AN ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE SKILLS AND VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: THE CASE FOR SPORTS MANAGEMENT

Abstract

The assessed importance of each of the four basic language skills in a foreign language varies, and the relationship between a person’s knowledge of vocabulary and the four macro language skills is highly elaborate in a foreign language of a particular profession, i.e. domain. In addition to the vocabulary in general language, a person must also master the knowledge of concepts that form the theoretical basis of the profession in question as well as the terms assigned to these concepts, first in one’s native language and then in the foreign one. The first aim of the research in this paper was to determine how respondents assessed the import of each sub-skill within the four groups of basic language skills – reading, writing, listening and speaking on the one hand, and on the other to determine the weight of knowledge of sports management-specific terminology in a foreign language for working in sports management in the Republic of Croatia. The second objective was to establish, also in the context of sports management, the correlation between the estimated importance of each of the four language skills and the estimated importance of the knowledge of sports management-specific vocabulary. The sample consisted of 70 students (men: n = 44; women: n = 26) of the fourth and fifth study years at the Faculty of Kinesiology, the University of Zagreb. The students filled out a questionnaire consisting of 58 items. They rated the relevance of all the sub-skills within the four basic language skills with the highest ratings. As for the order of skills given their criticality, the results indicated that the subjects considered reading skills as the most important, followed by listening, speaking and finally writing. The respondents also assessed the significance of the command of sports management-specific vocabulary with the highest rating. However, contrary to expectations, the analysis pointed to a low or only marginally moderate correlation between the assessed merit of each of the four language skills and the assessed weight of knowledge of the sports management-specific vocabulary.