English for Placement Purposes: Developing a Needs Based Course for Meeting the Employment Demands of IT Industries

Abstract

The instrumentality for conducting a specific needs based placement course in an engineering

programme is to develop relevant employability skills of the technical students to cater to the

communicative demands of the industry. This paper is concerned on understanding tertiary level

students’ language and communication problems while they face job interviews. This article is treated

with triangulated multiple sources and methods to analyze the learning needs of the final year

Information Technology students and the target demands of the HR Managers. It is found that the

technical students need to adopt relevant job related oral and written communication skills to

competently perform in on-campus recruitments. With the due emphasis given on examining present and

target situational needs, a specific needs based intensive communicative course is designed and

developed to satisfy the learners’ learning needs and their target situational demands. It reports on how the technical students are able to satisfy the recruiters in their job interviews.

Keywords

• English for Placement Purposes (EPP); English Proficiency Course (EPC); on-campus recruitment drive; needs analysis; productive skills; syllabus design

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