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Article 1
Introduction Author: Tuula Lehtonen, Sinikka Karjalainen
Date of Publish: 29 January 2008
Title: University graduates’ workplace language
needs as perceived by employers
Text:
 Individuals working in a particular context
have specific needs or are expected to have
specific skills in a particular language
 Language used at work often differs from
that used in other contexts
 Inherent problems is not knowing enough
about the students’ future careers and
language skills needed at work.
 Concentrate on the ‘‘common core” of the
workplace to help teachers plan courses for
undergraduates from many different
disciplines.
 Until rather recently in language centre
teaching at universities, workplace
language needs have not been paid enough
attention, even though the Bologna Process
places great emphasis on improving
employability
 Graduates’ need for language skills was
also pinpointed in a recent international
evaluation of teaching at the University of
Helsinki (Horppu and Niskanen, 2004) at
the University of Helsinki.
 Language Centre need to find out about the
language needs at the workplace in order to
bridge the gap between language teaching
and the linguistic needs of the workplace.
 This evaluation of teaching that provided
the initial impetus for the study reported on
in this article.
 To focus on the language needs of
university graduates at today’s workplace
according to the views of their employers.
 Use interview data to highlight certain
language-related trends at the workplace of
Finnish university graduates from different
fields.
 Also consider different languages needed
instead of one particular language and its
specific uses.
 Pay attention to cultural aspects which are
relevant to the workplace in today’s
multicultural/multilingual world.
 The practical aim of this study is to help
LSP/ESP teachers and curriculum
designers in university language centres or
other similar institutes plan their language
programmes even in cases where the
Article 2
Author: Seyed Mohammad Mohammadi,
Manijeh Masoudi Moghadam
Date of Publish:11 August 2015
Title: Workplace Oral and Written Language
Needs for Graduate Students: A Review
Text:
 One of the inherent problems in
language teaching at university
language centers is not knowing
enough about the students’ future
careers and language skills needed
at work, so we concentrate on the
‘‘common core” of the workplace to
help teachers plan courses for
students from many different
disciplines.
 The LSP/ESP approach, often
focusing on the business context
and employing methodology that
often stems from genre or discourse
analysis, offers us invaluable insight
into the language needed at work.
 For example, Crosling and Ward
(2002) analyzed the development of
oral communication skills in an
undergraduate business and
commerce curriculum and argued
that undergraduate experience in
formal presentation only can be a
sign of insufficient preparation for
oral communication in the
workplace.
 Despite the need, and the varied and
often creative ways of including
oral communication skills in
subjects, there appears to be little
research available that provides
precise understandings of the nature
of workplace communication for
graduate employees.
 Regarding the social context of
workplace communication, one can
point to the language specimens in
social contexts for purposes of
professional communication such as
power (Foucault, 1982; Bourdieu &
Moreover, workplace discourse can
reflect power relations (Fairclough,
1995).
 oslehifar and Ibrahim (2012)reports
on an investigation of English
Language Oral Communication
(ELOC) needs of HRD
undergraduates from a public
university in the Southern part of
Malaysia and concluded that there
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students’ future employment is rather
unspecified.
 Help practitioners in setting workplace-
related goal levels
Methodologies 1- This study is set within the context of the
Language Centre of the University of Helsinki,
Finland.
2- Caters for students from eleven different faculties
and provides them with opportunities to fulfil the
degree requirements in languages.
3- A project called Language Needs at the
Workplace
4- To investigate the actual language use of
employees with an academic degree and to
interview representatives of employers about issues
related to language use.
5-First, Horppu (2005) carried out a postal survey
(structured questionnaire) on the actual use of
languages at work, and the frequency and type of
usage five years after graduation.
6-As shown in Table 1, Horppu’s (2005) findings
suggest that English is needed on a regular basis,
and about a third of the Finnish-speaking
respondents use Swedish regularly.
7-When the respondents were asked if there was a
language that they did not know but would need at
work, the most frequent, although not
overwhelmingly frequent, answer was Russian.
8-Other languages in the repertoire of the
respondents were reported to be used much less
seldom, German being the most known and used
language.
9-The respondents represented all faculties, and the
response rate was highest among those who
graduated from the faculties of Science (52%),
Behavioural Sciences (51%) and Arts (50%)
10- These 15 employers represented the sectors that
employ university graduates: town councils (two
employers), state offices (three employers),
universities or other institutions of higher education
(two employers), the Lutheran church of Finland,
i.e. the predominant religious community (one
employer), NGOs (one employer), and private or
state-owned companies (six employers in the fields
of law, pharmaceuticals, paper, insurance,
publishing and broadcasting)
Findings 1- Need for languages
 The general message received from the
employers was that, today, language skills
are important in professions requiring
university education (cf.
were some specific oral
communicative events and skills
required by HRD trainees at the
workplace
1- Telephone Interviews
 In addition to the interviews with
graduates, 15 of their workplace
supervisors were also interviewed
via the telephone to gather details of
the company communication
profiles and to obtain their views
about the graduates' particular
communication needs.
