Further examples of language in particular communicative environments

Emma is your student. Emma might become a hairdresser. She might work in a salon in a local shopping centre. The speech communities in her communicative environment would include her family, her friends and her work. Working as a hairdresser, Emma would have to learn a new trade with its own jargon or terminology. Her day to day environment would be filled with oral communication, such as responding to requests from the owner of the salon, answering the telephone and making appointments, talking to sales reps about various product lines, ordering supplies for the salon, and chatting to clients while they have their hair done. Emma may need to negotiate her hours with her employer or her days off with other staff. As Emma becomes more experienced she will need to manage new staff and explain and instruct them in the use of new products or new styles. So Emma will need to learn the vocabulary of her occupation as well as the skills to develop good rapport with the customers through her communication with them. Without good communication skills, Emma would find her chosen career very difficult.

Finally, what can we say about Emma's communicative needs? Emma would probably not need to use formal speech very often in her day to day work, but her ability to interact socially using appropriate language with a range of people of different ages will be fundamental to her success as a hairdresser. She would need to express interest in her customers' lives, to speak with her employer and her work mates as well as with other professionals in the hairdressing industry.

James is your student. James will most likely go onto university. He would need specific communication skills to be able to succeed in his tertiary studies. James would have to discuss the units he will take with course co-ordinators and to enrol in them at student services. If he studies engineering for example, he may need to work on group projects with other students. They would have to allocate tasks within the group. They would have to arrange to meet each other and debrief about their contribution to the project so far. James would need to give tutorial presentations, he would also need to contribute to tutorial discussions, to ask questions of his peers, to explain concepts and explore different perspectives, etc. He would need to talk to lecturers and ask for clarification about things in the course that he doesn't understand. He may need to ask library staff for help and in doing so explain the task that he has been set. James would need to learn a lot of new words about his field of study, but he would also need to learn to communicate within a tertiary institution.

When James graduates as an engineer, for example, he would need to communicate with his employers, perhaps an engineering firm, with their clients (builders, project managers, government departments, local councils). In these situations, his ability to express his ideas would be fundamental to his winning project tenders.

James' communicative environment will require very different language skills from those of Emma. He would need to learn the language of his field of study, eg, engineering. He will also need to learn a range of general academic terms or language for learning. James would also need to contribute to discussions and to give formal presentations. Like Emma, he too would need to communicate with a range of people, but the sort of communication expected of him would be very different from that expected of Emma. James would have to talk to lecturers, tutors, library staff (usually about his subject area), and other general administrative staff (usually about his enrolment, prerequisites, electives etc). Communicative competence for James would also be fundamental to his success as an engineer. He would need to negotiate with clients and to gain their confidence and custom through the expression of his ideas.

[Back to beginning?]