Addressing the language needs of industry: Incorporating real-life workplace communication into SGC-based vocational English modules

Background For vocational English courses to adequately address the language needs of today’s industries, it is of vital importance to incorporate into the course materials and classroom activities details and characteristics of the real-world communication tasks that trade practitioners are required to perform in their workplaces [1]. As part of a recent study conducted by the Languages Discipline entitled the Industry Language Training Needs (ILTN) Study, this paper examines how authentic workplace communicative events derived from the qualitative data collected directly shed light on the language needs of industry, and it explores ways of translating the findings into practical pedagogical uses for the existing SGC-based Vocational English modules of the various programs offered by the Vocational Training Council (VTC).