Professional English Skills for Employability Across EU. Framework for a Curriculum

The ability to effectively communicate at work is one of the 21st Century Skills demanded by employees. Feeling confident and competent in a foreign language plays a vital role in enhancing employability and mobility. The English language is so widely used in the EU and around the world in general that gaining some mastery of it provides the user with clear employment advantages. There are some studies that suggest that the probability of being employed when a candidate has appropriate English skills is in some cases increases by up to 12%. Currently, about 94% of upper secondary students in the EU learn English. Many of them may be successful in their attempts to find employment partly because of their level of English. In a 2016 survey on foreign language skills Eurostats reporting that ‘It was common to find that employed persons had the highest level of foreign language proficiency when compared with the shares recorded among unemployed and inactive persons of the same age.’ The project Professional English Language Skills for Employability Across EU brings together six partner institutions from six countries: Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) Cyprus; MECB Ltd Malta, Lusófona University Portugal, TEAM4Excellence (T4E) Romania; Babel Idiomas Spain; and Eurospeak Language Schools Ltd United Kingdom. The main objectives of the project are: make high-quality professional English training available for specifically unemployed citizens across Europe; produce a sensible ready-to-go framework for a curriculum for professional English that can have an impact on Language teachers and trainers, and upskill unemployed citizens with professional English skills that are actually required by employees. With the research in different countries previously conducted by the project partners in mind, a framework for a curriculum has been drawn up to address the skills required by survey participants. Overall, speaking, reading and writing were considered important skills across the industries and businesses surveyed. Within each skill, there were a number of subskills that were required by respondents to the questionnaries conducted by the projects British, Cypriot, Maltese, Romanian, Portuguese and Spanish partners. Some of the modules overlap in content and theme though this serves to consolidate knowledge gained in those modules.