Fourth-Year English Majors’ Career Orientation

I, Introduction 

“Employment is the huge part of adult life” (Asher, 2004, p.3). If a person makes a wrong career decision, he will suffer both financially and emotionally. In the 1990s, English degree was highly appreciated and versatile for numerous jobs. However, in modern society, employers tend to recruit graduates with specialized majors such as computer science or economics. Thus, English major students are often confused and get stuck in choosing career (DeGalan & Lambert, 2000). Hence, it is crucial that the research be carried out to give all English majors and the would-be ones an overall look at English major seniors’ career choice and their preparation for the future life-work so that they can take their own career plans to achieve success.

II, Materials and Methods

To collect the data, a questionnaire was developed. The subjects of the study were English major seniors of Hanoi University so a monolingual questionnaire was reasonably required. It comprises nine questions. The first two questions probe the general judgment on senior’s career orientation while the next two questions attempt to find out their popular career choice and the last five ones discover the way students prepare for their future jobs in terms of academic knowledge as well as social skills.

A survey was conducted at 3 English classes: 1A06, 6A06 and 7A06 of Hanoi University in April, 2010. Questionnaire papers were distributed to 48 females and 2 males on voluntary basis. The participations answered the questionnaires in their break time. Before they answered, the queries were responded and participants then progressed to finishing the questionnaire. All the handouts were completed and collected after 30 minutes. It took us several days to analyze the data. Finally, the data were recorded in the form of bar charts, pie charts and tables.

III, Results and Discussion

1. Some general judgment on fourth year English majors’ career orientation

The pie chart showed positive attitude of fourth-year English majors towards career orientation. The majority of asked students (90%) took career paths in advance whereas just a minority of them (10%) did not give any thought to the career planning. Apparently, almost all respondents had their own career planning. It will be the great advantage for them to launch successful career, which was strongly confirmed by Lawson (2002) and Asher (2004). All their research demonstrated that career orientation could boost new employees’ confidence and competence to fit in with their future jobs. As the result, they will gain more success and happy lifetime. For the all above benefits, it is definitely recommended that career orientation be built as soon as possible among undergraduates.

2. Career choice

2.1. The most popular career choice

Concerning English majors’ career choice, chart 2 highlighted the differences in the popularity of work fields. As can be seen from this chart, business contributing the highest percentage of students’ selection (55%) was highly preferable to any other fields. This finding was relevant to the deduction of DeGalan and Lambert (2000) that “business has enjoyed enormous growth and peaked in popularity” (p.9). Following this area was teaching (14%). Two other fields, Tourism, Publishing and Broadcasting made up lower choice with the same percentage (11%). Finally, translating was chosen by only 9% of respondents staying at bottom of the list.

With these results, it is clear that the number of Hanoi English majors who decided to become translators or interpreters as the trained majors was extremely limited. This conclusion proved the findings of Manabe (2009) that to become a translator, learner needed to possess not only excellent English skills but also deep and wide background knowledge of history, culture as well as other aspects of life. Correspondingly, translating is still a particularly challenging field with students. However, English majors are provided with valuable skills such as critical thinking, solid writing, and fluent speaking… which are very useful to different job fields, consequently, they can apply for various kinds of jobs. Lemire also (2006) emphasized that “where there are people who need help using words to communicate, there are jobs for English major” (p.5). Hence, “No one need worry about the future of English majors in colleges or universities” (DeGalan and Lambert, 2000, p. 11).

2.2. Key factors affecting job choice

Chart 3 indicated key factors contributing to job choice of English major seniors. A significant portion of respondents (72%) considered salary the salient factor when looking for work. It was more than three times as much as the percentage of students choosing their jobs based on their interest (20%). Nearly half of respondents, namely 48%, embarked on career fields because of the working-condition while just 25% of them gave heed to their own ability.

It is clear that most of students often paid more attention to external factors than internal factors when they applied for jobs. This trend did not appear to be congruent with findings of many experts. According to DeGalan and Lambert (2000), career planning should be done by choosing a job that not only is suitable with students’ ability but also challenges to develop their new skills as well as flair. They also emphasized, “If you make a decision that you can not tolerate and feel you must leave that job, you will then have both unemployment and self esteem issues to contend with.”(p.97). Therefore, aside from external working factors, internal working factors such as interest and ability should be put on thoughtful deliberation. “If you find jobs you love, you will never work a day in your life” (Asher, 2004, p.4).

