_________________ _________________________ ________________ _______________ _______________ _________________ ________________ ________________ _________ OUMH2203 ENGLISH FOR WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION JANUARY 2016
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1. INTRODUCTION
English is not only use as an official language in many countries, but has influence on many different cultures in a large number of countries as it is the central language of communication around the world (Susanna, 2007). The role of English l anguage is important for communication between people especially in higher institutions and businesses in Malaysia. According to Clagett (1997), the most important area in communication is oral communication skills in English language which all employees should acquire to make sure that they can efficiently be useful at the workplace. With English being widely used b y the business community both in Malaysia and internationally, it is important for Malaysian employees to master the language because by having the ability to converse and write adeptly in English, it has become a huge advantage in today's world, enhancing the importance of mastering English as this has affected Malaysia's ability to compete in global markets as well as a destination for investment. Nowadays, to be at the higher of corporate ladder into increasingly upper management levels, the importance of English proficiency become more important. In fact, English proficiency can be one of the criteria for job promotions. According to Azian and Mun (2011), a survey conducted by the Malaysian Employers Federation showed that 68% of employers named communication skills as being the most needed skill in a job application. In Malaysia, employers expect not only high levels of knowledge and technical skills, but also the ability to communicate, think, and learn; ability to work in teams; and the person’s attitude and adaptability. Mostly all industries in Malaysia whether corporate or businesses use English as the communication language medium in workplace. However, like other non-native
English
speaking countries, Malaysians are facing difficulty communicating in workplace due to a large number of people have low proficiency in English language .The declining standard of English among the Malaysians has got to the attention of
many stakeholders from employers,
educationists and linguists to parents to voiced their concern about this critical issue. Various surveys on graduates' employability have found that English is their main weakness where many cannot speak or write proper English (Higher Education Ministry Survey 2008; World Bank Report 2005 on Malaysia Firm Competitiveness, Investment Climat e and Growth among others). Many of our fresh graduates despite having good paper qualifications are unable to converse or write well in English during job interviews. A survey conducted by JobStreet.com to 3,300 senior human resource personnel, the main reason for the high rate of unemployable graduates was their “weak English proficiency” (2005). The communication problem among school leavers, especially in English either in oral communication or writing is the biggest grouse among
employers. Therefore it is crucial for us to look at the factors contributing to this situation and find ways to improve it.
2. GAP BETWEEN URBAN AND RURAL STUDENTS IN ENGLISH PROFICIENCY
There are many reason why many Malaysians have difficult y communicating in English. One of the underlying problem lies in the social element. English is not the native language for Malaysians. Malaysians communicate with one another in the language in which they are the most familiar. This is true especially in rural areas. It is apparent that there is vast discrepancy in the mastery of English language between urban and rural students still exists. The initiative to teach Science and Math in English language was initially conceived to improve Malaysian students’ English proficiency and employability in order to compete globally which implemented the teaching of science and math in English from 2003 – 2012. Nevertheless, the Government had found that academic grades in Maths and Science subjects had fallen since English was introduced. This is partly because the students in rural districts suffered the most because their English proficiency was low. Family background has a major influence on their English language as everyday life communication. Research conducted by Thiyagarajah (2003) found that students i n rural schools did not use English outside the classrooms and adopted very limited learning strategies may be due to the unawareness of the learners’ different styles of learning. Mother tongue such as Bahasa Malaysia, Tamil or Chinese has a strong influence over the learning of English. Martin (2005) in his research says interference of mother tongue language system in some ways contributes to wrong use of English grammatical rules, morphology and syntax. Speakers tend to refer to their first language system when writing in English, use direct translation and constantly referred to English and bilingual dictionaries meanings to comprehend English text (Nambiar, 2007).
