In this chapter, the results presented in Chapter Four are discussed. The researcher will first provide an overview of the study. Then the researcher will summarize and discuss the findings in relation to the three research questions proposed. Next, future research directions and pedagogical implications will be presented. Finally, limitations of the study will be discussed.
Overview of the Study
The study examined whether the tertiary EBP curricula in Taiwan match the English needs of the workplace in the fields of international trade, manufacturing, and finance. The framework for both the English needs analysis in the workplace and the evaluation of the tertiary EBP curricula is a tripartite categorization of needs--necessities, lacks, and wants-- proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). Three research questions were proposed to explore the issue. The first research question concerned the English needs in the business workplace. To investigate the English needs and accompanying communicative functions, 170 business professionals were recruited for this study-- 27 participants received interviews and the other 143 participants filled out a needs-analysis questionnaire.
categories of language functions were used as a classification scheme to ascertain the communicative functions of frequent English tasks in the business workplace. The second research question was posited to gather information about the content of the tertiary EBP curricula. To answer this question, 10 EBP instructors from eight public and private universities were interviewed. The third research question intended to examine whether the tertiary EBP curricula matched the English needs identified by
the business professionals. To answer this question, the target tasks in the workplace and in the EBP classes elicited from the interviews were tallied and compared.
Discussion
In this section, the researcher will first summarize the results in response to the three research questions proposed, and then discuss them in relation to the findings from extant literature.
RQ1. What are the workplace English needs as determined by the daily tasks in the fields of international trade, manufacturing, and finance, and what are the communicative functions of these tasks?
The English needs of the interviewed business professionals are reported according to their necessities, lacks, and wants. Regarding necessities, English reading and writing abilities are used most frequently in the business workplace, especially attending to emails, forms/documents, business reports, and reading website information. In contrast, English speaking ability is demonstrated less frequently. The English speaking tasks that the participants needed to perform are making and receiving phone calls, hosting foreign business partners or attending overseas exhibitions. Thus, literacy skills require greater priority for business professionals.
Subsequently, the communicative functions of the four frequent tasks were investigated. Regarding the most frequent writing task, attending to emails, the top three communicative functions for business email writing are responding to clients inquiries/requests, making inquiries, and making requests. Regarding another frequent writing task, writing English business reports, the top three communicative functions
are describing a situation/problem, describing work progress, and making appraisals.
Regarding the most frequent English speaking task, telephoning, the top three
communicative functions are making inquiries, making confirmations, and replying to clients inquiries/requests. Finally, for English meetings, the top three communicative functions are negotiating/persuading, reporting work progress, and making proposals.
One may notice there is extensive repetition in the list of communicative
functions in that inquires and requests occur on both sides, the foreign clients and the interviewees, and also appear in both tasks, emailing and telephoning. Therefore, it may be informative to condense this information into a more economical
nomenclature.
Upon consideration of the commonalities among the communicative functions, it can be seen that negotiating/persuading, making inquiries/requests, and replying to clients inquires/requests require interaction skills to perform the functions. Moreover, the function of responding to clients inquiries/requests requires problem-solving skills in addition to interaction skills. Describing a situation/problem and reporting work progress need descriptive skills. Making appraisals, such as market outlook appraisals and credit appraisals, entails analytic skills. Therefore, interaction, problem-solving, descriptive, and analytic skills could be deemed as necessary communicative skills in the business workplace. It corroborates the categorization proposed by Bachman and Palmer (2010) that language use is recognized as serving ideational, instrumental, interactional, and heuristic functions.
Moreo lacks, although English listening and
speaking skills are demonstrated less frequently than English reading and writing skills in the workplace, the participants indicated that they encountered more difficulty in accomplishing English speaking tasks. Comprehension of a variety of
English accents and the ability to socialize and maintain small talk in English with international business partners are found to require enhancement. The participants explained that job mobility and the immediacy of interaction lead them to desire enhancement of English listening and speaking abilities over English reading and writing abilities. Hence, lacks are clearly defined by difficulties of performing tasks in English, in contrast to necessities which comprise easy and difficult tasks.
