Business English Communication Skills Needed by Business Graduates as Perceived by Business Professionals

Abstract

This study was conducted with 100 Business professionals in two different business sectors to examine their perceptions on the importance of business English communication skills and business English communication tasks. The purposes of this study are to investigate business English communication skills needed by graduates as perceived by business professionals and to determine what business English communication skills should be given priority. In addition, the effect of the business type and gender factors on their perceptions was examined to investigate if various business professionals differ in their perceptions of the importance of different business English communication tasks. A questionnaire with a seven-point Likert-type scale was used for data collection. Frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviation, Chi square test, and ANOVA were used for data analysis. The main findings were as follows: Firstly, the subjects ranked reading as the most important, followed by listening, speaking, and writing respectively. Secondly, for all of business English communication tasks, significant differences were found in only 4 tasks. Categorized by each English language skill, for the listening skill, there was only one task: an oral presentation; listening to the future plans. For speaking skill, there were two tasks: making face-to-face conversation with foreign customers and colleagues and an oral presentation; talking about future plans. For the reading skill, there was no significant difference found among the reading tasks. For the writing skill, there was only one task: writing reports. Thirdly, these 4 business English communication tasks were affected by both business factors and gender. Business profession was the main factor effecting "oral presentation: listening to future plans". "oral presentation: talking about the future plans" and "writing reports." On the other hand, the findings showed that there was a significant interaction between the subjects' gender and profession on their perceptions toward the importance of the communicative speaking task: "making face-to-face conversation with foreign customers and colleagues." Specifically, most of the business professionals working in manufacturing business sector perceived each communication task as more important than those in non-manufacturing. On the basis of these results, it could assist employers, ESP course designers and academic institutions in developing the business English curriculum or training that match the specific workplace needs.