3. LACK OF CONFIDENCE
The most common problem that faced by Malaysians is a lack of confidence to communicate in English. Although they spent eleven years studying English at primary and secondary school, some of them can't even pronounce an English sentence correctly. The English subject taught in school has always been viewed as a difficult subject to learn, especially to those students from
small town and rural areas. Most of them are not confident enough to communicate in English and always refuse to use the language in public. This leads t hem to have low confidence in using the language resulting them not to get involved in the discussions during conversation because they are afraid to talk. In the study by Shamsudin and Nesi (2006) revealed that people are often decli ned to use English because they are embarrassed about their lack of fluency. According to a survey, (English language teaching and learning issues in Malaysia) some respondents experience about being unsure of meaning of certain words which made them reluctant to respond or reply to the speakers. This is because they always feel worry and shy to make grammatical mistakes and feel embarrass of their lack of proficiency. They are afraid of the negative physical response, such as smirk that they received from other more proficient speakers when the speak incorrectly, therefore they will try to avoid communicating in English in front of others and not fully involved in conversation. This makes them appear as not as intelligent as they look like. There are complaints from local employers that when our graduates attend interviews, meetings or conferences, to negotiate, they cannot convey and put across their ideas in planned and impromptu situations. These are the reasons they are made to look less smart when they are comparable to any graduate from the rest of the world. (Ambigapathy & Aniswal, 2005; Ngui, 2005). Most of people experienced performance anxiety when they need to perform in front of a crowd. When they have no confident they may hesitate or look uncomfortable and become silent. In other words, anxious people feel a deep self-consciousness when asked to risk revealing themselves by speaking the second language in the presence of other people. It can be more stressful when they are expected to speak in the second language before the fluency is achieved and this will downgrade their motivation to master English fluently. In Malaysia, people who came from small towns or rural areas are usually grown up in environment where English is not a crucial language in their daily life. They are not exposed to the language and have limited opportunity to use English outside the classrooms. Consequently, those people always express unwillingness and high anxiety to use English to communicate despite acknowledging that English is important for their future. There is a lack of support to use English in the home environment and the community itself in Malaysia where people speaking in English is viewed as language for elite society and this make them feel not confident when communicating in English.
Psychologists have tried to define what constitute motivation, which among the various theories, the self-efficacy theory deserves special attention because it explains the important role that confidence plays in a person’s language learning (Dornyei, 2001). According to Bandura (1993), people’s cognitive performance is related to their self -efficacy, which is determined by one’s previous performance, vicarious learning, verbal encouragement by others, and one’s psychological reactions (e.g. pleasure or anxiety). In other words, if people lack successful or pleasant learning experience, they will no longer believe in their own ability to learn and choose to give up quickly. It is important to improve their self-efficacy, or to boost their confidence, making them believe in their own ability. While speaking is a key medium of English communication in business, one also needs to be proficient at writing. Greater grammatical and spelling accuracy is required when writing than when speaking because writing is “evidential”. Unlike pronunciation inaccuracies made when speaking that fade with the memory and the moment, a recipient can easily see spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and punctuation problems. In business and management, employees are expected to be proficient in a variety of writing forms that often require a different range of skills. This make students to preferred to write in Bahasa Malaysia or mixing English with their native language to replace vocabulary that they do not know.
4. SKILL GAP BETWEEN EXPECTATION OF EMPLOYEES AND EDUCATION SYLLABUS.
Education institutions in Malaysia is facing a high challenge where there is a lack of holistic and comprehensive research on current English for Occupational Purposes curriculum practices in Malaysia especially in higher education institutions. Recently employers has been giving many negative testimonies on the deterioration of English language proficiency among young graduates looking for employment. Research by the National Institute of Research in Higher Education (IPPTN) has discovered that Malaysia is grappling with quality issues in higher education, which has had an impact on employability figures standing at a 48.5% (IPPTN, 2010). Yunus (2007) states that employment in Malaysia was set back by an educational and skills mismatch. This occurred when higher education institutions produced a new workforce that could not enter the labour market because of the differences in what they perceived was needed in the market and what was actually needed. The lack of a systematically structured and informed
framework for professional communication skills because different higher education institutions teach English for Occupation Purpose courses differently according to their own interpretation of the perceived needs of future employers. The current soft skills module does not capture the specific needs of communication skills workforce environment. Furthermore, according to Hayati (2008), the curr ent English textbooks and course books which are readily available are not suitable for the Malaysian context since they offer a minimum number of exercises , and some of the low quality materials do not offer reinforcement of the communication skills needed for the workplace. The current course books are more geared towards examinations, as opposed to preparing graduates for working life. This raise concerns on Professional communication skills in the syllabus and the content of current English for Occupational Purpose courses, and whether the courses are taught for the students to pass their final year examinations or to help in upskilling and polishing students’ workplace skills. There is a mismatch between, or inconsistency of standards by universities and industries, as well as the lack of a valid and reliable mechanism to assess graduates’ English competency for entr y-level employment. Malaysian employers have highlighted the discrepancy between graduates’ English competency based on their English language scores in the SPM, MUET or university language courses and their actual performance during job interviews where an excellent score in SPM and/or MUET does not readily translate into an excellent performance in English during the recruitment exercise (IPPTN, 2010). According to research done by the Malaysian National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN, 2010) has showed that industries have had to develop their own in-house assessments and training programmes for appraising graduates’ English language competency since they were unsatisfied with present English language assessment results as it does not tally to the performance of the employees skill.
