Designing the syllabus- báo cáo nghiên cứu khoa học giáo viên

1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION There is no doubt that communication is a great need to us, human beings In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, communication is placed after physical requirements, such as the need for food, water, sleep, warmth and safety This hierarchy is displaced as a pyramid whose lowest levels are made up of the most basic needs and whose top are for more complex needs As people progress up the pyramid, needs become increasingly psychological and scholar Further up the pyramid, the need for personal esteem and feelings of accomplishment take priority In this way, Maslow emphasizes the essence of communication as a way to achieve individual potential [1] Similarly, there is a Vietnamese saying, “ Sự ăn cho ta lực, cho ta trí bang giao cho ta nghiệp”[2] Obviously either we work in an office, or function at school, or interact with people in any situation, communication is needed Every day, in many ways, we communicate with other people Sometimes, it is verbally; other times, it is through the written word; and even we it non-verbally through what we call body language If we expect to get our point, our message, our meaning across, it is imperative that we have good communication skills Obviously, when dealing with issues in our personal life, good communication is vital If we are in a relationship with someone, communication will be what keeps that relationship alive In the workplace, without effective communication skills, a person may find it impossible to climb up the corporate ladder as promotion just comes to those who can communicate effectively at all level, from senior management level to the lowest employee Thus, whether at work or in our dealings with life, the importance of communication skills cannot be underestimated It is the high awareness of the value of communication skills as an important soft skill to students of the English Language Faculty that pushed the researchers to carry out this study 1.1 Statement of the problem The World Bank calls the period we are living in now the century of “Skills-Based Economy”, in which one’s working ability is assessed by three criteria: knowledge, skills, and attitudes And according to many world’ leading scientists, on our success in life, soft skills (emotional intelligence) has up to 85% of influence and hard skills (logical intelligence), only 15% Among the soft skills, communication skills are those most required by employers and recruiters It is because in the workplace, communication is considered an affair bringing about the success to an individual or even an organization However, the reality shows that not many employees can meet the demand for good communicating ability In a survey that Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Welfare, in association with Manpower Group, conducted on 1000 businesses of fields in areas across the country, a quarter of the surveyed businesses stated that communication skills are what most employees lack [3] Also, as revealed in a recent assessment on the quality of Vietnamese young laborers carried out on 13 th October, 2011 by the World Bank, most recruiters are not satisfied with English skills, particularly speaking skill, and communication skills of Vietnamese new graduates[4] Adding more to it, Mr Nguyen Huu Thiet, Human Resource Manager of Friestland Food Dutch Lady Vietnam, said that most of domestically-qualified students, as in his long-time observation, were weak in their communication skills (i.e presentation skills, verbal skills, interpersonal skills, team working skills, e.t.c), their ability to apply knowledge to practical situations and their professionalism This, according to him, might be resulted from the pusillanimity and passivity they had formed at schools (cited in Luong (2010)) [5] The lack of communication skills does not only obstruct the promotion of an individual, but it also negatively affects the development of an organization since communication is done both internally and externally In consideration of the lack of communication skills as well as other soft skills of Vietnamese new graduates, there are two main reasons First, it is because a majority of young Vietnamese leads a misconception that only what are shown in their profile , such as certificates or diplomas, professional skills, working experience,e.t.c, counts, so they tend to impress the recruiters with their hard skills, leading to the fact that students tend to pay more attention to professional knowledge than to communication skills As a result, they become less active in daily communicational situations and even worse, they not know how to behave properly in a job interview and thus lose the chance of being given the applied job Second, the training of soft skills in general and communication skills in particular has not ever been concerned satisfactorily in university education Our university curricula usually play the most emphasis on providing students with strong professional skills, so there has been no place for soft skills in the educational program until today when their importance has been magnified by businesses or recruiters In reality, more and more schools include certain soft skills into their curricula, but a large portion of the learners’ need has been met by extra-curriculum courses, which; however, are sometimes inconvenient or even impossible for learners to take due to their busy schedules Therefore, in a survey of 234 recruiters and 3.364 graduates from 20 universities published in the research “Solutions for Enhancing Higher Education Quality” by Ho Chi Minh University of Pedagody, both graduates and recruiters shared a common view that students need to be retrained