Speaker
Description
Despite the growing use of English in professional settings, little attention has been paid to the alignment between language instruction at postgraduate level and the learners’ workplace communication demands. To fill in void, this qualitative study explores the English language requirements of legal professions who have finished an English course as part of their higher education at Hanoi Law University. Thematic analysis of students’ written feedback revealed that the participants primarily use their reading and writing skills for drafting contracts, emails, and reports. They also need to listen and speak in English for client consultations and professional presentations. English language competence is considered important for both employment and career advancement of postgraduate learners; however, the students report major challenges with their spoken English and the use of legal terminology. Current language instruction at postgraduate level is perceived as inadequate, thus it is recommended that future English courses put greater emphasis on productive skills, reduce the coverage of grammar, and include more legal content.
Biography
Nguyen Thu Trang is currently an instructor of English at the Faculty of Legal Foreign Languages of Hanoi Law University, and a researcher in language learning and teaching. She has got 15 years of teaching English for both English-major students and non-major students. Her research interests include writing skills, presentation skills, learners’ difficulties and strategies, and semantics. She has attended the Viettesol conference 2023 in Hanoi and the Viettesol 2024 in HCM City. She hopes to be able to share her teaching and research contexts at Hanoi Law University to her colleagues around the country and be informed of current developments in EFT teaching and learning.