In terms of the participants wants, cross-cultural communicative skills and pragmatic skills for interaction are the ones that the participants desire to learn. The participants indicated that enhancing cross-cultural communicative skills can reduce the risk of social embarrassment and provide more topics for them to chat on social occasions. Moreover, the theme of pragmatic skills is evident when interviewees stated that they desired the ability to adjust their English in different contexts of the business workplace, as the ultimate business goal is to make partners and clients feel comfortable doing business with them.
Four aspects of the above findings deserve our further discussion. First, regarding the necessities in the business workplace, the findings of the study are consistent with previous studies conducted in the past decade (Chang, 2011a; Chew, 2005; Evans, 2010, Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, 2010; Taillefer, 2007) in that English reading and writing skills are the major required language skills in the
business workplace; whereas Shih et al (1998) indicated a different finding that English writing skills were the skills least demonstrated in the workplace in Taiwan.
The researcher surmises that the difference between the findings of this study and the ones conducted earlier is due to the advance of technology and asynchronous
computer-mediated communication, such as email, MSN, and Skype, which are widely adopted in the workplace. The instant messaging functions of these media
make English writing skills more important than speaking. Universities in Taiwan should require students to take more credits in business English writing skills.
However, the instant messaging functions of the media have also changed the linguistic characteristics of English business writing in the workplace.
Louhiala-Salminen (1996) posited that unlike the traditional business correspondence which values indirect language and complex sentence structures, email writing in English tends to be brief, straightforward, less formal, and contains a great amount of spoken grammar. Trezise (2010) also found that the register of the email exchanges between a sales manager and his foreign partners was often quite informal, and the linguistic style was characterized by low levels of syntactic and lexical complexity.
The interview findings of business professionals in this present research conform to the findings of the above two studies
Second, regarding the lacks in the business workplace, the findings of this study are consistent with all the studies discussed in Chapter Two (Chang, 2011a; Chew, 2005; Cowling, 2007; Edwards, 2000; Evans, 2010; Kankaanranta &
Louhiala-Salminen, 2010; Kassim & Ali, 2010; Rogerson-Revell, 2007; Shih et al, 1998; Taillefer, 2007) in which English speaking skills are repeatedly reported as a source of difficulty. It is not surprising that the participants encounter communication breakdowns with international business partners owing to the fact that the participants in the above studies are not native speakers of English, and they experience the stress of immediate response and various English accents. Of the previous research, two studies, Chang (2011a) and Shih et al (1998), pointed out that the business
professionals in Taiwan also have similar problems to those who are from other countries. Considering that the present study corroborates the findings of Chang and
Shih et al, it can be concluded that English learners in Taiwan have yet to overcome the frustration of English oral interaction.
Third, regarding the participants wants, the findings of the study seem to
support the theory of communicative competence first proposed by Hymes (1972) and expanded by Canale and Swain (1980). These researchers proposed that language competence should not only refer to linguistic competence but also include pragmatic competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Boyd (2002) indicated that in the case of business English, learners need to be able to select appropriate language and use it strategically to achieve a particular communicative purpose, and even a particular personal style, in business settings or target situations where English is the agreed-on language of interaction (p. 41). In particular, most of the international business communication takes place between NNES and NNES (Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, 2010; Rogerson-Revell, 2007). When two parties of NNES do business, the non-linguistic competences play an even more crucial role in determining the success or failure of communication.
Fourth, in terms of the most frequent communicative functions of emailing, telephoning, and meeting, interaction skills and problem solving skills are necessary skills. The results seem to be consistent with Trezise s (2010) investigation of English literacy in an international trade company, which revealed that the texts at work were generally interpersonal and interactive in nature, involving brief but frequent
exchanges with customers. Louhiala-Salminen (1996) also indicated that exchange of messages is the most important situation requiring written skills in English. Hence, the findings in the EBP research seem to support the belief proposed by Lockwood, Forey and Elias (2009) that in successful business communication, interactive
competence should also be developed in addition to one s linguistic competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence.
