Nglish in the Workplace: An Analysis of the Communicative Needs of Benin Banking, Tourism and Travelling Personnel

Abstract

This research is an exploratory study of the use of English by Benin banking, tourism and travel Personnel. It attempts to examine the communicative needs of this personnel in their workplaces by shedding light on their needs, wants, lacks and attitude towards English. It is a need analysis performed to find out the professionals’ needs of English in their specific area of work. This analysis makes sure that the course will contain relevant and useful skills to learn. It also enables the course designers to achieve a detailed profile of what this category of professionals need to be able to do in English in order to produce a specification of the language skills, function and forms required to carry out the communication described in the needs profile. The current study has been carried out using the mixed methods, qualitative and quantitative methods. The sample consists of thirty personnel to whom questionnaires are distributed by type of work. Fifteen ESP teachers were interviewed. The data was collected by means of questionnaires, class observation, interviews and analysis of the results were obtained. On the one hand the results have shown that the workers’ perceptions of their needs, wants and lacks are greatly affected by their attitudes toward English. On the other hand the results provide a useful input for developing a curriculum or designing an ESP to meet the communication needs of these personnel and thus ensure their efficiency at their workplaces.