in all-around skills which can support students’ specialized skills so that they can work productively in the workplace [5] Up to now, there have been hundreds of English-majored students at Lac Hong University leaving schools to enter the working life yearly This brings to the administrative board of the English Language Faculty (ELF) a great concern about how to enable the new graduates of the faculty to first get a job easily and then to work effectively In order to deal with this concern, many positive changes of the teaching program have been done In addition to the improvement on the contents for specialized knowledge, the training of soft skills, particularly communication skills, is proposed to the curriculum In respect to the existence of communication skills in the program, it is necessary for the faculty to design an effective syllabus which ensures the included contents can meet the common requirements of recruiters or businesses 1.2 Purposes of the study This study was carried out with the purpose of helping English-majors of the English Language Faculty, Lac Hong University be better prepared for their future career, which was expected to be achieved primarily by training them to be good communicators Concerning this, it was assumed that with both professional skills and communication skills, English majors would be able to get down to working immediately and effectively as mentioned in the school’s slogan, “new graduates of Lac Hong University can start working without any further training.” 1.3 Significance of the study Taking the mentioned purpose into account, it is clear that the success of this study can bring a lot of long-termed benefits, not only to the school but also to students First of all, once the proposed syllabus of communication skills is successfully implemented in the curriculum of the English Language Faculty, English majors would be better prepared for their future career After graduation, together with good English skills, they will be equipped with effective communication skills, so they would be more confident in their lives and work Moreover, students will no longer have to take the extra courses as they used to do, which is of course a big convenience for them, in terms of time and money The other benefit is related to the success of the school In fact, the fight for learners’ enrollment among universities/ colleges is getting bitter year by year, and in this struggle, only those whose students can meet the demand of the labor market can stand Referring to this, there is a strong belief that with better occupational preparation, it would be easier for English majors in particular and students of Lac Hong University in general to seek for a good job as well as to get promotion in their career, and hence more learners would prefer to register at the English Language Faculty and at Lac Hong University 1.4 Research questions In consideration of the above rationales, this research tried to answer these two questions: Why is a course of communication skills necessary for English majors at Lac Hong University? What should be included in a syllabus of communication skills? 1.5 Research hypothesis It was hypothesized that communication skill is one of the soft skills English- majored graduates are expected to acquire in order to get success in the workplace Another hypothesis was that a syllabus for communication skills would be much beneficial to learners if it trains them how to exchange information effectively, to maintain good relationships with people around, and to overcome any obstacles that might hinder their communicating process CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Soft skills 2.1.1 Soft skills versus hard skills There are two basic types of skills in the world of work: hard skills and soft skills Hard skills are “technical or actual knowledge” They are part of a person’s IQ (Intelligence Quotient), are specific to a professional job and can be determined by qualifications or standardized tests IQ plays an important role in many desirable life outcomes (e.g job performance, income, etc.) [6] Soft skills are “common sense knowledge” It is a sociological term for a person’s EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) Soft skills are very difficult to judge by standardized tests and can only be roughly estimated by personal contact Most of the time, a person’s soft skills are most visible in real-life social situation [7] Soft skills are often described by using terms associated with personality traits, such as:  optimism,  common sense,  responsibility,  a sense of humor,  integrity , and abilities that can be practiced such as:  empathy,  teamwork,  leadership,  communication,  conflict resolution and negotiation,  creative problem solving,  strategic thinking,  influencing skills,  selling skills, to name a few [8] It has been suggested that in a number of professions, soft skills may be more important over the long term than hard skills The legal profession is one example where the ability to deal with people effectively and politely, more than their mere occupational skills, can determine the professional success of a lawyer [9] Another example is IT careers Increasingly, over the last two decades, it has been recognized that when IT Professionals acquire soft skills, better relationships are built between IT and other business unit within the enterprise, fostering alignment The key element to build these relationships is their ability to communicate [10] In respect to the fact that a person’s EQ is sometimes more important than his/ her IQ, in the book, “Working with Emotional Intelligence”, Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and CEO of Emotional Intelligence Services, contends that among the pool of people smart enough to