 These interviews, with both the
graduates and their supervisors,
were used to supplement the
information obtained via the
questionnaire in order to achieve
greater reliability and validity
2- Collection of Authentic Workplace Texts.
 Throughout the investigation, and in
fact as an on-going process,
merchandisers have provided
samples of correspondence they
have written or received.
 This has enabled an analysis of the
writing style of these authentic texts
to be carried out.
3- Visits to the Workplace
 The authors visited the
administrative office of a Hong
Kong-based buying office for half a
day to obtain an understanding of
the operation of the company and to
observe merchandisers at work.
Two days were spent at the
company's large factory just outside
Shenzhen, a city in China close to
Hong Kong, to observe the
procedures involved and the
communications required in the
production of garments.
 Even though English is not the first
language of many of these
countries, the international language
of business, English, is used by the
Hong Kong merchandisers in their
communications with most of them.
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 This is in line with the findings of a recent
study on the effects of language skills on
the European economy (ELAN, 2006).
 In fact, these skills are often regarded as
self-evident, and job applicants with a poor
knowledge of languages are not even
considered.
-English
 The general message received from the
employers was that, today, language skills
are important in professions requiring
university education
 In fact, these skills are often regarded as
self-evident, and job applicants with a poor
knowledge of languages are not even
considered
-The national languages of
the country
 This is consistent with Horppu’s (2005)
findings and the Europe-wide trends
expressed in the newest Eurobarometer
(European Commission, 2006) which
states that English is the most widely-
spoken foreign language at the workplace
throughout Europe
 (Private company: pharmaceutical
industry) Good language skills in our
company mean that you are able to take the
floor in English without being nervous.
 Swedish is important too, especially in jobs
at the sales department, but if there is a
meeting where one person does not know
Swedish, English is the language used
4- Other languages
 The need for languages other than Finnish,
Swedish and English is relatively difficult
to assess, but the interviewees gave
context-specific examples of their use.
 They stressed that skills in some other
languages complement the ‘‘usual”
package of Finnish, Swedish and English.
 In the Finnish workplace context in
general, based on our data, the three most
important languages are Finnish, English
and Swedish.
 According to the Eurobarometer (European
Commission, 2006), Finns state they know
English (63%), Swedish (41%) and
German (18%) well enough to have a
conversation.
 In official European Council
documentation (e.g. Commission of the
European Communities, 2003), the aim is
 While the survey results indicate the
extensive range of countries
merchandisers may need to
communicate with, the countries
will obviously vary according to
individual business contacts at any
time.
 This question aimed to gain an
appreciation of the range of
countries with which Hong Kong
companies trade and it was found
that 46 different countries were
mentioned.
 Other major trading countries
included Japan, Macau, Taiwan,
Korea, Canada, Italy and the UK
 The identification of the most
frequently required written
communication activities has
provided an insight into the specific
communication needs of these
merchandisers and as a result,
teaching and learning materials have
been developed to provide practice
in such activities.
 The current collection of over 100
samples of authentic written
correspondence, mostly in the form
of faxes, has provided an insight
into the type of communications
common in textile and clothing
merchandising.
1- Presentation of the Message
 Use of uppercase letters was
noticed. A number of examples
were printed entirely in uppercase
letters. Such a style is not easy to
read and students have been alerted
not to use this type of writing.
2- Paragraphing
 This varied in the samples collected,
with some short paragraphs of just
one or two lines through to solid
blocks of text of more than 30 typed
lines. Students are advised to follow
the recommended paragraph length
given in many business
communication texts
3- Headings and Paragraph Numbering
 Students are advised to consider
their use so as to improve the
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for all Europeans to be able to use their appearance of the message and to
mother tongue and two other languages. ease comprehension.
 Russian was the only single language  These features, which were in
mentioned by both the employees in evidence in some samples, made the
Horppu’s research (2005) and by the messages easier to read.
employers in our interview data as a
potentially useful future language in 4- Abbreviations
Finland.
 Almost all of the sample texts
5- Level of knowledge collected used abbreviations and
this supports the survey findings
 As indicators of good language skills the which showed over an 85% usage.
employers included good communication  Student activities to practice
and presentation skills, confidence to use a comprehension and production of
foreign language, and the ability to interact abbreviations are now included in
and adapt to various linguistic and cultural the programs.
conditions.
