The mismatch between the unmet need for and supply of occupational English skills: an investigation of higher educated government staff in Norway

Abstract

Nordic universities are involved in a global competition against American and UK universities, whose main competitive advantage is their placement in English-speaking countries. The authors argue that Nordic universities need to do more to offset this advantage than merely offer English-Medium (EM) courses to foreign and domestic students. They also need to systematically address their students' need for advanced occupational English skills. To underpin this claim, the authors use data from three different needs analyses: (1) a large-scale survey of language use and needs in Norwegian government ministries, (2) a qualitative follow-up study based on interviews of state directorate staff, and (3) a follow-up survey of ministerial job advertisements. These show that while almost 89 % of ministerial staff use English at work on a regular basis, almost 80 % of the highly educated staff have no formal English courses beyond upper secondary school, and that this leads to communication problems. The job advertisement data show that this is because language skills are invariably required in combination with professional degrees that do not necessarily include language modules. It concludes by arguing the need to integrate language-learning goals into EM courses and to supplement these with occupational English and communication courses.

Nordic language policies for higher education and their multi-layered motivations

“…While this article and the whole special issue at hand (see also Airey & al;Fabricius & al;Airey et al;Hellekjaer & Fairway 2015;Ljosland 2015; and the introduction by Saarinen) concentrates on the Nordic countries, the approach of focusing on implications of language usage in higher education policies is by no means limited to that geographical context: similar trends are seen not only in globalizing Western countries (see Doiz, Lasagabaster & Sierra 2013) but also in the expanding Asian and South-American contexts (Marginson 2006;Lim & Low 2009).…”

English writing instruction in Norwegian upper secondary schools

“…In addition, with an increased use of English in higher education as well as in business and governance (Hellekjaer, 2007(Hellekjaer, , 2010, the need for advanced English skills in Norway is already high and still increasing. A recent study on higher educated government staff in Norway also reveals that there is a mismatch between the need and supply of occupational English skills (Hellekjaer & Fairway, 2015). This study points out that the students' need for advanced occupational English skills needs to be systematically addressed in Norwegian universities.…”

Policy is what happens while you’re busy doing something else: introduction to special issue on “language” indexing higher education policy

“…In this issue, Nordic higher education provides a testing ground for theorizing about the position of language in developments of internationalization and knowledge society, and of the position of national institutions within those developments. The articles discuss the position of language in developments of internationalization and globalization (Hellekjaer and Fairway 2015;Fabricius et al in Methodologically, the presentation expands on existing views on how discourses of language, internationalization and knowledge society are operationalized in the social dynamics of higher education. The observation that higher education institutions are devising language policies with the dual role of safeguarding the national language(s) while institutionalizing the status of English as a de facto universal language of higher education, may be an indication of the strengthening or re-emergence of ''national'' as a critical factor in internationalization or globalization, exemplified by the role of institutional language policies in navigating between ''national'' and ''international'', and by the top-down mechanisms that the institutions have experienced as the major motivator for those policies (Saarinen and Taalas in this issue; Airey et al in this issue).…”