handle the most cognitively demanding fields, IQ has the least power in predicting success[11] Supporting this view, William Bennis, an internationally renowned author and leadership expert, says “Emotional intelligence is much more powerful than IQ in determining who emerges as a leader IQ is a threshold competence It might get you into a certain field, but it doesn’t make you a star Emotional intelligence can.” [12] 2.1.2 Preferred soft skills in the global job market At the 2006 Conference Board, an in-depth survey of 461 business leaders released by the Corporate Voices for Working Families, Partnership for 21 st Century Skills, and Society for Human Resource Management revealed that while reading, writing, and arithmetic are still fundamental to every employees’ ability to the job, employers view soft skills as even more important to work readiness Also, this survey has indicated some soft skills that young workers are expected to acquire They are as belows:  Professionalism or work ethic  Oral and written communication  Teamwork and collaboration skills  Critical thinking or problem-solving skills Adding to this list, the Circle of Champions, a distinguished group of U.S business pointed out the following competencies as key to the success of young workers in the 21 st century’s workplace: networking, enthusiasm, professionalism, communication skills, teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking [13] It can be seen clearly that companies are not just assessing their current staff and future recruits on their professional skills They are now evaluating the staff on a whole host of soft skill competencies around how these people relate and communicate with other people, how they adapt themselves to the changing needs of the company, how they can deal with differences, etc All of these skills are soft and essential in the workplace 2.1.3 Reasons for soft skills “In today’s working environment, where customers and employees are demanding more, in stilling the use of soft skills in your team members is something you simply cannot survive without.” (Nicolaides, 2002:1) [14] In fact, more and more corporations around the world recognize that in order to gain competitive advantage, they need to make sure their people know how to handle themselves at work and how to relate with their customers and peers Besides customers, in order to contribute for better results for a company, a person needs to work with other important people in the company This requires the employee both competences in their specialization as well as being able to work with others and being aware of others’ roles, challenges and strengths Also, critical projects in a company carry risks as well as some amount of stress, and being able to handle the emotion is essential to deliver on these projects, which cannot be performed well with technical skills only In this way, showing empathy as well as optimism, and being self-aware of what is going on around are what one needs to for the integral part of a progressive organization Concerning the role of soft skills in some one’s career, Jide (2011) gives three great reasons to develop soft skills, clarified by typical example of IT career First, “certification is not an end in itself.” We need soft skills to create opportunity for ourselves because technical knowledge will become useless if nobody is unknown to the others So the essence is opportunity and the opportunity can be grabbed only by soft skills Second, “soft skills help advance your career.” To explain this idea, he gave an example of how IT professionals advance their careers In his example, to bring value to organization and clients, IT staff is getting more involved in many non-tech activities to carry out their IT tasks, particularly communicating with colleagues or people in non-IT areas or motivating other team members Finally, “soft skills empower you and create opportunities.” In this way, good soft skills will help when our technical competencies are similar to those of other candidates who are in the struggle of getting the position we are seeking [15] The effects of good soft skills on someone’s life go far beyond his career In respect to this, Jide (2011) also mentioned them as an important reason for developing soft skills In his point of view, soft skills are necessary to our personal growth and also they help us grow beyond money motivation [10] Supporting it, Todd (2011) pointed out some things that could be considered as the positive effects of soft skills on our lives Specifically, the development of soft skills deepen our relationship with spouses, children, and friends; they help us become attractive to attract like-minded people in our lives; they bring us people’ respect and admiration and; they change us into a good example of successful people; and especially they give you the feeling that you have more control of your life Therefore, with good soft skills, not only could our lives be enhanced, but also the world would be made a better place to live [16] In short, soft skills are not only personal attributes that enhance an individual’s interactions, job performance and career prospects, but also behavioral competencies Thus, soft skills are interpersonal and broadly applicable, so they can complement hard skills and many other activities Soft skills, as opposed to hard skills, greatly impact the personality development of employees, which, as many organizations today realize, can play an important part in not only maintaining relationships with their customers but also in developing a successful business Therefore, soft skills have been considered by employers to be an indicator of job performance which is as good as traditional job qualifications or hard skills like Ian Morrison puts “Hard skills will get an applicant an interview, but soft skills will get that person a job.”