VMI) or English as Medium of Instruction programs (EMI), and stakeholders such as employers and subject teachers – experts in the field. The practice of autonomy in ESP courses may serve as an effective way to improve learner outcomes and facilitate the learning of graduates in their later career. Theoretically, this dynamic and on-going process of NA and teacher reflectivity can be applied to similar contexts to capture ever-changing needs in workplaces across EFL countries. This study develops a model to encapsulate the potentially dynamic relationship between the expertise of the work domain and the expertise of the educational institution. However, implementing this model is constrained by institutional processes including the lack of a current mechanism to achieve the stakeholder sharing of knowledge, in this case, achieved through independent research.</p>