Bridging Higher Education and Industrial Needs Here Comes the Specialist!

Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh; Mohan Rathakrishnan; Rohaya Md Ali

doi:10.36923/jicc.v19i3.792

Open Access Article Education

Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh ⁽¹⁾ , Mohan Rathakrishnan ⁽²⁾ , Rohaya Md Ali ⁽³⁾

1. School of Languages Civilisation and Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences

2. School of Languages Civilisation and Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences

3. School of Languages Civilisation and Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences

https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v19i3.792

Issue
Vol. 19 No. 3 (2019)

Submitted
2017 December 20

Published
2019 November 10

Keywords:

Specialist Informants, Target Situation Analysis (TSA), Needs Analysis, English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Genre Analysis, Discourse Community

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Abstract

In an intercultural setting, it is timely to say that there is a crucial need to bridge the dimensions of professional discourses such as the engineering discourses, the business discourses and the legislative discourses. While various approaches are used to investigate intercultural communication, genre analysts believe that the use of specialist informants is beneficial, to provide important information on the targeted discourse community. This paper reports one such possibility to extract reliable information related to the needs of the written communication. Data was extracted using a set of interview questions manoeuvred based on Munby’s CNP model. The findings highlighted the extent of workplace intercultural communication involving particularly the English language written skill.

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Authors

Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh

(Primary Contact)

Mohan Rathakrishnan

Rohaya Md Ali

Author Biographies

Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh

Dr. Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh, Ph.D (TESL), M.Ed (TESL), B.Edu (Hons.) (TESL), is a Senior Lecturer in School of Languages, Civilisation and Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Universiti Utara Malaysia. At present, she is holding the post of Postgraduate Course Coordinator. Currently, she is teaching Academic Writing, Research Methodology and Psycholinguistics to postgraduate students. Her areas of research interest include Teaching Englis as a Second Language (TESL), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Corpus Linguistics, Genre Analysis, Discourse Analysis, computer-assisted corpus analysis (CACA); a method that she developed during her PhD, critical discourse analysis, conducting language needs analysis in professional organizations, developing and analyzing learner and genre-specific corpora. She is also keen on developing professional and academic corpus for the purpose of research. She is actively motivating teachers and scholars into conducting classroom-based investigations using the CACA method, in order to enhance classroom teaching and learning practices.

Mohan Rathakrishnan

Dr. Mohan Rathakrishnan is a research fellow of Institute of Tun Mahathir's Thought (IPDM) (2018-2022) and Senior Lecturer in Universiti Utara Malaysia. Currently, he is attached to School of Language, Civilization and Philosophy. He is an e-learning and instructional designer in teaching and learning program. He also teaches critical thinking and creative thinking. He has conducted many workshops on Blended Learning, Critical Thinking, General Studies and Web 2.0. He has also written many books on General Studies and e-learning. He supervises and advises students who likes to do research on online learning (social media, open learning or blended learning) based on any suitable subject discipline. Currently, he is supervising a few Ph.D. and Master students on collaborative and online learning in Applied Linguistic and Education.

Rohaya Md Ali

Dr Rohaya Md Ali is a Senior Lecturer in School of Languages, Civilisation and Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Universiti Utara Malaysia. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Honors); Major in Media studies (Publication and Journalism) and minor in Malay Studies from University of Malaya (UM) Kuala Lumpur. Her Master degree is in Malay Literature (Philology) from the University of Malaya (UM) Kuala Lumpur. She obtained a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Literature (Children Literature / Traditional Literature / Adaptation) from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia. Her research areas cover children's literature, traditional literature, modern literature and digital literature.

Singh, M. K. S., Rathakrishnan, M., & Ali, R. M. (2019). Bridging Higher Education and Industrial Needs Here Comes the Specialist!. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 19(3), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v19i3.792

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