(cited in Nguyen, p.1) [17] 2.2 Communication skills 2.2.1 Fundamentals of communication As discussed above, among the soft skills needed for an employee, communication is, in Baker’s view, “the act of transmitting and receiving information”( 2011:1) [18] In other words, “communication is the simultaneous sharing and creating of meaning through human symbolic interaction”(p.3) [19] Thus, a definition of communication will include these attributes:  It is a process that is continuous in time  It is interactive between people  Its purpose is to transmit facts, thoughts, ideas, interpretations, desires and emotions [20] In relation to the way people interact with each other, there are two main types of communication: verbal and nonverbal These two types are equally important in communication Verbal communication is the way we use words to express our thoughts, feelings and attitudes Nonverbal communication includes eye contact, posture, facial expressions, hand gestures and signing These two types are necessary for us in that together they help us conduct our communications efficiently [20] 2.2.2 Communication skills There are different definitions of “communication skill” For example, - Communication skill is the ability to use language (receptive) and express (expressive) information - Communication skill is the set of skills that enables a person to convey information so that it is received and understood Communication skills refer to the repertoire of behaviors that serve to convey information for the individual - Communication skill is the ability an individual displays in consistently demonstrates the ability to effectively communicate with clients, colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors in professional manner and in the personal department - Communication skill is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral language and written language This means that every platform for communicating is a communication event This includes formal meeting, seminars, workshops, trade fairs, etc (p.1) [21] In accordance to the number of people involved the purpose of the communication and the degree of formality in which it occurs, there are various skills necessary for communication They are: - Intra-personal communication skills: This implies individual reflection, contemplation and meditation One example of this is transcendental meditation According to the experts this type of communication encompasses communicating with the divine and with spirits in the form of prayers and rites and rituals - Interpersonal communication skills: This is direct, face-to-face communication that occurs between two persons It is essentially a dialogue or a conversation between 10 two or more people It is personal, direct, as well as intimate and permits maximum interaction through words and gestures - Focused Interactions: This primarily results from an actual encounter between two persons This implies that the two persons involved are completely aware of the communication happening between them - Unfocused Interactions: This occurs when one simply observes or listens to persons with whom one is not conversing This usually occurs at stations and bus stops, as well as on the street, at restaurants, etc - Non- verbal communication skills: This includes aspects such as body language, gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, etc., which also become a part of the communicating process; as well as the written and typed modes of communications - Mass communication: This is generally identified with tools of modern mass media including social media marketing, which includes: books, the press, cinema, television, radio, etc It is a means of conveying messages to an entire population (p.1) [22] As communication skills are the tools to help us deal with the obstacles we might encounter when communicating with others, they not simply refer to the way in which we communicate, but encompass many other things Thus, to be a successful communicator, a person needs to acquire an integrated set of skills These skills comprise writing skills, speech skills, listening skills, non-verbal skills, conversational skills, interviewing skills, interpersonal skills, persuading skills, networking skills, etc [23] However, in the sets of skills, the following are acknowledged to be essential, so most required for communication not only in daily routines but also in the workplace First of all, it is listening skill “It shows up on every list of what effective communicators do: They listen.”(p.100) [19] In fact, effective communicators spend more time listening to others According to an American survey, Americans spend up to 45% of a typical day listening to others; speaking, 30%; reading, 6%; and writing, 9% [19] In fact, many average entry-level candidate struggles to know how to listen efficiently They may not immediately process essential instructions or be able to understand how their tasks relate to the overall goals of the organization [13] Together with listening, speaking or responding skill is also considered essential in communication Communication is two-way ... communicate with other people, how they adapt themselves to the changing needs of the company, how they can deal with differences, etc All of these skills are soft and essential in the workplace... responding to others as well as simply articulating messages Therefore, we need to respond in order to let other people know we understand the message they have transferred to us; otherwise, they would... within the company In offices, people often receive memorandums, letters and other types of interoffice communication These are used to coordinate the efforts of the people within the company Whether