RQ2. What are the workplace English needs perceived by the tertiary EBP instructors in Taiwan and what tasks do instructors use to meet these needs?
According to the interview findings, the tertiary EBP instructors place the most emphasis on the enhancement of English oral communication skills in the classes.
They perceive that English oral communication skills are demonstrated frequently in the business workplace, and students in Taiwan lack confidence in English oral communication and have few opportunities to practice it. Therefore, they feel that the most necessary tasks for EBP classes are group discussions, oral presentations, and job interviews.
In addition to the focus on English oral communication skills, most EBP instructors also emphasize the training of reading business news and reports and the building of business English lexis. Most EBP instructors select a business English textbook and teach the business English articles from the textbooks. A number of them also supplement the textbook with updated business news from the Internet and from the business magazines such as the Economist and Bloomberg s Businessweek.
From these readings, the instructors highlight essential business vocabulary to build up students vocabulary size.
Although the tertiary EBP instructors focus on the enhancement of English oral communication skills, most of them still prefer using traditional pencil-and-paper tests as summative tests to evaluate students learning. They assess students vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension about the business articles discussed in the
classes. Only three of the instructors interviewed use alternative assessments, such as mock product launch and job interviews, to assess students learning.
It is worth noting that the EBP instructors express a dilemma about designing their syllabi and selecting tasks for their students. They indicated that due to the lack of work experience, students do not show involvement in tasks such as holding a business meeting or negotiating with clients and can not have in-depth discussions on topics such as outsourcing, merging and acquisition. Even though they tried their best to familiarize students with the oral interaction tasks in the workplace, students usually behaved passively. It turned out that the instructors were forced to dominate those tasks. As a consequence, the EBP instructors either discontinued communicative tasks and returned to whole class lectures, or focused on the building of business vocabulary.
Several parts of the findings reported here call for extra attention. First, the focus of English listening and speaking skills conforms to the results of Chang (2011a), Shih et al. (1998) and Tsui (1992) in that the business professionals in these three studies showed strong motivation to increase English listening and speaking abilities.
Second, according to the interview findings, most of the EBP instructors would choose a business communication textbook as the main teaching material and teach the readings contained within. However, previous studies have found that a gap existed between business English in textbooks and in practice. The readings in the business English textbooks are usually simplified to meet teaching purposes. For example, Belcher (2004) asserted that ESP materials remain too far removed from the real-life contexts that learners aim for (p. 165). Trezise (2010) investigated business English textbooks from the 1990s and discovered that the literacy tools
which were used to implement brevity and sincerity at that time were dramatically different from the workplace.
Third, regarding the finding on evaluation methods in the tertiary EBP curricula, with the exception of three interviewees who used communicative tasks to evaluate students, most EBP instructors preferred pencil-and-paper tests which assess
vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. The generally accepted weakness of this evaluation method is that it only assesses learners linguistic competence.
However, as mentioned previously, Boyd (2002) maintained that business English is concerned not simply with general communicative competence but with the specific ability to manage the delicacy of context that leads to successful business
relationships. (p. 41) Traditional pencil-and-paper tests could not really evaluate such abilities.
RQ3. To what degree do the tertiary EBP curricula in Taiwan prepare college students with the English skills needed in the workplace of international trade, manufacturing, and finance?
