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

The instrumentality for conducting a specific needs based placement course in an engineeringprogramme is to develop relevant employability skills of the technical students to cater to thecommunicative demands of the industry. This paper is concerned on understanding tertiary levelstudents’ language and communication problems while they face job interviews. This article is treatedwith triangulated multiple sources and methods to analyze the learning needs of the final yearInformation Technology students and the target demands of the HR Managers. It is found that thetechnical students need to adopt relevant job related oral and written communication skills tocompetently perform in on-campus recruitments. With the due emphasis given on examining present andtarget situational needs, a specific needs based intensive communicative course is designed anddeveloped 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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