A study of De La Salle University alumni's perceived communicative competence in the workplace and its implications for business English syllabus design.

• Main Author: McCormack, Marina A. Martinez
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 1995
• Subjects: English language > Business English.; De La Salle University > Alumni.; De La Salle University > Curriculum.; English language > Outlines, syllabi, etc..; English language > Writing.; Business communication.; xx5. Business writing.
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/1285
• Institution: De La Salle University

In Metro Manila, Philippines, where the majority of written communication is carried out in English, competence in written English has been a perennial and important concern among corporate employers and universities. Congruent with this national thrust on English communication, the goal of the De La Salle University's English Department has been to meet the written communication needs of the business industry by producing communicatively competent graduates. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the alumni's perceived communicative competence in the workplace and explore its implications for syllabus design at De La Salle University (DLSU), Philippines.The researcher designed a questionnaire for the DLSU Business alumni (a) who graduated between 1981 and 1984 (b) who received a degree of Bachelor of Science in Business or dual degree in Business and Economics whose areas of concentration are in Accounting, Management of Financial Institutions, Business Management, and Marketing Management and (c) who were employed in Metro Manila at the time the research instrument was administered.This study deals with the graduates' on-the-job writing needs and problems. It also analyzes the Business English syllabus previously used, and compares it with existing theoretical models.The findings from this investigation revealed that, regardless of the respondents' areas of specialization in the College of Business, (1) most of those who were exposed to frequent writing tasks felt communicatively competent in the workplace, while the majority of those who rarely wrote, did not feel communicatively competent (2) those who performed job-related types of writing felt communicatively competent, while those who performed non-job related writing did not feel communicatively competent and (3) the majority of the respondents who were exposed to a combination of two or more writing methods while in school felt communicatively competent, while those who performed mostly group writing did not. As hypothesized by the researcher, this study revealed that there is a relationship between the alumni's perceived communicative competence and the three independent variables namely: frequency of writing, job-related types of writing, and methods of writing.