Based on the comparison of the interview findings listed in RQ1 and RQ2, it is found that the content of the tertiary EBP curricula in Taiwan did not meet the
English needs in the workplace of international trade, manufacturing, and finance. As shown in Table 21 on p. 159, five tasks which were carried out frequently by business professionals-- attending to emails, attending to English forms and documents,
attending to overseas exhibitions/conferences, hosting and visiting clients, and
telecommunication-- deserve more attention from tertiary EBP instructors. According to the interview findings in Chapter Four, the business professionals rely heavily upon emails and asynchronous CMC because of the time differences with clients. However,
the interview findings with the EBP instructors portray a different picture. From the point of view of the EBP instructors, email correspondence is a mundane task which requires very little attention in curriculum planning. Likewise, the business
professionals attend to forms/documents every day as a large component of their daily workload. This makes one believe that the task is mundane and leads one to overlook it. This is precisely what has occurred on the part of the EBP instructors.
Therefore, concerning the common necessities among the sectors of international trade, manufacturing, and finance, tertiary EBP instructors should place more
emphasis on English writing training. The findings of the study confirm Bacha and Bahous (2008) that many business English instructors underestimate the importance of English writing skills in the workplace.
In addition, attending to overseas exhibitions/conferences is specific to certain departments, like sales and marketing. This explains why 44% of the business
professionals need to learn English appropriately for this task. Unfortunately, the EBP instructors completely overlooked this task. There is no clear explanation for this omission on the part of the EBP instructors even though 50 percent of them had work experience in business. The researcher surmises that the EBP instructors regard this task as overly specific for students without work experience. This conjecture is based on the comments regarding the failure of incorporating group discussions,
presentations, and simulated meetings into classroom instruction.
On the other hand, those who would rather teach English presentation skills than exhibition English believe that students will utilize this skill in their future careers.
However, according to the business professionals, the majority of meetings and presentations are conducted in Mandarin because they are situated in the Taiwanese
offices without international partners present. Upper managers are those who have opportunities to conduct English presentations and meetings.
Moreover, the business professionals perceived the task of hosting and visiting clients difficult because they need to maintain small talk before and after their business. However, the unpredictability and spontaneity of small talk make it even more difficult. On the other hand, the small talk aspect of hosting and visiting clients is perceived as easy and not worth valuable class time by the EBP instructors.
Likewise, the task of telephoning is perceived difficult by business professionals, while the opposite is true of the EBP instructors. The business professionals think that it is difficult because of accents which are made even more difficult to understand due to lack of visual cues. However, the EBP instructors consider this task easy. Therefore, in order to prepare college students to meet the English requirements in the future business workplace, EBP instructors need to make their students familiar with these tasks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this study demonstrated the mismatches between the needs of English language skills in the business workplace and the content of the tertiary EBP curricula in Taiwan. English literacy skills, small talk skills, cross-cultural
communication skills, and pragmatic skills for interaction, which are identified by business professionals as required English language skills, deserve more attention and class time from EBP instructors. In addition, owing to the ideational, manipulative, and heuristic functions of business communication, EBP instructors should design more descriptive, interactive, and problem-solving tasks to prepare students for the future workplace. It is hoped that these findings have shed new light on EBP
curriculum design and evaluation. It is also expected that this study can serve as a catalyst that will urge more research into EBP curriculum design.
Implications for Future Research
The findings of this study offer two important implications for future research.
First, the present study has quantitatively ascertained the tasks which are frequently carried out in English and the tasks which are perceived as difficult in the business workplace. The results of the study may help EBP instructors prioritize the focused language skills and communicative tasks. However, in order to construct authentic tasks in the workplace, the characteristics of the tasks need to be further explored. By probing the characteristics of frequently performed tasks, valuable information can be provided to help EBP instructors design teaching materials and evaluation tasks to
First, the present study has quantitatively ascertained the tasks which are frequently carried out in English and the tasks which are perceived as difficult in the business workplace. The results of the study may help EBP instructors prioritize the focused language skills and communicative tasks. However, in order to construct authentic tasks in the workplace, the characteristics of the tasks need to be further explored. By probing the characteristics of frequently performed tasks, valuable information can be provided to help EBP instructors design teaching materials and evaluation tasks to