5. RECCOMENDATION
Having good communication skills is the way to success and that are seen as fundamental and an great advantage in workplace. Job seekers who are proficient in English will have better chances to be employed by multinational companies. The employers do not s imply look at their
excellent academic results but also their proficiency in the second language. The mastery of any language requires frequent and prolonged practice. Therefore it is not enough just to learn English during English period at school. Moreover, it is important to apply a language in our everyday lives by practising speaking and writing the language to help the continuous learning process. An extensive use of English must be emphasised across the entire community in order for the learners to achieve mastery of the language, by providing them with more opportunities to use the language formally or informally. It is crucial for all Malaysians to change their mindset and perception towards English language as a communication language because the world has changed rapidly and we need to cope with the progress in order to be competit ive globally. The government have an important role in transformation of higher education and restructuring of the educational system in terms of its effectiveness i n producing employable graduates to meet the demand of the job market and to compete in the international environment. (Uda Nagu, 2006). As a result, Malaysian institutions of higher learning are not only need to intensify their efforts to enhance students’ English competency, but also to ensure that graduates’ English competency are compatible with the needs of the industry by developing plans to improve their programmes and services, particularly with respect to the balance between theory and practice and to match educational content to industrial needs and English language competencies.
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REFERENCE
Susanna, A. (2007). The weak language learner: a study of ways of taking weak language learners into consideration in class. Sweden: Vaxjo University,School of Humanities English, GIX115. Ngui, C. (2005). Getting to the root of graduate unemployment. Malaysian Business, Business Network. Clagett, A. (1997) Workforce needed by today’s Employers. Market Analysis. Largo, MD: Prince George Community College, Office of Institutional Research and Analysis. Hadley, O. A. (1992), “Teaching Language in Context”, Heinle & Heinle. Boston. Radha M. K. Nambiar. (2007) Enhancing academic literacy among tertiary learners: A Malaysian experience. 3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. Azian, H., & Mun, L. Y. (2011, April 10). English work: top jobs only for those who know the language well. The Star. Ambigapathy, P. and Aniswal, A.G (2005) University Curriculum: An Evaluation on Preparing Graduates for Employment, University Sains Malaysia: National Higher Education Research Institute). Uda Nagu, S. (2006, August 10) Final touches. (New Straits Times), p. 2. Retrieved 25 January, 2016 www.nst.com
Hariati Azizan and Lee Yen Mun (2010) Minding your language. Retrieved 27 January, 2016 from http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2011/04/10/minding-our-language/ Dornyei, Z. (2001). Teaching and researching moti vation. Essex, England: Pearson Education. Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychology. Moslehifara, M.A., Ibrahim, N. A. (2012). English Language Oral Communication Needs at the Workplace: Feedback from Human Resource Development (HRD) Trainees. Ahmad Tajuddin, Azza Jauhar (2015). A Malaysian professional communication skills in English framework for English for occupational purposes courses. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Retrieved from http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28747/1/AJAT%202015.pdf IPPTN, N. H. E. R. I. (2010). University Curriculum and Employability Needs (p. 8). doi:378.0720595