 The employers’ definitions of good 5- Grammatical Accuracy
language skills in their work context were
similar, regardless of the sector the
 Examples of grammatical errors
employer represented.
noted in the texts include a number
 They mentioned several high-level
of common errors made by students
receptive and productive tasks that
in Hong Kong.
employees need to perform, such as
negotiating, giving and attending lectures
and presentations, writing up contracts and 6- Tone
drafting project plans (cf.
 Knowing languages other than English  The use of an appropriate tone was
helps in social settings. mentioned as an important issue by
 (University) Knowing languages other than the supervisors.
English is an extra bonus.  This facilitates an effective
 It helps you establish contacts and build up relationship being built between the
networks, it makes the distance shorter merchandiser and the custome
between you and the others from another
culture. 7- Connectives
 On the other hand, the interviewees saw
that less advanced skills in a less well-  The use of connectives, while
known language can be beneficial socially. effective in linking ideas in a
message, were often over-used in
2- Knowledge of culture(s) needed the sample correspondence or used
inappropriately.
 Some of the interviewees felt, in fact, that
cultural awareness comes before language 8- Incomplete Sentences
knowledge, and that culture and language,
though interrelated, can be treated  Incomplete sentences noted in some
separately. correspondence can imply a careless
 The focus of professionals at the attitude towards the work in hand
workplace seems to be on smooth and may lead to misunderstandings.
communication in context – much in the
vein of the CEFR (Council of Europe,
2001) – and on co-operation with people
from other cultures, often in a lingua
franca.
 Similar ideas have been expressed in other
contexts as well, for example in the recent
final document of the Thematic Network
Project
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 The situations where different languages
are used can be described as ‘‘cultura
franca” or ‘‘culture three” (Louhiala-
Salminen et al., 2005) situations: in a
situation where English, for example, is the
lingua franca and not the native language
of any of the participants, the participants
are often expected to adapt to the demands
of the ‘‘cultura franca”, the nature of
which depends on the cultures of those
present.
Conclusion  A clear message from the employers
interviewed in this study was the need for
language centres to see language skills
from a wider perspective essentially
including skills such as fluent presentation
and interaction, use of a lingua franca or
lingua francas, confidence to communicate
in a variety of situations, cultural
competence, and learning-to-learn skills.
 Close co-operation with employers in
planning language centre courses is thus
needed in order to tailor language teaching
to adequately meet the needs of the future
academic workforce.
 Representatives of 15 employers were
interviewed on various themes concerning
language skills and recruitment, language
use at work and future language needs.
 The findings confirm that foreign language
skills are an increasingly important basic
component of professional academic skills,
particularly in a country like Finland,
whose native languages are not among the
major world languages.
 This again may call for attitude change in
language centres as language teaching has
tended to be geared towards the academic
needs of students, or considered as
contributing to their personal development.
 The employers also sent another message
that concerns countries where several
foreign languages may be needed at work:
professionals need to be highly proficient
in languages.
 We believe that our findings may be
generalized to other countries with a
similar language situation to ours.
Recommendation  More research like this is needed in other
contexts, e.g. other regions of Finland or
other countries, different academic fields
and different languages.
 Research focusing on the real life of
individuals and their language use at work
is also needed in order to create a link
 A clear message from the employers
was the need for language centers to
see language skills from a wider
perspective essentially including
skills such as fluent presentation
and interaction, use of a lingua
franca or lingua francas, confidence
to communicate in a variety of
situations, cultural competence, and
learning-to-learn skills.
 The findings confirm that foreign
language skills are an increasingly
important basic component of
professional academic skills,
particularly in countries which have
major business contacts with the
world and their native languages are
not among the major world
languages.
 This again may call for attitude
change in language programs as
language teaching has tended to be
geared towards the academic needs
of students, or considered as
contributing to their personal
development.
 Authentic texts in the media, and
widely available international
textbooks published for various
fields can be used selectively and
efficiently according to the specific
needs of particular students in an
ESP context.
 Syllabus design is influenced not
only by the target situation but also
by many other factors that make it
dynamic and interactive to
maximize learning.
 University students starting to learn
a new language should be
encouraged to continue their studies
in that language to a level that
enables them to actually use the
language effectively.
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between this reality and the applications of
the CEFR.
 University students starting to learn a new
language should be encouraged to continue
their studies in that language to a level that
enables them to actually use the language
effectively.
 An effective and flexible ESP
course design can be produced from
the teachers own practical
experiential knowledge and from
the students themselves.
 Close cooperation with employers
in planning language courses is thus
needed in order to tailor language
teaching to adequately meet the
needs of the future academic
workforce.