A LANGUAGE NEEDS ANALYSIS OF CLERICAL STAFF IN THE BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES

Abstract

The rationale for this study, set out in Chapter One, is to investigate the linguistic and communicative needs of clerks who form a large pool of employees in an important service industry in Singapore, namely, banking and finance. Singapore is a renowned international banking and financial centre which uses English as its national and international medium of communication. The clerks working in this industry are required to be communicatively competent in English. They are therefore encouraged to attend business communication courses. A study of the needs of the clerks will help guide course designers to develop a relevant and interesting syllabus in terms of content and methodology for these adult learners. Having been involved in teaching such courses for the last five years, and in keeping with the view that research into learners' needs is best initiated by the teacher-practitioner (Nunan, 1992; Kemmis and MacTaggart, 1988), this attempt at needs analysis on my part is intended to provide useful input for course design with regard to business communication courses currently being offered in Singapore. A literature review of needs analysis in Chapter Two highlights its role as the bedrock of course design, providing guidance for setting objectives; selection of content, materials and methodology; selection of language skills and learning activities; and evaluation of course goals. Evaluation will lead to further reassessment of needs and provide feedback for a reformulation of course objectives and design. This is seen as a cyclic process within the theoretical framework of course design adopted for the study. The research design in Chapter Three will fulfil the first three objectives of this study (Chapter One, p.2) which entail an examination of perceptions of the learners' needs from the point of view of the learners (the clerks) themselves, the language lecturers and the job trainers in the user-institutions. A triangulation of perceptions will ensure that the study is valid and reliable. The methods used to determine the perceived linguistic needs and the target tasks required of the clerks include interviews, questionnaire surveys and an examination of a corpus of authentic written communication by the clerks. This examination forms the fourth objective of this study The findings in Chapter Four indicate that the clerks have problem writing grammatically accurate sentences and fluent discourse. In addition, the target written tasks of the clerks are, for example, memorandum, letter and short report, which do not require any special language or vocabulary. This finding confirms my hypothesis that an ESP course for the clerks needs to be essentially similar to EGP, building on what the clerks already know about the common rules of grammar and discourse. Unlike EGP, ESP requires "a smaller common core" (Waters, 1994:10) as a result of the specificity of their target tasks relating to written business communication. The job trainers and language lecturers involved in training the clerks also recommend that the clerks be trained in reading comprehension and summary writing as additional receptive and productive skills respectively. On the basis of the findings, I proposed in Chapter Five an outline for a business communication course exemplified by a teaching unit which is the final objective of my study (Chapter One, p.2). The pedagogical implication of this study is that a task-based, learning-centred methodology would be useful in providing the clerks with more practice through approximating in class real-life target writing situations. The proposed course also aims to raise the language awareness of the clerks by teaching language in context. Writing skills will emphasise the integration of form, content, and meaning. Finally, a learning-centred approach in class will, it is hoped, encourage the development of learner autonomy.