Job Focus: Revisiting Students’ Communicative Needs and Industrial Demands

Abstract

In an attempt to develop students’ employability skills through a job-specific, needs based English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course, this paper investigated conducting a needs analysis to understand the perceptions of the final-year technical students, alumni, and Human Resources (HR) managers for promoting placements in the campus recruitments. By employing a qualitative ethnographic approach, an open-ended questionnaire was conducted with final-year information technology students and structured and unstructured interviews with the HR managers and the alumni respectively. In this study, the communicative needs of the final-year technical students were specifically addressed to provide them with career education and placement training and raise employment opportunities in their course of study. Based on the results of the questionnaire-based survey and subsequent observations in the structured and unstructured interviews, it is widely examined that all of the HR managers reflected on the importance of English language in corporate communications. The findings of the survey also reflected that the perceptions of the alumni and the expectations of the HR managers on verbal and nonverbal skills were well received by the final-year technical students. This is a positive development on the part of students as they were found to be thoroughly aware of their workplace needs and were keen to develop language, communication, and soft skills for successfully entering into the job market. This research implies that connecting institution and industry is a significant factor in helping students obtain job offers and develop the job-specific skills that meet the requirements of the industry.

Professional communication competence in English for occupational purposes (EOP) courses: A systematic literature review and proposal of a framework

“…From the analysis conducted, the studies were done in various contexts, including maritime (Ahmmed et al, 2020;Alibakhshi & Labbafi, 2021), engineering (Adnan, 2019;Baklazhenko, 2018;Gözüyeşil, 2014;Masduki & Zakaria, 2020;Panyawong-Ngam et al, 2015;Spence & Liu, 2013), medicine (Arumugam & Kaur, 2011), mechatronics (Ranasuriya & Herath, 2020), pest control (Hee & Zainal, 2018), human resource (Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012), information technology (Fareen, 2018), military and/or aviation (Alshabeb et al, 2017;Sari & Sari, 2020), architecture (Palea et al, 2012) and a combination of multiple industries (Al-Buainain, 2011).…”

“…In examining the individual skills required, many claim that the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) are equally important (Adnan, 2019;Alshabeb et al, 2017;Arumugam & Kaur, 2011;Ranasuriya & Herath, 2020). Others reported the perception that productive skills (speaking and writing) are the most essential for business communication (Baklazhenko, 2018;Fareen, 2018;Singh & Raja Harun, 2020). However, there are also others who believe that writing is the most common skill practiced in the workplace (Spence & Liu, 2013), yet some posit that speaking skills are the most needed skill (Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012), as it is also the skill that is tested the most among recruiting agencies (Ahmmed et al, 2020).…”

“…Writing emails (Adnan, 2019;Ahmmed et al, 2020;Chan, 2014;Fareen, 2018;Hee & Zainal, 2018;Masduki & Zakaria, 2020;Ranasuriya & Herath, 2020;Spence & Liu, 2013;Thomas et al, 2016) Writing reports (Ahmmed et al, 2020;Alshabeb et al, 2017;Chan, 2014;Fareen, 2018;Masduki & Zakaria, 2020;Singh & Raja Harun, 2020;Spence & Liu, 2013) Writing business letters (Fareen, 2018;Spence & Liu, 2013) Writing proposals (Spence & Liu, 2013;Thomas et al, 2016) Writing memos (Alshabeb et al, 2017;Ranasuriya & Herath, 2020;Spence & Liu, 2013) Preparing presentation slides (Spence & Liu, 2013;Thomas et al, 2016) One study that examined the competence level required for writing tasks was conducted by Attan et al (2013), who provided written scripts to industry practitioners to obtain their feedback regarding the written quality of the scripts. Based on a scale rating of '1 = Extremely Limited Writer' to '6 = Effective Writer', the study found that the respondents believed a '3 = Functional Writer' could satisfactorily meet the workplace requirements if given extra assistance and time to learn in the workplace.…”

“…Giving oral presentations (Adnan, 2019;Belwal et al, 2017;Gözüyeşil, 2014;Hee & Zainal, 2018;Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012;Ranasuriya & Herath, 2020;Spence & Liu, 2013) Attending meetings and seminars (Hee & Zainal, 2018;Singh & Raja Harun, 2020;Spence & Liu, 2013) Communicating with customers or clients (Hee & Zainal, 2018;Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012;Spence & Liu, 2013;Thomas et al, 2016) Handling telephone calls (Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012;Singh & Raja Harun, 2020;Spence & Liu, 2013) Giving and receiving instructions (Masduki & Zakaria, 2020;Sari & Sari, 2020;Singh & Raja Harun, 2020) Participating in social conversations (Masduki & Zakaria, 2020;Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012;Sari & Sari, 2020;Singh et al, 2014;Spence & Liu, 2013;Yao & Du-Babcock, 2020) In terms of spoken competency, Fareen (2018) found that there is a need for prospective employees to develop competencies in discussing, persuading, convincing and negotiating in English. Rapport building was also highlighted as a valuable skill, as well as the ability to recognise when to be concise and when to be detailed when communicating.…”

“…In terms of challenges in using the English language, studies have found that graduates face challenges in sustaining conversations (Alshabeb et al, 2017;Arumugam & Kaur, 2011), comprehending and answering questions (Arumugam & Kaur, 2011), giving instructions (Arumugam & Kaur, 2011), organising ideas (Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012), explaining logically (Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012) and paraphrasing (Moslehifar & Ibrahim, 2012). Some studies also found that respondents feel a lack of vocabulary is a challenge (Gözüyeşil, 2014) especially for spoken language (Adnan, 2019;Alshabeb et al, 2017;Sari & Sari, 2020), and some reported spelling mistakes (Fareen, 2018), inaccurate grammar use (Sari & Sari, 2020) and pronunciation issues (Fareen, 2018;Sari & Sari, 2020) as issues to be solved. Interestingly, a study by Chan (2014) also found writing negative messages to be a particularly challenging task for written communication.…”