3. Preparation

“Planning is the key to success” (Coplin, 2003). As the results, preparation is regarded as a decisive step to launch a successful career.

3.1. Academic preparation

As illustrated in table 4, English majors were more concerned with oral English than written English. Among 50 respondents, majority of them (23) confirmed that they spent a lot of time practicing speaking and listening and no one ignored those skills. Writing, meanwhile, was not fully appreciated by students. Most of them (43) sometimes (not frequently) or rarely or even never spent time practicing it, and just a few students (7) reported that they had the usual habit of exercising writing skills. However, DeGalan and Lambert (2000) emphasized that writing skill was very important to any employer. Through writing frequently, students can learn about critical thinking, paraphrase technique, analyzing and interpreting data as well as the way to express ideas clearly and precisely which can help them not only improve other skills but also satisfy the demand of employers. For all those advantages, besides studying verbal communication skills, English majors should appreciate the importance of writing skill, as the result, practice it more regularly and diligently.

As chart 4 showed, additional education or training were particularly appreciated by most of English major seniors. A substantial percentage of respondents (92%) considered obtaining other degrees or certificates besides English degrees necessary to get their future jobs. Just a modest number of English majors (4%) were confident to launch their career without any other education. Only a small number (4%) had neutral opinions about this. The trend of holding other degrees or certificates besides English could be explained that “English as a major is not job training” (p.115) as DeGalan and Lambert (2000) stated. According to their findings, English majors were provided with “liberal education” (p.115) - general knowledge rather than specified skills, “the content of academic major, in or of itself, is only transferable to those occupations…. such as editing, publishing and translating” (p.115). Hence, to meet the demand of the employment, English major students should be armed with additional education or training to get ready for job search.

Concerning the additional education or training of English major fellows, chart 5 highlights the popular fields students study besides English. Statistics presented economics as the dominant one with the highest students’ choice (84%). This tendency was directly traced to the 4th year English majors’ career selection, which was discussed in the previous part. As most of students decided to work in business, studying in economics fields was the deliberate choice. For this fact, it is strongly suggested that some specialized English, especially business English, should be introduced into the English department curriculum to accommodate the special demand of undergraduates.

3.2 Soft skill preparation

Table 2 shows that fourth-year English majors are supremely not confident in their social skills although they highly appreciate the role of these ones. Among 50 asked people, no one disclaimed the importance of soft skills but only 16 people reinforced to stay at the good degree. More than half of students (26) confirmed that they are at fair level. Worse still, eight respondents admitted to being extremely lack of those skills. It is undeniable that an inordinate number of students made inadequate preparation for social skills. This conclusion agrees with the view of many experts, “Students were considered high functioning, as indicated by intellectual capabilities, language skills and academic performance, but were lacking of social skills” (Kamps, Leonard, Vernon, 1992, p.282). However, aside from academic knowledge, some soft skills such as communication skills, problem-solving skills… are also regarded as the crucial factors required for the work placement (Coplin, 2002). So it is crucial that students pay more attention to improve these skills.

Chart 6 indicates some popular ways helping students sharpen their social skills. As can be seen from the chart, both part-time jobs and voluntary activities were in huge favor of more than half of respondents, which ranged from 53% to 57 %. Taking part in these activities, students can acquire a lot of communication skills as well as problem-solving skills, which are extremely valuable for their future jobs (Coplin, 2003). However, just a modest number of asked seniors (23%) became a member of clubs such as sports, English or social clubs… Obviously, students did not take full advantages of those kinds of activity. This underestimation of club’s significance completely contrasted with the review suggested by Coplin (2003). According to his findings, “certain pleasure activities are treated as skills for credit in college” (p.112). These experiences will develop students’ self-confidence, teamwork and interpersonal skills that help them cope with the world of work. For all those benefits, students are highly recommended to formulate all these viable strategies in order to develop social skills as much as possible.

IV, Conclusion

In brief, this small-scale research explored some significant points related to career orientation of 4th year English majors in teams of their career choice as well as their preparation for future job. The results demonstrated most of students had circumspect career orientation with variety of job choice and Business was concluded as the most popular. However, the key factors affecting job choice should be taken into more serious consideration. Concerning preparation, students should not only be prepared academically but also pick up more useful practical experience and soft skills. This research along with the above suggestions is expected to help students shape an illustrious career. “An effective orientation program takes time and effort but is well worth the investment” (Lawson, K, 2003).